Category: Jerusalem

One of the questions I am frequently asked is where the Beautiful Gate of the Temple was located. This gate is mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 3.2,10) as the place where the lame man was begging. After he was healed by Peter and John “he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God” (Acts 3.8).

The “Beautiful Gate” is not mentioned in  other historical sources. Many scholars have accepted Thackeray’s comment on Josephus’ description of the Nicanor Gate, or the Corinthian Gate as he called it (War 5.201,204), that it “probably” was the gate of Acts 3.2,10. Edersheim was of the same opinion.

The Nicanor Gate (Middot 1.4, 2.3,6; Yoma 3.10, etc.) was certainly beautiful, but the question is, would the lame man have been allowed to enter so far into the Temple Courts? This appears not to have been the case, as once he was healed, he entered into the Temple Courts (Acts 3.8), so the Nicanor Gate could not have been the Beautiful Gate. According to Acts 3.11 the healed man and Peter and John were in Solomon’s Porch, which is to the east of the Court of the Women.

Others have suggested that the Beautiful Gate must have been one of the outer gates of the Temple Mount. Because of its proximity to Solomon’s Porch, some have suggested that the Shushan Gate in the Eastern Wall of the Temple Mount, may have been the Beautiful Gate, as it had a beautiful representation of Shushan the Palace (Middot 1.3).

According to Mishnah Kelim 1.8, nobody with an issue of any kind was allowed into the Temple Mount. Although the lame man need not have had an issue, his infirmity may have put him in the same category. Another point to consider is the fact that he was begging. To get the best results, one would want to be where the traffic was greatest, which is another argument which would rule out the Nicanor Gate, as not many people were allowed to go through this gate. It would also rule out the Shushan Gate, which was mainly used for ceremonial purposes.

A more likely location would have been the Double Gate in the southern wall of the Temple Mount, which I have described in my book The Quest, Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, pp. 67-74.  A 210 feet (64 m) wide monumental stairway led up to this gate from the lower plaza. Because of its monumental proportions, this gate was probably used by most of the pilgrims going to worship at the Temple.

The ceiling inside the passageway has beautifully carved domes, which have survived up to today. Most of the worshipers went up to the Temple Courts through this gate, which was certainly beautiful and very effective for begging purposes, as suggested on p. 74 of the above mentioned book.

We suggest then that Peter and John healed the lame man at the Double Gate and from there he went “walking and jumping” to Solomon’s Porch.

In his Weekend Roundup, Todd Bolen mentioned that “The Israel National Library website has an extensive collection of maps of Palestine, dating from 1462 to 1927.”

Hundreds of maps of Jerusalem and the Holy Land have been digitized and put on the website. This is a treasure trove for map lovers. The website has a fascinating introduction to the Story of the Maps. You can search for maps by date or by the person who made them. Many maps have been made by fellow Dutchmen, which made me feel at home.

Being in the process of building our own Image Library, which involves the scanning and digital enhancing of the many drawings I have made over the last decades, we can fully appreciate what a laborious work it must have been to get all these maps digitized.

My attention was naturally drawn to the special section on Jerusalem. The oldest digitized map dates from ca. 1200 and is well-known, having been reprinted frequently. The original map is part of a Latin Psalter which is kept in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) in The Hague.

A Temple plan, entitled “The Ichnography (ground plan) of the Temple of Jerusalem with a description of the same. Delineated & Described according to the Scriptures, Josephus & the Talmud by H. Prideaux DD. Dean of Norwich” shows that he has struggled to harmonize the Temple descriptions in Josephus and the Mishnah. The lengthy description makes for interesting reading.

Looking at these old maps, we can be thankful for the many archaeological excavations that have taken place in Jerusalem and are still on-going, so that we now have a much clearer picture of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Ferrell Jenkins has an interesting post on the Pinnacle of the Temple.

In my reading the most common view is that the southeast corner of the Temple Mount is the place mentioned in Mark and Luke as  the pinnacle of the temple.

He aso quotes from Benjamin Mazar’s book The Mountain of the Lord:

Benjamin Mazar, The Mountain of the Lord, shows a photo of the southeast corner of the wall with the comment that this “is known as the ‘pinnacle of the Temple’ (Mark 11:11; Luke 4:9),” page 149.

Although this statement does appear in the book, I remember discussing this problem with him and he said that he actually saw the  southwest corner of the Temple Mount as a more likely candidate for the pinnacle of the Temple. One needs to determine what was the most important element in the temptation of Jesus to throw himself down from the pinnacle. Was it the height of the corner above what lay below or did the temptation lie in impressing as many people as possible with that jump?

As the southwest corner was a busy junction between the major north-south street running through Jerusalem and the Plaza in front of the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount, there would have been many more people to impress here than on the much quieter southeast corner.

It is in a setting such as this that we can visualise the dramatic scene that would have taken place had not Jesus challenged the temptation with the power of God’s Word.