Hillel Richman: The True Location of the Temple Mount: Fully Illustrated

okay so first of all I'd like to thank everybody for coming out today it's great to be here again mm-hmm so about a year ago I gave a talk here in Lubbock Texas of all places where I discuss the phenomena of temple denial and present historical and archaeological evidence for the existence of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem after my talk I was approached by a member of the audience who asked me but what about the whole theory that the temple was in the seed of David I responded that the theory contradicts the biblical rabbinical historical and archaeological data accumulated in the past 160 years but more than anything it goes against common sense but then again common sense ain't so common these days when I asked my colleagues some of Israel's most accomplished archaeologists they were astonished to hear of such a ridiculous idea and most had never even have heard of it the very fact that they have never heard of this theory demonstrates how it landish and ridiculous it is is actually so wrong that it doesn't even past academic scrutiny when I asked my boss who was probably the world's leading biblical archaeologist a man so knowledgeable on the subject of ancient Jerusalem about this theory he replied yes it's a bunch of rubbish that doesn't even deserve a reply the reason that we've decided to respond to such theories is because there's becoming so pervasive among the uneducated if one were to type the true location of a tempo in a youtube search a dozen videos proposing various theories would appear the propagation of a sly is becoming a dismissal of Jewish history and in this empowerment of Jewish identity and heritage regarding the Jews most important site moreover it is becoming a desecration of the name of the God of Israel now I will show you just how wrong this theories are so in this day and age with YouTube and the internet and the free flow of information it's very very easy to get carried away sometimes especially on a Sunday afternoon you know when you have time and some believe that the world is flat people people who like this theory actually are very proud to have believers all around the globe some believe this there were dinosaurs at the Civil War y'all never heard of this theory I mean wouldn't that been great and some believe this y'all understand what you're seeing here ok so we see we see the temple located in the City of David and not on the Temple Mount actually this this this depiction is wrong for so many reasons I don't remember the last time there was a hump in the OL fell but whatever now we're not going to be naming any names today it's just it's just unprofessional but several books have been written in the past 20 years or so on this topic and various various locations have been have been offered as long as it's not on the Temple Mount now these theories are based on several assumptions mm-hmm we're going to be dealing mostly with the City of David theory since that's the one that has gained the most attention so the first premise is is based on the fact that the term Theon or Zion refers to the temple and it started yanno refers to the temple and refers to the City of David or first to both so every time that the Bible says Cheon it's referring to the City of David since Theon is the City of David and nothing else that's all it is the second the second premise is that the tempo required a live water source now the only real live water source the only substantial water source in Jerusalem is the Gihon spring right underneath the City of David and therefore the temple had to be located somewhere just above that area and last one we're gonna discuss today is the fact that the there was a Roman fortress called Antonia and this fortress was housed many many soldiers about ten thousand Roman Legionnaires and therefore the only area large enough to hold such a large military force is the Temple Mount and therefore it had to be this Roman fortress called Antonia so first of all see on its Heon only the City of David well it's mentioned 154 times in the Tanakh and it has more than one meaning so originally yes it's true see one referred to the fortress of Zion which is also called the city of David David captured the stronghold of Zion that is the City of David by the way the stronghold of Zion is not the whole ancient city of Jerusalem what we refer to today as the City of David we are talking about the entire southeastern Ridge which is the whole ancient original city of Jerusalem the real old city which is actually outside the walls but today the name stuck to the entire entire area of the city of David but again originally the city of David is referring to a location within ancient Jerusalem called Seon so in the time of King David Jerusalem spreads from the southeastern region north towards the direction of the Temple Mount and King Solomon of course builds that temple and a a great verse that portrays this historical fact is from Psalms great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God his holy mountain beautiful in elevation the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion and the far north so from this verse we can see we can understand two very important geographical facts first of all we're talking about a mountain geographically we're talking about the mountain second of all we're talking about a mountain that has been in the far north in the far north of what in the far north of the original city of Jerusalem Jerusalem which is again the South the southeastern ridge of Jerusalem so the far north would be give or take the area of the Temple Mount today so again Jerusalem is the