Temple Mount Archives - Page 38 of 59

Weekend Roundup #1

The Times of Israel is reporting that Muslim authorities moved tons of illegally excavated earth from the Temple Mount into a city dump.

Aren Maeir posts an astounding video of a flood in the Harod Valley this week.

Frankincense has returned to Israel after 1,500 years.

More tourists visited Israel in 2012 than in any year before.

An Israeli committee will review modern prohibitions against mixed prayer at the Western Wall.

Jean Perrot died this week. Among other things, Perrot excavated several Chalcolithic sites near
Beersheba.

Marked down to $1.99 for Kindle: The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the
Pursuit of an Ancient Bible, by Matti Friedman. These sales are brief.

HT: Jack Sasson, Joseph Lauer

Western Wall prayer area from south, amd042108530

Segregated prayer areas at Western Wall.
Photo by Austen Dutton (source).

Tagged Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Resources, Temple Mount, Weather, Weekend Roundup

Ancient Cedar Beams on Temple Mount

Archaeologists have long known about some ancient cedar beams on the Temple Mount. Recent tests indicated that they dated back to the time of Solomon’s temple. (I don’t have an English reference for that at the moment.) The Temple Mount Sifting Project team recently wrote about these cedar beams:

Some of these beams predate the first Al-Aqsa Mosque and have been used and reused numerous times in various structures, which actually aided their preservation. We have some fragments of these beams among the finds at the Sifting Project.
We have been monitoring these beams for many years as they lay exposed to the weather in the open courts of the Temple Mount. We hope the Israel Antiquities Authority will succeed in placing them in a safe shelter before the coming winter. We have been requesting that the IAA deal with this issue more than three years, but these ancient beams have yet to be properly secured.

Arutz-7 reported on Sunday that some of the beams are being used as firewood.

The wood, consisting of giant beams, first appeared at the end of the 1930s, when the Al-Aqsa mosque which currently occupies the Temple Mount was refurbished. The beams had been used in the roof structure of the mosque, and already at that time they were said to be thousands of years old by archaeologists – preserved only because they had been used in the building. Some of the beams were dated to the first Temple period, others to Roman times, and at least one beam was found to have Byzantine-era designs etched on it.
[…]
Now, many of the beams have been placed at what appears to be a dumping ground next to the Golden Gate of the Old City, apparently for the use of local Arabs as firewood. Jewish groups that visited the Mount saw the beams being moved, but reported that the Arabs forbade them to take photos of the activity. Officials of the Archaeology Authority, who are responsible for the safety of these ancient beams, are nowhere to be seen.

The Arutz-7 story includes a short video allegedly showing the beams being burned next to the Golden Gate.

Cedar trees in Lebanon
Photo from the new Lebanon volume

Tagged Temple Mount

Weekend Roundup

A dog fell into a hole in Jerusalem and now it will become an open biblical tourist park.

Work continues in Georgia in constructing a museum for artifacts from Israel.

The next time you travel to the Golan Heights, you can remember your day this way: Bastions, Burials, Battles, and Borders.

Ferrell Jenkins shares a photo of a beautiful sunrise over the Sea of Galilee.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher may close its doors for a day to protest its bank account being frozen for not paying its water bill.

Al Jazeera posts 15 photos on the Western Wall prayer plaza and excavated tunnels.

The Zondervan Atlas of the Bible is marked down to $14.99 for the Fabulous Friday sale at christianbook.com. (Amazon: $26.39). It might make a great gift for someone who wants to understand the Bible better.

The latest SourceFlix video short is about the olive harvest. (If you appreciate their work, you might consider making a donation some time.)

A special exhibition opens next week at the Lynn H. Wood Archaeological Museum on “The Battle over King David: Excavating the Fortress of Elah.”

I bet that this is the first (future) motion picture reference to Shaaraim in connection with the David and Goliath story. (If they ever read 1 Samuel 17, they’ll get rid of it. Shaaraim is not Qeiyafa and it’s not the Philistine base either.)

HT: Charles Savelle, Joseph Lauer

Woman harvesting olives near Bethlehem
Photo from Cultural Images of the Holy Land

Tagged 10th Century, Galilee, Golan, Museums, Resources, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

Haaretz: Following the Dream of a Third Temple in Jerusalem

Haaretz’s article on the Third Temple and Jewish visits to the Temple Mount is probably the most thorough and helpful report I’ve read on the subject.

They are proposing what they consider to be the key to solving all of our problems: building a Third Temple. In the meantime, they are trying to get permission to pray on the Temple Mount, where Jewish religious ritual has been prohibited since East Jerusalem was taken by Israeli forces in the 1967 war.
Shortly after the war, the government decided not to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount ‏(which is known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, and is the site of two major Muslim holy places, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock‏). Jews could pray below the Mount, at the Western Wall, Israeli authorities decreed.
In terms of religious ritual, the Temple Mount remains a Muslim preserve. According to a survey conducted by the joint directorate of the Temple movements, only 17 percent of Israeli Jews, religious and secular alike, want to see a Third Temple built. However, the numbers shoot up in regard to the possibility of praying on the Temple Mount, with 43 percent of the secular public and 92 percent of the religious public in favor, which averages out to 52 percent of the entire Jewish public.
The police, though, are convinced that allowing Jewish religious ritual to be performed on the Temple Mount will stir unrest among Muslims on a scale that is hard to gauge. Accordingly, the police make every effort to enforce the long-standing government decision, even though this involves repeated skirmishes with the Temple movements. Some of their activists, Yehuda Glick among them, are barred from even approaching the entrance to the Temple Mount.

