Israel/Palestine

The preponderance of archaeological and historical evidence is overwhelming and the argument that there is 'no proof' of the Temples is a modern political artifact.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.681589

Was there once a great Jewish temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount? Yes. Does any scholar genuinely doubt there was? No, say archaeologists who have spent their lives studying Jerusalem. "I feel stupid even having to comment on it," says Dr. Yuval Baruch, a leading Israeli archaeologist who has studied Jerusalem throughout his career. "Demanding proof that the Temples stood on the Mount is like demanding proof that the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem, which stand to this day, were the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem," he adds.

The contention that there is no proof the Temples existed, let alone on the Mount, is an artifact of the recent Israeli-Arab conflict. Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition has always held the Mount sacred and none queried the existence of the Temples. "A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif," published in English by the Supreme Muslim Council itself in 1925, states: "The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps from pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. As well as being sacred to Jews, the hilltop plaza, which could go back as much as 5,000 years, is sacred to Muslims as the place from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven. No Muslim scholars would agree to be interviewed for this article.

Jewish tradition says the First Temple was built by King Solomon on Temple Mount. It was destroyed by the Babylonians, who expelled the Jews from the land, in about 587 B.C.E. When the Jews were allowed to return from exile some decades later, they built a new temple on the site, but it was a simple structure. Their makeshift effort was not to the taste of King Herod, who swept away the shabby house of worship, created a great platform on the top of the Mount and had the grand Second Temple erected on it, within a massive compound.

The Second Temple was destroyed and looted by the Romans in 70 C.E., under Emperor Titus. How much of this can be proved? Almost all.

Carved in stone

Archaeologists cannot conclusively point to stones they know comprised the Second Temple, let alone the first one. But as Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a world-renowned expert on Jerusalem archaeology, spells out in an email to Haaretz, "There is no scholarly school of thought that doubts the existence of the First Temple."

All the archaeologists Haaretz spoke with for this article believe that if Temple Mount could be excavated – which it never has been – such evidence would be found, even if many of the stones were repurposed over the centuries.  But concrete finds definitively from the Temple exist in abundance, says Bar-Ilan University Prof. Gabriel Barkay, an archaeologist who has spent many years working in Jerusalem, and the area of Temple Mount in particular.

"Two copies of inscriptions prohibiting the entry of nonbelievers to the Temple have been found on Temple Mount, which Josephus wrote about. These inscriptions were on the dividing wall that surrounded the Second Temple, which prevented non-Jews from accessing the interior of the [Temple] courtyard," Barkay says, adding that both were written in ancient Greek. The "warning" stone, which is at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, warns non-Jews of the perils of entering the sacred Temple. There were additional, similar inscriptions in Latin, he says.

Another inscription in stone, "To the trumpeting place," was found in 1968 at the southwest corner of Temple Mount. "It is known that trumpets were blown at the corners of Temple Mount, to declare the advent of Shabbat and other dates," Barkay explains. Josephus, the ancient historian of ephemeral loyalties, explains that it was customary for a Temple priest to "stand and to give notice, by sound of trumpet, in the afternoon of the approach, and on the following evening of the close, of every seventh day." The stone is now at the Israel Museum.

Inscriptions

Further concrete evidence attests to Jerusalem’s uniqueness in religious observance. "The ancient city of Jerusalem at the time of the First Temple was clearly a hub of ritual worship," says Baruch, who heads the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Jerusalem district. "The hundreds of mikvehs (ritual purification baths) found around the Temple Mount compound and Jewish artifacts made of stone found there show that until the Temple's destruction, at least, Jerusalem was an 'ir mikdash' (holy city), where what matters is the house of worship. Athens and Olympia were like that, too."

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We don't need to rely exclusively on digging in Jerusalem for solid evidence that the Mount housed the Second Temple. Roman Emperor Titus was not coy about his achievement in crushing the Jewish rebellion in 70 C.E. and destroying the Temple in Jerusalem.

"Herod had destroyed whatever was on the Mount and built a giant platform on its top, on which he finished building the Second Temple. The Arch of Titus in Rome shows the procession following the gleeful plunder of the Temple by the Romans, even showing the menorah they removed," says archaeology writer Julia Fridman. Whatever their quirks, the ancient Roman emperors didn't make up a temple on the Mount just to mess with the minds of latter-day warmongers.

