Author: Leen Ritmeyer

Last year we attended the First annual conference of Hekhal: the Irish Society for the Ancient Near East that was held in Dublin, Ireland.

This year, the second conference, entitled “Pilgrimage, Travel, and Cult” will be held on 24-26 May 2013 at CITI, Braemor Park, Dublin 14.

Many scholars from different parts of the world, including Israel, will attend. On the Hekhal website there are links that let you download the sessions and abstracts of the different papers.

The sessions that I would find particularly interesting are: “Pools of Jerusalem: Pilgrimage, Purity and the Holy City” by David Gurevich, University of Haifa, Israel, and “The role of the Temple Mount after 70AD” by Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, Israel Antiquities Authority.

HEKHAL is currently preparing the proceedings of its first annual conference for publication, which will contain our article on “Relating the Temple Scroll from Qumran to the Architecture of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem”.

I am often approached by people that are under the impression that the Eastern Gate of the Temple Mount had to be directly opposite the entrance leading into the Holy Temple.  According to Middot 1.3, there was only one gate in the Eastern Wall of the Temple Mount:  “the Eastern Gate on which was portrayed the Palace of Shushan”.

The Eastern Gate is an important gate of the Temple Mount, as on Yom Kippur the scapegoat that was chosen by the High Priest in front of the Temple, would have been led through the Court of the Women, down a stairway to and through the Shushan Gate and into the Kedron Valley. From there it was led over the Mount of Olives into the Wilderness of Judea.

Another biblical scene takes us to the top of the Mount of Olives, where a priest would sacrifice a Red Heifer. Numbers 19 stipulated that in order for the people to be purified, a Red Heifer should be sacrificed, its ashes collected and put in a container with water. This was used to sprinkle those in need of purification. The Mishnah said that the priest that was consecrated to burn the Red Heifer would leave the Temple Mount with the Heifer and go through the eastern gate to the Mount of Olives. The problem of the identification of the eastern gate lies in two passages, in Mishnah Parah 3.9 and 4.2.  The first states that the priest that offered the Red Heifer on the Mount of Olives, sprinkled its blood seven times toward the Holy of Holies. According to the second passage, “if the blood was sprinkled not in the direction of the entrance [of the Holy of Holies] it is invalid.” There must therefore have been a direct line of vision between the Mount of Olives and the entrance to the Temple. From the place of this activity, he could look straight through the Nicanor Gate and see the entrance to the Temple.

The idea that the Shushan Gate had to be directly opposite the entrance to the Temple comes from a misunderstanding of the passage in Middot 2.4: “All the walls there were high, save only the eastern wall, because the [High] priest that burns the [Red] heifer and stands on top of the Mount of Olives should be able to look directly into the entrance of the Sanctuary when the blood is sprinkled.”  Does that mean that the Eastern Gate of the Temple Mount should be on the same line of vision, drawn between the Temple and the top of the Mount of Olives?

Looking from the top of the Mount of Olives through the Golden Gate one could never see the Temple, wherever one places it on the Temple Mount, as that gate is located far too low down. One cannot expect to look through a lower gate and see something that is higher than that gate. Only the drawing of a section would make that clear. In order to solve architectural problems, one needs to think in three dimensions.

The level of the top of the Mount of Olives (810 m. above sea level) is 75 m. (246 feet) higher than the Temple platform (735 m.). The sill of the Golden Gate is located some 21 m. (70 feet) lower than the Temple platform. How then could one look from the top of the Mount of Olives through the Golden Gate, or any other gate in the Eastern Wall of the Temple Mount, and hope to see the entrance to the Temple? It is totally impossible!

We must conclude that the passage in Middot 2.4 needs to be read differently or that the writer didn’t remember the actual line of vision.  Which walls are referred to by “All the walls …”? Those of the Temple Mount or those of the Temple Courts? The previous passage (Middot 2.3) describes structures “inside the Temple Mount” and it ends with a reference to the Nicanor Gate. This was an extraordinarily beautiful gate with bronze doors made in Alexandria, that stood between the Temple Court and the Court of the Women, right in front of the Herodian Temple .

There is a direct line of vision from the top of the Mount of Olives to the entrance to the Temple through the Nicanor Gate, while the walls of the Court of the Women were kept low (see illustration above). If one stands today to the east of the Dome of the Rock one can see the Mount of Olives clearly.  The Nicanor Gate therefore is the only gate that the writer of Middot could have had in mind. The High Priest that offered the Red Heifer on the Mount of Olives would have had to look through this gate in order to see the entrance to the Temple. I believe therefore that the gate mentioned in Middot 2.4 is the Nicanor Gate and not the Shushan Gate.

In a previous post we reported on the The Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project in Rome, led by Prof. Steven Fine, which has as its aim the scanning of the menorah panel for evidence of ancient color.

Prof. Steven Fine noted that in the first presentation at the upcoming April 4 Kennes Torah Umadda (Congress of Torah and Science) in Jerusalem he will be discussing — for the first time in Israel — the discoveries made by the Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project last summer and the implications of advances in the study of polychromy for the study of the arch (and of Jewish visual culture in general).