The full, lengthy article describes a meeting with leaders interested in rebuilding the temple, a visit to the Temple Mount on a bride’s wedding day, the modern Bezalel, preparations for rebuilding the sacrificial altar, and a plot to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque.

HT: Bill Soper

Replica of the temple overlooking the Temple Mount
(Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount

The Location of the Royal Palace in Jerusalem

Where was the royal palace in Jerusalem during the time of the monarchy? Most scholars have assumed that it was located to the south of Solomon’s temple, between the ancient city and the summit of Mount Moriah. In a 2009 article, David Ussishkin suggests that the palace was built to the north of the temple for the following reasons:

1. It is more logical that the king would desire to isolate his royal compound from the population so that everyone traveling from the city to the temple would not pass by it.

2. In a number of ancient cities, the palace was built at the edge of the acropolis. This was true at the Hittite capital of Hattusha, the Late Bronze cities of Ugarit and Megiddo, as well as a nymber of Assyrian cities including Calah, Nineveh, and Dur-Sharrukin.

Ussishkin notes some difficulties with his hypothesis:

1. Some biblical texts indicate that the palace was south of the temple (Neh 3:25-29; 12:37).

2. The royal acropolis was located in the center of some cities, including Samaria and Zincirli-Sam’al.

I would also question the premise that Solomon would desire to be isolated from the people. God’s intention for Israel’s king was that he would represent the nation to God and vice versa (Deut 17:14-20; 1 Kgs 3:7-10; Ps 72:1-4). The first story of Solomon’s kingship is his adjudication of the case of the dead infant (1 Kgs 3:16-29). The isolation that may have been desired by other kings of the world may not have been appropriate for the king in Jerusalem.

Absent archaeological investigation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, it is impossible to confirm the location of the home of Judah’s kings.

Ussishkin’s proposal is a small portion of his article “The Temple Mount in Jerusalem during the First Temple Period: An Archaeologist’s View,” found on pages 473-83 of Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager, ed. J. David Schloen. This thick book is loaded with many articles of interest to students of biblical archaeology.

The Temple Mount from the north. Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands, volume 3.

Tagged Analysis, Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Massive Reservoir Discovered near Temple Mount

Excavations west of the Temple Mount have revealed a massive water reservoir from the Old Testament period. Over the last few years, archaeologists have been excavating the path of a 1st-century street and drainage channel leading from the City of David to the Temple Mount, and the reservoir was discovered during this work. The reservoir is similar to contemporary systems excavated at Beth Shemesh and Beersheba. From the Jerusalem Post:

The recently discovered reservoir, with an approximate capacity of 250 cubic meters, is one of the largest water reservoirs ever discovered from the First Temple period. Due to its size, archaeologists believe the reservoir was designed for and used by the general public.
According to Eli Shukron, the excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “the exposure of the current reservoir, as well as smaller cisterns that were revealed along the Tyropoeon Valley, unequivocally indicates that Jerusalem’s water consumption in the First Temple period was not solely based on the output of the Gihon Spring water works, but also on more available water resources such as the one we have just discovered.”

The Israel Antiquities Authority has issued a press release with more details.

According to Dr. Tvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist of the Nature and Parks Authority and an expert on ancient water systems, “The large water reservoir that was exposed, with two other cisterns nearby, is similar in its general shape and in the kind of plaster to the light yellow plaster that characterized the First Temple period and resembles the ancient water system that was previously exposed at Bet Shemesh. In addition, we can see the hand prints of the plasters left behind when they were adding the finishing touches to the plaster walls, just like in the water reservoirs of Tel Be’er Sheva, Tel Arad and Tel Bet Shemesh, which also date to the First Temple period.” Dr. Tsuk says, “Presumably the large water reservoir, which is situated near the Temple Mount, was used for the everyday activities of the Temple Mount itself and also by the pilgrims who went up to the Temple and required water for bathing and drinking.”
The exposure of the impressive water reservoir that lies below Robinson’s Arch joins a series of finds that were uncovered during recent excavations in this region of the city, indicating the existence of a densely built-up quarter that extended across the area west of the Temple Mount and predating the expansion of the Temple Mount. It seems that with the expansion of the Temple Mount compound to the west and the construction of the public buildings and the streets around the Temple Mount at the end of the Second Temple period, the buildings from the First Temple period and early Second Temple period were dismantled in this region and all that remains of them is a series of rock-cut installations, among them the hewn water reservoir.

A presentation about the discovery will be made this evening at the City of David Archaeological Conference. The Israel Antiquities Authority has released three high-resolution photos. The story is also reported by Arutz-7.

Iron Age reservoir in Jerusalem

Iron Age reservoir in Jerusalem. Photos by Vladimir Naykhin, IAA.

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem, Temple Mount