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Yet more solid evidence is found with elaborately stamped coins from the Bar Kochba era (second century C.E.), showing the Temple with its Roman-style pillars. The coins don't state that the Temple was on Temple Mount, a fact that makes Fridman snort. "It wasn't anywhere else – everywhere else has been excavated," she says. "The Muslims built the mosque there because it was a holy site … they conquered the land and stamped it with a mosque. That's what they did in Mecca as well – the Kaaba is a pagan site, a meteor that had been worshipped."

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"The question of whether archaeological finds prove the existence of the Temple on Temple Mount is cynical and provocative," says Barkay. "These are things known to anybody with culture and cannot be cast in doubt. We have dozens of literary sources, including Muslim sources, describing the Temple."

Over the last century, political strife has made proper excavation of the Mount unthinkable. Yet the argument, notably by certain Muslim radicals, that  a Jewish temple never existed there is a specious political artifact, with zero basis in history, archaeology, religion or tradition. Barkay believes –certain Muslim leaders are trying to have things both ways. "They claim there are no remains of the Temple, but they don't allow any digging (on Temple Mount). If they would allow digging, remains would be found," he asserts.

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While much of the Second Temple compound still exists, if not the actual Temple itself, no remains of the First Temple have ever been found. But Elephantine Island in ancient Egypt harbored a replica of the First Temple. The Elephantine Papyri from the fifth-fourth centuries B.C.E. contain a document written in 407 B.C.E. to the Persian governor of Judea, Bagoas, pleading for help in repairing the recently built Second Temple, which was damaged in a pogrom.

The "Petition to Bagoas" is relevant since the author mentions the age of the Elephantine replica – which, by definition, had to be younger than the Israelite Temple in Jerusalem on which it was based: “Now our forefathers built this temple in the fortress of Elephantine back in the days of the kingdom of Egypt, and when Cambyses came to Egypt he found it built. They (the Persians) knocked down all the temples of the gods of Egypt, but no one did any damage to this temple."

Baruch shrugs off the one piece of evidence that’s purportedly from the First Temple – a tiny carved pomegranate made of hippopotamus bone, with paleo-Hebrew writing running along the shoulders of the fruit. At the time of its discovery, it was thought to have adorned the high priest's scepter for use within the inner sanctum of the Temple, and was thought to prove the existence of Solomon's Temple. The consensus now is that it's a fake, but in any case Baruch simply dismisses it as an irrelevancy, given the clear-cut evidence of Jerusalem's status in the First Temple era – notably, the mikvehs in their hundreds.

Liturgical evidence

So, possibly starting with Canaanites worshipping Lord knows who, to the ancient Israelites, to the Christians and, finally, to the Muslims, Temple Mount has been held sacred.

"Muslim historians and geographers of the Middle Ages never doubted it," says Baruch. "I don't know a single description of Jerusalem in Arabic from the Middle Ages, or even the earlier period or later one, that does not relate to Haram al-Sharif as the site of the Temple." Islam does not necessarily distinguish between the First and Second Temples, he adds. For them, Solomon built his temple there and that is that.

Historical evidence is abundant, too, and not only from Jewish sources. From the Babylonians and Romans to the Greeks and  Persians, the Jewish Temples on the Mount were recorded.

The Letter of Aristeas, for example, from the second century B.C.E., describes how King Ptolemy (285-247 B.C.E.) was urged by his conscientious librarian to have the scriptures and laws of the Jews translated for his library. Ptolemy sent Aristeas to the Jewish high priest Eliezer, who agreed to cooperate. Ptolemy rewarded Eliezer with silver for the temple sacrifices.

There are accounts of the Temple in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and much loving detail about it in the Mishna. By the time the Crusaders became involved in Jerusalem from 1099 C.E. on, the Temples were long gone, but they still harbored no doubt.

"Anybody who pursues historical research and has read the ancient texts would reach the categorical conclusion that the Temple existed on Temple Mount," Barkay sums up.

With the facts so clear, why does the history of Temple Mount remain controversial? "The controversy does not come from the scholarly world. It is all politics and propaganda (by people with no sense of learning)," Finkelstein tells Haaretz. "The fact that the Temple Mount cannot be properly explored is, of course, a factor – though I guess the deniers would deny its existence even if it had been found standing 10 meters high."

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.681589