Here is the account that has been  published by the Center for Israel Studies of the Yeshiva Universtity in New York.

The Arch of Titus Project will have important significance for the study of Roman architecture, as no monument of the Flavian period has yet been subjected to pigmentation analysis to reveal its original coloration. It is also projected to be of great importance for the study of the appearance of the sacred vessels of the Second Temple in the first century CE, as well as of the Herodian building projects in ancient Judaea, especially King Herod’s rebuilding of the Second Temple in the first century CE. It will thus expand the reach of the new field of research surrounding polychromy in the ancient world beyond Classics and Classical Archaeology into the fields of Judaic studies and early Christian history.

Steven Fine had asked me earlier this year what I thought about Eilat Mazar’s color reconstruction of Herod’s Temple Mount, whom she had  published in her Complete Guide to the Temple Mount Excavations, p. 43, with this comment:

The colours were chosen on the basis of parallels of painted architectural remains in the Judean Desert at Cypros and Masada.

As far as I remember, paint was only found on plaster in these sites, not on stone. No remains of any paint has been found so far on any excavated Herodian stone remains in the Temple Mount Excavations led by Prof. Benjamin Mazar from 1968-78.

The comment of archaeologist Stephan Zink in the above mentioned article is interesting:

The 2009 study of the remains of the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine by conservator Heinrich Piening, another member of our team, and archaeologist Stephan Zink showed that “most surfaces of the temple were kept uncolored as white marble (probably from Carrara) but a carefully-chosen color palette highlighted strategic elements such as capitals, entablature and doorframe. Although evidence for the original coloring remains fragmentary, sufficient information is available to allow us to consider the design strategies that lie behind the color scheme of the temple…”

So, some paint may have been used, but only sparsely. In his description of the Jerusalem Temple, Josephus (War 5.207-10; 222-23) is quite clear that the facade of the Temple “was covered with gold all over” …  “with plates of gold of great weight” and that “those parts that were not gilt, were exceeding white.” No color was therefore used in the entablature and columns that decorated the Temple’s facade.

In his post of Monday, March 11, 2013, Todd Bolen of Bibleplaces, remarks on a statement reportedly made by Dan Bahat in an Italian newspaper:

There’s an article in the Italian press (with a Google translation in English here) in which Dan Bahat allegedly claims that he knows the exact place where Jesus taught the rabbis at the age of 12. He identifies an area on the south side of the Temple Mount where he says that excavations have uncovered the scales on which the teachers stood.

This is the paragraph that was translated by Google:

“The paths of Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem could be enriched by a new holy place” the point where Jesus’ amazed the rabbis with his wisdom when he was 12 years old. I think I can show exactly where this and ‘happened.” This is an area in the southern part of the Temple, where excavations have brought to light the scales on which the teachers of the law were standing normally.”

So much for Google translator that wrongly translated “scale” with “scales” instead of “steps”, as mentioned by Ferrell Jenkings in his comment on Todd’s blog. I once saw “out of sight, out of mind” translated as “invisible moron”! So, better get your dictionaries out.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the event described by Luke 2.46 took place:

“After three days they [Mary and Joseph] found him [Jesus] in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions”.

If Bahat was thinking of the monumental stairway leading up to the Double Gate, that would not be “in the temple”, but outside of it, and therefore can be dismissed. But, who were those “teachers” that Jesus questioned? According to the Talmud (see quote below), they were the members of the Temple Sanhedrin that met in special courts, such as the Chamber of Hewn Stone. Normally, non-members of the Sanhedrin couldn’t enter the premises where these teachers and lawyers met in order to question them, let alone a 12-year old. There were, however, occasions when these teachers came out upon the “Terrace” or “Rampart” (Hebrew: hel) of the Temple. This was a walkway in front of the buildings that stood to the south of the Temple and was located on the top of a flight of 12 steps.

These 12 steps were most likely the “scale” which Bahat referred to. Although the only source that mentions this location is of a later date, it is still our only authority. It is stated in the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 88b:

“… they all proceeded to the Hall of Hewn Stones, where they [i.e., the Great Sanhedrin] sat from the morning tamid  until the evening tamid; on Sabbaths and festivals they [the members of the Temple Sanhedrin] sat within the hel”.

Both terrace and steps are mentioned in Middot 2.3:

“Inside this [soreg] was the Rampart (hel), ten cubits broad. And there were twelve steps there; the height of each step was half a cubit and the tread thereof was half a cubit.”

We have illustrated this location in our book “The Ritual of the Temple in the Time of Christ” and in a corresponding CD.

In the illustration we see  the little figure of Jesus in blue (see arrow) with a few of the teachers (in white) on the hel above the 12 steps during that first visit to the Temple. Jesus was there during the Feast of Passover and it may possibly have been the first time that he would have realized that he was that to be that ultimate Passover sacrifice and that he would have to lay down his life for his friends.