Temple Mount

Temple Mount
Arabic name
Arabic	الحرم القدسي الشريف
Romanization	al-Haram al-Qudsī ash-Sharīf (Noble Sanctuary)
Hebrew name
Hebrew	הר הבית
Romanization	Har ha-Bayit

The Temple Mount, biblical Mount Moriah, is a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is the former site of a Jewish temple built by King Solomon in the mid-tenth century BC. The temple was rebuilt by King Herod of Judea in the first century BC. When Jesus went to temple, he angrily overturned the tables of the money changers. The Roman commander Titus destroyed the temple in 70 AD during a Jewish revolt against Roman rule. Roman Emperor Hadrian built a Temple to Jupiter around 130. This temple was destroyed by Emperor Constantine in 325.

The Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine, was built by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik in 691. The al-Aqsa Mosque was built about 710. As the site of Muhammad's ascension to heaven, al-Aqsa is considered to be the third holiest site in Islam. Although the Temple Mount was captured by the Israelis in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, it is still managed by an Islamic religious authority called the Waqf.

Building under Herod

The Jewish historian Josephus records that Herod rebuilt the temple at great expense:

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Accordingly, in the fifteenth year of his reign, Herod rebuilt the temple, and encompassed a piece of land about it with a wall, which land was twice as large as that before enclosed. The expenses he laid out upon it were vastly large also, and the riches about it were unspeakable. A sign of which you have in the great cloisters that were erected about the temple, and the citadel which was on its north side. The cloisters he built from the foundation, but the citadel he repaired at a vast expense; nor was it other than a royal palace, which he called Antonia, in honor of Antony.

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The Herodian temple took forty-six years to build. In the time of Jesus, Antonia was a Roman fortress. Like the temple, it was destroyed in 70 AD.

Dimensions

Josephus states that the Temple Mount was "six furlongs around, including Fort Antonia." The temple and Antonia were both squares with sides of 1 furlong. A biblical furlong is 606.75 modern feet (185 meters). So the dimensions Josephus gives correspond to 607 X 1,214 ft (185 X 370 m). The Temple Mount was enlarged by Hadrian in the second century. The modern dimensions are 1,020 ft (313 m) across the north, 1,530 ft (470 m) in the east, 910 ft (280 m) in the south, and 1,578 ft. (485 m) in the west. Thus the current Temple Mount is significantly larger in every dimension than the Herodian temple.

The Church of the Condemnation, the traditional site of Antonia, is just north of the Temple Mount. That is to say, the location was selected without taking into account that Antonia was later incorporated into the Temple Mount.

The temple itself was 60 X 20 cubits in area and 40 cubits high. A cubit was 21.85 inches, so the building was 109 X 36 ft. (33 X 11 m).

In contrast to the Josephus, the Mishna gives dimensions of 500 cubits by 500 cubits (861 X 861 ft., 262.50 X 262.5 m). The Mishna's description is suspiciously similar to Ezekiel's ideal temple and was written well after the temple no longer existed. So it is less likely to be based on observation than is Josephus's.

Location of the temple

The issue of where the Jewish temple stood has attracted both interest and controversy. Traditionally, the temple was said to have been at the location where the Dome of the Rock now stands. In modern times, various sites on the Temple Mount have been suggested. The idea that the temple was located outside the Temple Mount has also received attention, but is rejected by specialists as a fringe theory. Archaeological digs on the Temple Mount are banned by the Waqf, making the issue difficult to resolve.

The black lines represent the current Temple Mount, blue is Hadrian's Temple to Jupiter in Baalbek, Lebanon, and red is a possible plan for the Herodian temple. Like the Temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem, the Baalbek temple was built by Hadrian. If the design of the Jerusalem temple was similar, the site of the octogonal Dome of the Rock corresponds to that of the hexagonal forecourt of Hadrian's temple. Drawing by Tuvia Sagiv.

al-Kas Fountain

Fortress Antonia, where Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate, was at a higher elevation than the temple, according to Josephus. In modern times, the Dome is the high point of the Temple Mount. If Antonia was located at what is now the Dome, that would place the temple at al-Kas Fountain, according to Tel Aviv architect Tuvia Sagiv. This location is midway between the Dome and al-Aqsa. This area was landscaped and flattened by Hadrian. If the temple was at this site, it is now under 17 meters of earth.