Temple Mount is referred to Mount Zion and not see on it's referring to Mount C on it sometimes is referred to see on but usually we're talking about Mount Zion and I'll read you a verse then the Lord work will create over the whole area of Mount Zion and over her assembly is a cloud by day even smoke and the brightness of a flaming fire by night for over all the glory will be a canopy and we have other verses so who dwells on Mount Zion Mount Zion Isiah and so on and so forth during the eighth century BCE give or take in a time of King Hezekiah Jerusalem spreads even larger and and encompasses what we know us today as the Jewish quarter there Armenian Quarter or this where the northwestern ridge in the in the photo you can see the famous broad wall which you can see today in the old city of Jerusalem in the Jewish quarter and this this wall reflects the expansion of Jerusalem during the period archaeologists are are don't don't exactly agree as to why Jerusalem expanded but that's not what we're talking about today and here's a verse that beautifully portrays this expansion our feature stand within the gates o Jerusalem Jerusalem is built as a city that is united together so we see this expansion during the eighth century we're and we can identify archaeologically so again during the eighth century and after Jerusalem and Seon becomes synonymous it is basically one on the same and here's a verse this is the world this is this is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him the Virgin the daughter of Tionne hath despised thee and and laughed to scorn the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head at the again it's just talking about the Assyrians but you can see a clear parallel or a synonym if that's the correct word between seon and Jerusalem and we have another verse just bowed awake awake close yourself clothed yourself in your strength ot on clothe yourself in you and your beautiful garbage Oh Jerusalem the holy city Jerusalem xi'an synonymous Zeon is also synonymous with the people of Israel and the entire land of Israel for I will bend Judah as my bow I will fill the boat with a frame and I will stir up your son's Otzi on against her sons o Greece and I will make you like a warrior sword the punishment of your iniquity has been completed our daughter at sea on he will exile you no longer so we see here and that scene has more than one meaning and it doesn't only mean the City of David so that's the first thing that we knocked down so what does the Bible say the Bible is very clear about where the temple was built it's clear about the location they did with the geographical location of the temple and here's the verse from Chronicle then then Solomon began to build a house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah where the Lord had appeared to his father David at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite so we're talking about Mount Moriah and we're talking about a location that was outside the city okay and this was a area of agriculture this was an area that was outside the city again only towards the end of David's reign and during his son Solomon did Jerusalem expand to this area now the threshing floors were outside the city this is very important again the Temple Mount was outside the city in biblical times we know this from verses in the Bible and we know this archaeologically there were PhD is written on the topic of Agriculture during biblical times and we know this for a fact here we have some verses and there came an angel of the Lord and sat under an oak which was in afar that pertain unto Josh the API is right and a son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide from the Midianites he was thrashing weed in the winepress because the winepress is situated within the city limits closer to the city it's also easier to hide in the winepress because it's deep down under and this is a very nice biblical portrayal of this of this fact that the the threshing floors were outside the city and here's another one then they told David saying behold the Philistine fight against Kayla and they robbed the threshing floors the threshing floors are the first things that came that could rob because they're outside the outskirts of the city and here's from what let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor and then we see then she went into the city so searching clothes were outside the city therefore it couldn't be the the the original the threshing floor of Ornan couldn't be in what we call today the City of David now again we're talking about geography here this is very important because these are facts that are just not looked upon or just what's going for ignored it's a good word all the biblical sources refer to a place in the temple as being on top of a hill read my lips on top of a hill then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes the leaders of the father's household of the sons of Israel to King Solomon Jerusalem to bring up to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from the City of David which is see own now how do they ignore this verse I have no idea can I hear up so God seems so God came to the to David that day and said to him go up erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite and David went up according to the Word of God just as the Lord had commanded then his Akaya took the letter from the hand of him messengers and read it and he went up to the house of the Lord stairway by which he went up to the house of the Lord who may ascend into the hill of the Lord let us go up to the mountain of the Lord technics on your only son whom you love Isaac and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains