There have been previous earthquake warnings in Israel and Haaretz reports today again that a major earthquake may hit Israel at any tine. Read the full report here.
Dr. Avi Shapira, the chairman of the inter-ministry steering committee for earthquake preparedness, asserts that a strong earthquake can be expected here within the next 50 years. That is, it could happen today, tomorrow, 10 minutes from now, or 10 years from now. A powerful quake in Israel is therefore not a question of “if,” but rather a question of “when.”
The El Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount suffered major damage in the earthquake of 1927
The last deadly earthquake struck the Land of Israel in July 1927, damaging Jericho, Nablus, Ramle, Jerusalem and many rural locales. In January 1837, a strong earthquake occurred in the Galilee, and killed thousands of people in Safed and Tiberias. In Safed alone the number was estimated at 2,400.
Three people were killed when this house on the Mount of Olives was destroyed in the earthquake of 1927
The earthquake that took place during the last year of King Uzziah was still remembered some 400 years later (Zech. 14.5).
Today, the 10th of the Hebrew month Tevet, Israel Remembers the Holy Temple and the Holocaust.
Friday is the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, a fast day on which Jews remember the siege of Jerusalem that preceded the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile. The siege is described in the Bible in the Book of Kings.
It is always sad to remember the destruction of such a beautiful building. Read more here.
Solomon's Temple
The design of this beautiful model of Solomon’s Temple is based on the description in the Book of Kings. The Temple had a high Porch, supported by two bronze pillars, called Yachin and Boaz. The inner sanctuary was divided into two rooms, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies (Most Holy Place), where the Ark of the Covenant stood. A three-storey high structure surrounded the sanctuary. In front of the Temple stood the Altar, the bronze Basin (Sea) and ten smaller basins.
This Temple was frequently damaged and rebuilt during its long history and it was the Temple described in the Book of Chronicles, that was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.
The sadness of its destruction is expressed in the Book of Lamentations 2.1:
How the Lord in his anger
has set the daughter of Zion junder a cloud!
He has cast down from heaven to earth
the splendor of Israel;
he has not remembered his footstool
in the day of his anger. (ESV)
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.
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.
One of the readers of a previous post drew attention to a Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) photograph of the lintel of Barclay’s Gate. In the caption, we are taken to task for publishing an incorrect interpretation of the lintel in BAR XV No.6, pages 23-42.
We wrote the following comment below this photograph:
The incorrect black outline on the photograph on p. 28 of the BAR issue was unfortunately added by the editors and not by ourselves. For the correct drawings of the lintel of Barclay’s Gate, see our book The Quest, Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, pp. 26, 28.
Whoever put up this caption didn’t look carefully at the drawing next to the photograph in the BAR issue, where the lintel is drawn correctly.
Barclay’s Gate is one of the four gates in the Western Wall of the Herodian Temple Mount:
This study drawing shows the depth of the original gate, which is still buried underground:
This drawing shows that only the upper three stone of the left jamb of Barclay's Gate can be seen today, the rest are still buried below ground. The size of the original gate is based on the explorations of Charles Warren in the 1870's.
This close-up photograph shows that the projection on the left side of the lintel is not very sizeable:
This photograph shows the projection on the left side of the lintel.
A central part of the lintel can be seen in the small room where women pray:
The central part of the lintel over Barclay's Gate - photo Clare Ritmeyer
Here is a view of the same lintel from inside the Temple Mount:
The lintel of Barclay's Gate seen from inside the Temple Mount - photo: Eric Matson Collection
Barclay’s Gate is one of the two lower gates in the Western Wall, the other is Warren’s Gate. Both these gates had internal passageways with steps by which one could ascend to the Temple Mount. This reconstruction drawing shows how Barclay’s Gate worked in the Second Temple period:
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.
An overall view of a model of the Temple Mount looking from the south.
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?
The southwest corner of the Temple Mount may have been the site of the 'pinnacle' of the Temple.
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.
In this Jerusalem Post report, several correspondents quote Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev:
Denying the Jewish connection to the Western Wall is to deny reality. If you deny the Jewish connection to the Western Wall you are in fact denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the land of Israel itself. When they deny the Jewish connection, they are unfortunately raising very serious questions as to their true commitment to reconciliation.