Writing in 400 AD, Jerome says that in his day an equestrian statue of Hadrian stood over the Holy of Holies. Hadrian also built a Temple to Jupiter in Baalbek, Lebanon. The ruins of this temple still stand. If Hadrian's temple in Jerusalem followed a similar plan, this statute was at the site of the fountain.

West side of al-Aqsa

A trumpeting stone of the temple was found in 1968 near Robertson Arch near the southwest corner of Temple Mount. As the stone fell off the Western Wall in the first century, the discovery confirms that the wall, where today's Jews go to pray, was a part of the Herodian temple. If we follow the dimensions given by Josephus, the temple extended 1 furlong in both directions from the southwest corner. This would put the temple of the west side of al-Aqsa, according to Norma Robertson.

Based on digs near the southern wall, archaeologists claim that what is now al-Aqsa was the site of Herod's Royal Stoa. This was a government building for the bureaucracy and courts of the kingdom. Reused cedar timber from the Stoa was found in al-Aqsa.

Dome of the Spirits

An alternative theory described by physicist Asher Kaufman is based on the tradition that the temple was due west of the Golden Gate. This gate was built by Justinian in the sixth century and sealed off by Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1541. It was sealed because there is a tradition that the messiah will enter using this gate. If the location of this gate corresponds to the Herodian gate, that would put the temple at the Dome of the Spirits (or Dome of the Tablets), which is 330 feet north of the Dome of the Rock. This site is sacred to the Sufi sect.

The name Dome of the Tablets suggests that a tradition connected this site to the temple. But the dome was built in the tenth century, after the Golden Gate was built. There is a tradition that connects the Golden Gate to the Shushan Gate of rabbic literature. But there is no consensus regarding where this gate was or if it even existed.

Jesus

Several well-known episodes in the life of Jesus occurred at the Herodian temple. Mary brought Jesus to the temple forty days after he was was born. He returned as a 12-year-old to debate the Pharisees. During his ministry, Jesus visited the temple and was outrage by the sight marketers defiling it. He angrily overturned the tables of the money changers. In the temptation narrative, the devil brought Jesus to the "pinnacle of the Temple" and challenged him to prove that he son of the God by throwing himself off.

According to Matthew:

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Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

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This prophesy was fulfilled with the destruction of the Herodian temple by Titus in 70 AD.

After Jesus appeared at Pentecost, believers began to meet at the temple.

Prophecy

There are various prophecies in both the old and new testaments that concern the rebuilding of the temple. For example, in a letter to a Christian community in Thessalonia, Paul prophesied as follows:

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Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day [the day of the Lord] will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

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According to Paul, the Old Testament prophecies concerning the rebuilding of the temple were fulfilled by the coming of Jesus:

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Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

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"The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man," according to Acts.

Revelation says that the messianic temple will be built in heaven, not on the Temple Mount:

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Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.

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Together with the grounds that surround it, the messianic temple prophesied by Ezekiel will be 51 miles by 21 miles. The building itself will be about one mile square. A mountain near Jerusalem, either Moriah (the Temple Mount) or Zion, will grow miraculously to accommodate this huge building, according to Isaiah:

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It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

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Non-Jews were excluded from the historical temples, but the messianic temple will be for people of all nations. It will be presided over by a messiah, which should be understood simply as a position that combines the roles of high priest and king.

Muhammad

According to the Koran:

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Glory be to Him, who carried His servant [Muhammad] by night from the Holy Mosque [in Mecca] to the Further Mosque the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs. He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing.

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This verse is conventionally interpreted to mean that Mohammad was miraculously transported to a "Further Mosque," in Arabic al-Masjid al-ʾAqṣā, as part of a one night journey in 621 and briefly ascended to heaven there. The al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is one of only three that are suggested as destinations for Islamic pilgrimage. The other two pilgrimage mosques are in Mecca and Medina.