and one of the mountains on one of the mountains which I will tell you Abraham called the name of that place the Lord will provide us that it said to this day the Mount of the Lord in the Mount of the Lord will be provided in the mountain of your inheritance the mountain of the house of the Lord the mountain house of Lord the mountain house of Lord mountain of the Lord on the Mount on this mountain in the holy mountain on the high mountain of Israel on my holy mountain on the high mountain of Israel on my holy mountain on my holy mountain on this mountain are we getting us just bear with me my holy mountain my holy mountain well who may dwell on your holy hill on this mountain on my holy mountain an i mountain of Israel now let's go to Josephus Josephus was the most important 'test historian of the Jewish people who lived in the first century and he witnessed the temple and its destruction with his own eyes and he also wrote about the general history of the Jewish people and of course the temple is the most important building of the Jewish people so he says this hill it was which Salomon encompassed with a wall it was of excellent workmanship upwards and round the top of it this temple as I have already said was built upon a strong hill now it's time to look at Jerusalem so we see the white dotted line that's what's called today the city of the City of David or the south eastern ridge the original city of Jerusalem and is actually not a mountain it is a spur it is a ridge that comes down from the summit which is mount moriah and the only mount in the area is again right above it mount moriah with a 740 meter elevation as opposed to 620 meters at the bottom of the City of David so it's not exactly a mountain and it can't be called a mountain here we see a good picture from the 1930s if I'm not mistaken you can see how the area of the City of David declines rather sharply right after the off hill which is south of the Temple Mount and again we're not talking about a mountain and here's a verse and a topographic map you could see the City of David for those who can't read Hebrew that's the City of David that's Mount Moriah and the verse reads as the mountains surround Jerusalem so the Lord surrounds his people okay so Jerusalem is actually low laying compared to the rest to the rest of the area to the rest of the mountains that surround it so how can you call it a mountain when the verse says clearly that mountains surround Jerusalem because it is lower and if whoever has been to the City of David you can see this for himself Josephus says the hill of the temple was a rocky a scent that declined by degrees towards the part of the east part of the cities was just exactly what we can see here on this map another topic and we're still in the direct geography lesson here nothing better to do on Sunday so Mount Scopus now what why am i bringing Mount Scopus because Mount Scopus is an area that is well known today you might know it as the place where we have the one of the one of the Hebrew University campuses and we have the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus but it is also mentioned in historical and rabbinical sources as a place called suppose--suppose in Greek and from there this is Josephus a plain view might be taken of the Great Temple this place he tells us exactly where it is on the north quarter of the city was about seven four longs from the city from the from the city distant from it which means that it's pretty close we're talking a few hundred meters so we know that it's north of the city we know that it's pretty close and we know that we can see the temple again we have several quotes here from Josephus again from various historical accounts mentioning this location and the fact that we can clearly see the temple from this location and here we have a rabbinical source talking about the pace of offering which had to be consumed in the vicinity of the Temple in Jerusalem and we have a mission here from same which states that if one suddenly notices that he has some flesh which was not burnt and has to be burned in the vicinity of Jerusalem and the temple the last place that he can still burn it as if he's on so phim why because from there he may see that they can see the temple if he passed so Fame they don't bother him to go back and he burns it wherever he is but so Fame is the last place from which you can see the temple north of the city and here's here's to fame right above you can see the ridge with the antenna right above the Temple Mount that whole ridge is so FEMA so what's the problem can anybody can anybody guess I'm sure you all can you just can't see it you just can't see the city of David from mounts of Fame I know this because I walked to work for 12 years taking the bus and I walked on mental Fame and looked towards the direction and you just don't see it from amounts of Fame and that's the view from mountains of Fame so it can't be anywhere else definitely not in the City of David and here's a famous famous teaching from a quote from Talmud Bavli which talks about the story of Rabbi Akiva and other sages which were approaching Jerusalem and when they arrived at Mount Scopus they rent their garments they tore their garments again why do they tear their garments because you can clearly see the site of the temple from Mount Scopus now this story is also a segue to another another issue which is raised by these theories and that is that the Jews simply forgot the location in the temple it's true there were various times in history after the destruction when Jews were not allowed in Jerusalem but to say that Jews actually forgot the temple is a little bit too much if I forget you Jerusalem in my right