Gershon Baskin, the joint CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, who had sent a letter to the Palestinian leadership in the wake of the Post article, calling the findings of al-Mutawakel Taha “a serious mistake” and “a stain on the Palestinian Authority, makes the following remark:
Any observer, even a non-professional archeologist, can discern that the stones used to construct the Western Wall (the Kotel) are from the era of Solomon’s Temple and the Temple rebuilt by King Herod which was hundreds of years before Islam appeared on the world stage.
Reconstruction model of Herod's Temple Mount showing the Western Wall with the stairway of Robinson's Arch in the foreground
It makes one despair that even some Israelis don’t seem to know that the Western Wall is Herodian and not Solomonic. See yesterday’s post.
The Israeli press is full of reports of a paper prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information to “refute” Jewish claim to the Western Wall.
Many studies published by Jewish experts have affirmed that there is no archeological evidence that the Temple Mount was built during the period of King Solomon,” the paper added. “One can only conclude that the Al-Buraq Wall is a Muslim wall and an integral part of the Aqsa Mosque and Haram Al-Sharif. No one has the right to claim ownership over it or change its features or original character. Also, no one has the right to agree with the occupation state’s racist and oppressive measures against history and holy sites.”
He is correct in saying that the Western Wall was not built in the time of Solomon. However, he appears to be ignorant of or chooses to ignore the history of the Temple Mount between Solomon and the Early Muslim period.
The drawing below from our Image Library shows the five stages in the development of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. From top to bottom:
1. The square Temple Mount built by King Hezekiah around the Temple built by King Solomon.
2. The Akra Fortress (red) was built by the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 168 BC to control the local Jewish population. The fortress was destroyed by the Maccabees in 141 BC.
3. After the destruction of the Akra, the Hasmoneans extended the Temple Mount to the south (blue).
4. King Herod the Great renewed the Temple Mount by enlarging the square Temple Mount to double its size and building a new Temple.
5. During the Umayyad period, the Dome of the Rock was built on the site of the Temple and the El Aqsa mosque on that of the Royal Stoa. Large public buildings were erected to the south and west of the Temple Mount.
The Development of the Temple Mount from Hezekiah to the Early Muslim period
I made the reconstruction drawing of the Herodian Temple Mount below at the end of the 10-year long excavation project led by the late Prof. Benjamin Mazar (1968-’78). The Western Wall, where the Jews pray today, is shown in red. This approx. 60 m. long wall is part of the 485 m. long western retaining wall of the Herodian Temple Mount. Many finds from the Second Temple period, such as Hebrew inscriptions, coins and also the architectural style prove that the present-day walls of the Temple Mount are irrefutably Herodian. To deny this is ignorance in the extreme.
Herod's Temple Mount with the Western Wall shown in red
In a previous post, we reported on the new plans for the development of the Western Wall plaza. Israel’s cabinet has now decided to allot NIS 85 million ($23 million) for this project.
The project will upgrade physical and transportation infrastructure at the site, provide access to new archeological findings, and run educational programs for soldiers and students.
The PA, of course, objects to the plan. Here is the report as it appears in today’s Jerusalem Post. A similar report appears in Haaretz.
Here is a report concerning the recent dismissal by Israel’s High Court of Shurat HaDin’s private prosecution of the Islamic Waqf for the Waqf’s depredations on the Temple Mount:
Israel’s High Court of Justice has handed down a decision which blocks a
first-of-its-kind private prosecution brought by Shurat HaDin against the
Islamic Waqf (“Trust”) in Jerusalem.
The Waqf is the radical anti-Israel authority which the government allows to oversee Muslim holy places including the mosques on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Following months of reports that the Waqf was utilizing bulldozers on the Temple Mount to carry out unauthorized construction that was obliterating ancient Jewish artifacts and the refusal of the Israeli police to act to safeguard these relics, we decided to go to Court against the Muslims.
Israel National News (Arutz 7) has a similar report:
Attorneys from the Israel Law Center accused the Wakf of deliberately destroying Jewish artifacts in order to eradicate evidence of the Jewish claim to the Temple Mount. By neglecting to take action to stop the demolition of ancient historical finds, the Israel government has been “abandoning the millenniums-long Jewish claim over the Temple Mount and allowing Islamic extremists to re-write Jerusalem’s history,” they said.
The attorney general’s office had tried to get the Israel Law Center suit dismissed, arguing that private citizens should not be allowed to prosecute in a case that affects the general public. The Law Center responded by accusing the attorney general of caving in to political pressure.
