The rooms would have been built around an inner sanctum—the Holy of Holies—where the ark of the covenant, an acacia-wood chest covered with gold and containing the original Ten Commandments, was said to have been stored. Until recently, Palestinians generally acknowledged that the Beit Hamikdash existed.
This too is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt and peace offerings. Arafat suggested the site of the Temple Mount might have been in the West Bank town of Nablus, known as Shechem in ancient times. But Natsheh—sipping Arabic coffee in his office at Waqf headquarters, a year-old former Sufi monastery in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City—is dubious.
The ark of the covenant disappeared, possibly hidden from the conquerors. Following the conquest of Jerusalem by the Persians in B. He enclosed the holy site within a foot-high retaining wall constructed of limestone blocks quarried from the Jerusalem Hills and constructed a far more expansive version of the Second Temple.
He wanted also to compete with God. On a cloudless morning, I join historian Meiron for a tour of the Temple Mount. Today, hundreds of Orthodox Jews are gathered in devotion before the remnant of that wall—a ritual that perhaps first occurred in the fourth century A. During the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, this area was a warren of Arab houses, and Jews who wanted to pray here had to squeeze into a foot-wide corridor in front of the Herodian stones.
After Israel claimed sovereignty over East Jerusalem in , it demolished the Arab houses, creating the plaza. Israel erected the wooden structure after an earthen ramp collapsed in , following an earthquake and heavy snowfall. But members of both the Jewish and Muslim communities opposed the plan. And the Israeli activist group Peace Now warned the project might alarm Muslims since the new route and size of the bridge three times the original ramp would increase non-Muslim traffic to the Mount.
Indeed, when Israel began a legally required archaeological survey of the planned construction site, Palestinians and Arab Israelis joined in a chorus of protest. They claimed the Israeli excavations—although conducted several yards outside the walls of the sacred compound—threatened the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
For the time being, non-Muslim visitors continue to use the temporary wooden bridge that has been in place for seven years. Such disputes inevitably send ripples throughout the international community. And in November , the Palestinian Authority created a diplomatic kerfuffle when it published a study declaring the Western Wall was not a Jewish holy site at all, but part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Today, the scene is calm. At various spots on the wide, leafy plaza Palestinian men gather in study groups, reading the Koran. We ascend steps toward the magnificent Dome of the Rock—which was built during the same period as the Al-Aqsa Mosque to the south, between A. Its provenance remains a subject of debate among historians, pitting the majority, who claim early Muslims built it, against those who insist it is a Byzantine Christian structure. But other historians counter that the eastern entrance to the Mount, where the Golden Gate was built, was important to the Byzantines because their interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew holds that Jesus entered the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives to the east when he joined his disciples for the Passover meal.
And in A. Fifteen years later, after defeating the Persians, Heraclius, a Byzantine emperor, is said to have brought the True Cross back to the holy city—passing from the Mount of Olives to the Temple Mount, and then to the Holy Sepulchre. In addition, Barkay has found archival photographs taken during renovations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the late s that appear to reveal Byzantine mosaics beneath the structure—further evidence that some sort of public building had been constructed at the site.
After the war his father—who had spent a year in a Nazi forced labor camp in Ukraine—established the first Israeli delegation in Budapest, and the family emigrated to Israel in Barkay earned his doctorate in archaeology at Tel Aviv University.
In , exploring a series of ancient burial caves in an area of Jerusalem above the Valley of Hinnom, he made a remarkable discovery: two 2,year-old silver scrolls delicately etched with the priestly blessing that Aaron and his sons bestowed on the children of Israel, as mentioned in the Book of Numbers.
Barkay and I get into my car and drive toward Mount Scopus. He shrugs. You can do it to the right, to the left, on the face of an Arab or a Jew. Still, some criticism of Barkay stems not from politics but from skepticism about his methodology.
Natsheh is not the only archaeologist to raise questions about the value of artifacts not found in situ. From the First Temple period, in BC, there are significant remains of preparations made by King Hezekiah when a siege on the city by Sennacherib King of Assyria was imminent.
They were allowed to return under an edict issued by Cyrus King of Persia. It was also during this period that Jesus was in Jerusalem. He was crucified about 40 years before the destruction of the city.
The two major remaining sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, shared a common conviction that the Temple must be rebuilt, although the Sadducees, who included the court nobility and priests, were particularly unable to envision Judaism without a Temple. This consensus drove people to drastic action. In the years to C. In C. But again, the overwhelming might of Rome was brought to bear. Bar Kochba and his troops were destroyed, and the remaining population of Judea was deported.
With this defeat, hopes for an immediate restoration of the Temple were set back indefinitely. Comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara, it contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis from different periods in Jewish history. Yom Kippur. Ancient Israel. Tisha B'Av. The practices associated with this holiday are closer to the experience of being a refugee than to being a mourner. We use cookies to improve your experience on our site and bring you ads that might interest you.
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