hand forget it skill may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy so the story that we hear that we learned from the Gemara this is again sorry from the Talmud this is again after the destruction we have sages in the 2nd century CE II that know where the temple was and this continues on through the generations and a very clear indication of this is in the Byzantine period which follows the late Roman period we have various edgings various inscriptions edged on the stones of the Temple Mount in several locations and they are dated to the Byzantine period a very famous one is located right underneath the famous Robinson's arch and it's pretty high up and it reads over a 10 musasa level a Matsumoto mathematic M kadesha Tirana which is when you see this your heart will rejoice and you will flourish like grass and this is from Isaiah again edged on the temple on the western wall just south of where the women pray so the truth is that Jews never forgot the temple and that whenever they were allowed access they came as close as they can to the temple sometimes they prayed on the Mount of Olives another another very important historical document comes to the Cairo Genizah and it is dated to about the 9th to 10th centuries of the Common Era and what it is is a prayer which is which is said upon approaching the walls of the Temple Mount and there were prayers said at every different gate this this is actually a tradition that has been resumed in the past 20 or 30 years so and here's a nice depiction from the Ottoman period of Jews coming close as they can to the location of the temple as close as they were allowed so the claim that I have heard by these people is that when did a mistake happen when did when did a false identification of the Temple Mount as such happened it happened during the Crusader period so the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099 and the Islamic shrines were already existing on the Temple Mount we have the alexa mosque and the Dome of the rock and they renamed them and use them for their own use so the claim is that the Dome of the rock and this is true was was turned into a church called temple um domine and because they call that templum Domini ever since then so people made an error and thought that that was the location of the temple now is this true no during the early Islamic period Jerusalem in general and then Temple Mount in particular were linked to the Jewish temple okay this is very important and this is well known one of the names of Jerusalem was baitin Democritus which is Beit HaMikdash there is no such word in Arabic this is a this is a term borrowed from Hebrew and numerous Islamic traditions actually associate the Dome of the rock with Solomon's Temple I'm only going to show you one such artifact and that comes from by the way some of this are you might have covered in my previous talk but I was very important for this topic as well and this comes from the village just north of Cologne village called Nuba and in this village in the in the mask of the village right over the mclubbe which is the direction of prayer there is a stone an inscription in stone which is in secondary deposition which is probably dates to the ninth century even though the inscription itself tries to lean on and oma desala formal who was the the caliph who conquered Jerusalem he came after Muhammad and he's the one who conquered Jerusalem and the inscription reads that Allah the great and remember the exact wording z' dedicates all the lands of nuba this air village as a walk as an endowment to such that by Telemachus and al-aqsa mosque in other words we have a we have we have reference here to two separate structures on the Temple Mount one of them called salad by Telemachus and one of them called al-aqsa mosque you know al-aqsa mosque we all know it's the structure on the southern part of the Temple Mount and what's sad vital among this first of all let's translate that to English the stone of the temple okay this is a clear indication of the unbroken tradition that the Muslims actually got from the Jews and we have many other stories but we just don't have time to tell them to the fact that the Muslims actually preserved the location of the temple and it didn't come from the Crusaders now we're going to ask a question about archaeology archaeologically could the temple have been in the City of David well let's go ahead and see so the City of David is the most excavated location in the Land of Israel we have 160 years of research in this small plot of land and among the researchers we have the very pioneers in the field of archaeology and the map that you see on the right is excavated areas in Jerusalem ount you can you can clearly see you can clearly see that hasn't been excavated at all but just below at the City of David we see all the red areas are heavily excavated areas and here's a quote from one your lights on le shu-kun and they're not quote this this quote comes from just the old article and they're just talking about the archaeology of the City of David and they're not talking about these theories that has nothing to do with these theories and what they say is the area we are talking about the eastern slope of the City of David and particularly the strip above the Gihon spring has been subject to more archaeological excavations and research than any site in Jerusalem and even in Israel so if there were temple there we would expect to find some remains of it so the offer was dug up excavated by a lot Messala many important artifacts were found here such as Salim anak wall dating to the 10th century BCE the seal of King Hezekiah himself possibly prophet Isaiah but the temple wasn't found give a tea parking lot is very very large excavation many important artifacts were found the whole area was gutted as you can see but no remains of the temple and this is a picture of the large stone structure which allowed Massa who excavated here this is right underneath the visitor center of the city of David associates actually with King David's Palace but not with the temple the entire Ridge of the City of David was excavated and again no temple the area right by the Gihon spring was excavated and all kinds of weird things were found and some tried to say that maybe aliens are behind it but no temple just no temple now but let's say that all the stones were taken and all the artifacts were taken and there's nothing left could we have put the temple in the city of David so let's go ahead and see that so the Jewish tradition teaches that the Temple Mount itself meaning the sanctified area was 500 cubits square or about 861 feet squared this cubit is the Royal Egyptian cubit which is what was mostly used during the first Temple period which is when the temple the first temple of Solomon was built so if we were to take a 500 square cube and try to stick it over the city of David you're gonna be faced with a little bit of a problem and that is that there's just no room the square will go over into the valley and onto the Mount of Olives and it's a big mess now during the Second Temple period we run into even worse problem and that's that the writ the the fortification line in the City of David during this period is even narrower then during the first temple prayers so during the first time appear the fortification line goes down on the middle of the ridge and they were actually houses built with terraces in a very complicated way but there were houses built on the ridge itself but during the Second Temple Jerusalem the other locations were more heavily more heavily housed and therefore it's very very hard to to think about King Herod's temple which the sages of vigils say was the greatest building ever and the most beautiful building ever and we asked a note to what extent King Herod enlarged this temple it's absolutely impossible that it was on that Ridge there's just no room whatsoever and just imagine you can see the ridge clearly imagine a temple going up into the air the platform into the air and onto the Mount of Olives and there's just no room like I said the the another indication again we're talking archaeology here is that the entire ridge like we saw the entire ridge of the City of David was excavated heavily excavated and what we're seeing here are dwellings these are houses houses built during the first Temple period 8th 7th centuries BCE and this would have been during the time when the temple was standing so it's a little bit hard to understand how these theorists would explain houses underneath the temple I mean you would have to dig underneath the foundations of the temple and put those houses there it just doesn't seem plausible now during the Second Temple period we have very very very large earthen fills which stretch from the bottom of the valley below the City of David and right up to the ridge of the City of David about 70 meters 230 feet of earthen Phil's not just any earthen Phil's garbage this is a very sophisticated method of disposing of garbage where you would bury it in layers and I don't think they had any garbage underneath the temple and another problem is a simple problem that these kills are unstable so if you were to put a temple on those fills they would collapse so archaeologically just doesn't make sense now what about the whole water issue yes water is a problem in the Middle East and they got everything covered we got everything nailed down and they took care of it and we have verses discussing the water and various vessels that were used and we have teach teachings from the Mishnah which talked about in the chamber of the exiles there was a fixed cistern from where water was provided to the whole Asda okay so there's much discussion about cisterns which provided the water needed for the temple these were the officers that were in temple and there's a whole list of various positions that were occupied in the temple and one of them is niku Nia who was the digger of pits or cisterns and he was responsible for excavating the cistern which would collect the rainwater and be used in the temple and this is a map by Charles Warren we know about at least 49 cisterns on the Temple Mount so water wasn't that much of a problem and one very large one cistern number 8 actually resembles first temple period cisterns which we know from First Temple period excavated towns such as bit shemish and bill Shiva so this is even larger and may very well date to the first temple period and therefore may have provided water to Solomon's Temple this is a cistern excavated below the the Temple Mount right underneath the area of Robinson's arch so the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount this is a large first temple period cistern it is dated by its style and by its plaster to the first temple period and as archaeologists Alicia Cohen who excavated says it probably provided water for the temple itself another machinae tells us water may be drawn on Shabbat by means of a pulley from the cistern of the Exiles and from the great sister so we're not sure exactly what the great cistern is referring to but there is a very large sister and the largest cistern on the Temple Mount is depicted from a painting than in 1870 and this mission I might be referring to this sister another water source talked about by the sages is the aqueduct which flew there from the spring of a tongue Abhaya said we infer there from that the item spring was at least 23 cubits above the ground of the temple court meaning that this aqueduct utilized the force of gravity to bring water from a very distant location all the way to the Temple Mount and we we are familiar with this archaeologically historically and these are the famous Solomon's pools south of Jerusalem which were filled by Springs the various Springs and then aqueduct which came out of these pools so the one on the right that that the Nisei wittily so the wiggly one on the right dates as early as the 2nd century BCE and actually we can follow its course all the way to right above the temple Plaza the Temple Mount plaza which you can see above and we know historically that it leads straight into the Temple Mount and supplied the needed water to the Temple Mount could the Temple Mount before Antonia so we're familiar historically with this for just see if his talks about it and he says that it was situated on a higher elevation than the Temple Mount and we this makes sense archaeologically there is no issue with this there is no problem with this and all the claims are false so Josephus writes for the temple was a fortress that guarded the city as was the terror of Antonia a guard to the temple and it was and it was that tower with the guards of those 3 ok so here we have an old aerial view looking north and you can see the LM only a school over here is situated above the Temple Mount and there is a rock a rock scrap there's a rock face which is higher than the Temple Mount and you can see here in a geographic map this is called the Antonia Hill which is exactly where we expect to find it to historical sources and we can see that is above the Temple Mount and if you look today in the northern corner of the temple mat you can see part of this rock face which is exposed where the Antonia stood and several archaeologists have identified Herodian masonry just above this rock face and those niches which were used for placing the beams that were part of the royal Portus or not the royal but the porticoes that surrounded the Temple Mount and here is how it would have looked in the first century now why is the Temple Mount in an Antonio so from what I've gathered from these theories there's a very elementary and a little bit of an embarrassing mistake here of just noticing coincidences and paying too much attention to coincidences so the claim is that the Antonia fortress has to be the temple mount to the Temple Mount is sort of rectangular and Roman Casa or custom where rectangular or square or whatnot and it looks exactly the same doesn't look exactly the same these are about 35 acres that's about 35 acres bingo it's just a coincidence by the way did you ever notice that your finger fits exactly into your nostril so so so the Temple Mount is a very complex archaeological structure it is not a single structure it wasn't built in a rectangular way from scratch and it's just a very very naive thing to someone who came for two days as a visit to Israel and he came up with all kinds of theories but we see here various differences which we're not gonna go into but just one very important quote from Josephus is that it looks like a tower and the temple and that's how Antonia is was reconstructed by historians and that is we're not gonna get into you know was it didn't onea protrude into the Temple Mount or not that doesn't really matter the bottom line is that it looks like a tower and nothing like the open court that is the Temple Mount today now so we mentioned earlier that there's a claim that where are you gonna house ten thousand Legionnaires where you can house them and yes there was very large military force in Jerusalem called the 10th Roman legion fort NZ this was a very powerful military force in those days that was in Jerusalem but there's only one little problem they weren't there before the destruction if they were there before the destruction the rebellion would have been quelled in 66 there would have been no rebellion the joy the Jews of Jerusalem had no chance against a Roman 10,000 Roman soldiers inside the so-called Antonia fortress another very important thing to say is that the Antonia fortress wasn't built as a Roman fort that were in the specs it was built as a fortress originally by the hush-money ins in the second century BCE and then herod expanded it or refurbished it it was built specifically as a tower to guard the temple it wasn't both as a Roman fort yes there were Roman forces inside that structure but it wasn't built as a Roman fortress and by the way the the historically archaeologically the the number of roman soldiers who by the way weren't were they weren't let's call him full-blown Legionnaires there were more like exhilarate forces they were between four hundred and a thousand soldiers in Jerusalem that was the number that the archaeologists know of today and there was no Legion therefore we don't need to worry about housing for ten thousand soldiers and here's an indication from the Cephas this is from the rebellion and when the Jews were built against the Romans and and talks about the fact that the rebels the zealots made an assault against Antonia and captured it in two days so it's a little bit hurt it's a little bit of a hard hard thought to imagine ten thousand soldiers being conquered by a few crazy Jews in two days again we're talking about the most heavily armed well-trained force in the ancient world another issue is the fact that the Antonia fortress was destroyed it was the foundations were dug up and we have here the quotes from the Cephas and Titus gave orders to the soldiers to dig up the foundations of the Antonia and in seven days time the overthrown the foundation the Latonia and they used it as a location from which they breached into the Temple Mount another important historical fact archaeological fact there's a quote from from Josephus which indicates that and also we can see in the in the in the picture that the Temple Mount wasn't built at a single day in a single day this was a project which took years and again we're talking about the expansion which was planned by King Herod the Great but we have historical indications an archaeological indications that it was not completed in Herod's day and what I want to show you now is another indication that the Antonia cannot be the Temple Mount so right underneath Robinson's arch we're doing a lot of Robinson's arch today they dug straight to the foundations of the Temple Mount okay so what you see here is the very lowest course of the Temple Mount resting upon bedrock and the in the well in the southwestern corner and part ok well you see there are very large papers which are sealed below the the foundation of the temple of the Temple Mount and one thing that we have to talk about historically is the project of expanding the Temple Mount was a very very large project and part of this project required hairy Celestia laughs Kea basically to confiscate structures that were in the area ok so the government had to do some land grabbing and what we see here is what was underneath the foundation of the Temple Mount in this location and we have steps leading down and this is a mikvah this is a the ritual bath this is a ritual bath which was again underneath the foundations of the Temple Mount and the pottery is first century pottery and the latest coin dates to seventeen to eighteen and it can't be any earlier than this latest coin which is way after King Herod's reign we're talking about the first century King Herod died in 4 BC so this can't be the Antonia why can't this be the Antonio because why is the Antonio named Antonia it was named after Herod's Herod's boss basically who was Mark Anthony Mark Anthony was out of the picture in the year 31 BCE he was the he was defeated by Augustus in the active battle and therefore it could not have been named after Antonia cuz Herod would have found himself with one less head so the Temple Mount is the Temple Mount after all we're gonna look at some very basic archaeological evidence and the first thing to keep in mind these are from Josephus is we have historical sources which tell a lot about the Temple Mount and the only structure in Jerusalem that matches these historical sources is the structure known as the Temple Mount so these these these sources to talk about King Herod's expansion of the Temple Mount so what we see today is twice the size of the original Temple Mount and this is part of Herod's expansion which again we just saw was finished long after he died but we can identify this expansion according to the historical sources here you see the various spaces so yellow is the original 500 square the orange is an expansion to the south probably during the days of the hush-money ends and the gray is all of Herod's expansion and planning and here we see it so this is a very complicated structure and no other structure in Jerusalem matches matches their historical sources and here we have some really ancient stones on the eastern side of the Temple Mount the reason being that the eastern side of the Temple Mount was the only site not expanded by King Herod's plan this is probably just due to the sheer drop the the the cliff which was just too complicated for them to expand towards the east here we see the famous seam in the southern and the southeastern corner the Temple Mount the clear break in the building and the right the the masonry on the right is from the Ashmolean period and to the left is Herodian masonry okay so again the archeology fits the historical sources and again there is no other building or structure which matches these historical sources and here's just some very basic things that I might have covered and rather talk about we have a quote talking about the Western the western side of Herod's expansion and it talks about four gates four gates and the first lead to the palace by a passage over the intervening ravine and this is the famous bridge from Wilson's arch which led up to the area of the palace which is where you have those red rectangular looking roofs here we have Wilson's arch today two other led to the suburbs so we can identify these these gates that Josephus talks about they're exactly the right number and note that there are also monumental gates very very large very very overwhelming gates and not gates that you would expect to find in a Roman fortress since it can be easily accessed by anybody Barclays gate this isn't the women's section in the plans of the temple mode you can see it from inside the temple mount as well and now we're and the last led to the other part of the city from which it was separated by many steps going down to the ravine and from here up again to the hill and of course this is Robertson's arch which supported a massive monumental staircase which led down to the street this was the first ever overpass in the ancient world actually archaeologic archaeologists think that they might have taken him to tries to build it if they think that it collapsed the first time and then they fixed it up and found what their errors were and built it up again but I don't think you have monumental staircase is going into fortresses the fourth front of the temple which was southward we're talking about the southern part of the Temple Mount had indeed gates in its middle and we find gates in the southern part of the Temple Mount we can see the lintel of the gate and we can we can't but we know what's inside and these are tunnels leading underneath the southern part of the temple mountain with staircases up to the plaza of the Temple Mount and the reason this is very important this area which by the way the Muslim is declared a mosque in the late 90s is we have the most elaborate well-preserved Herodian Second Temple masonry in the Land of Israel we have these domes which can be seen today and these columns hmm and this is the most well-preserved Herodian masonry in the Land of Israel dating by the top experts in the field of Roman archaeology to the first century exactly to the time of Herod's temple here we have this is a this is the design on one of those domes also it had the royal cloisters were store portico were Basilica wherever you want to call it and this was a very very impressive structure according to Josephus and the southern part of the Temple Mount the longest building in the ancient world the building with the most columns in the ancient world and as Josephus said it was a structure more not worthy than any under the Sun and here we have an archaeological archeological reconstruction of it and this is a professor Benjamin Messala who excavated right after the six-day war right in the southern part of the Temple Mount found the the all the rubble that was knocked down by the Roman soldiers you can see all the rubble and all these stones that were toppled and purposed by the Roman soldiers and we find exactly what we expect to find according to this to historical sources which is the most elaborate and largest selection of her Roman Herodian architectural members right underneath where the where the stoah stood we have column drums and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds upon hundreds of carved stones and with the most beautiful Herodian masonry found in the Land of Israel underneath the Antonia fortress one more person got it okay so you could just go on and on and on and on and another thing that we encounter our mikvah ritual baths all around the Temple Mount getting closer and closer and these are by the way public ritual baths exactly what we'd expect to find right alongside the Temple Mount and we have one identified as a mikvah underneath the al-aqsa mosque which was documented by Hamilton in the 1930s of the 20th century other artifacts found again underneath right underneath the walls of the Temple Mount we have a the famous golden bill the pure for God seal and The Smoking Gun which is the trumpeting sign lepetit Cavallari's which is something that we know historically and we know from the rabbinical sources that they would blow the trumpet before the Sabbath and in other times you can see the quote from Josephus the point where it was custom for one of the priests to stand and given notice by sound of a trumpet in the afternoon of the approach and on the following evening of the close of every Sabbath day and we find it exactly where we expect to find it another interesting artifact that was found is a Greek inscription of a donation this donation was by a Jew from the island of Rhodes and the inscription reads that it is a donation for the pavement what pavement if it came right underneath the Temple Mount it's probably talking about the pavement that was donated to the Temple Mount and we know from historical again historical and rabbinical sources that there were stones of various colors which were which paved the courts of the temple and the illegal excavation that was done in 1999 many many such color stones beautiful pavement stones were found and these date to again the Herodian period and the dating is solid and it is by parallels the dating is by parallels and we were actually able to this again I covered and my last talks but we were able to reconstruct some of some of these floors that were in the temple were in its courts and again this is done by matching these stones to other Herodian building sites which can still be seen today another very important artifact that was found in this rubble again removed from with inside the temple mount is a seal impression from the first temple period the time of King Solomon's Temple bearing a name of a priest which served in the temple hmm the name email is mentioned on the seal impression and email is the sixteenth family of the twenty-four families that took took part in the work done on the temple and if you read Jeremiah chapter twenty verse one past whole son of email the priest he was the chief officer in the house of the Lord so we have a direct indication to solomon's temple coming out of the area which we have we would expect to find it again a very good indication that the temple was there the the seal probably was part of the Treasury of the temple you can see here a depiction of how it maybe was placed upon a sec and we're coming up on time here so I guess there's only one thing to say and that's checkmate sorry about that those who trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion and which cannot be moved but abides forever thank you very much [Applause] you

Channel: The Temple Institute

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Keywords: Temple Institute, korbanot, High Priest, Moses, Moshe, Aaron, Aharon, Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, HaMikdash, Tabernacle, Mishkan, Mikdash, Bible, Rabbi Chaim Richman, Parsha, Parshat, Hashavua, teaching, bible, Eretz, Israel, religion, educational, politics, inspirational, Temple, Ark, Para Aduma, Torah, תורה, ישראל, ירושלים, בראשית, City of David, Antonio Fortress, Archaeology, Cornuke, Josephus

Id: dh5yQiPYuo0

Length: 53min 53sec (3233 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 08 2019