Scholars Debunk ‘Times’ Article on Temple Mount

[oberliner]

History is too vast, and time too short, to waste on fool-proofing for nonsense, which is why you won’t find serious historians spending their time de-bunking late-night pseudo-documentaries about the alien landing in Nevada that set off the Cold War or the super-secret advanced society that ruled the lost continent of Atlantis. But what happens when a marginal, crackpot theory makes its way into a major media outlet, where it has been deployed, consciously or not, for insidious political purposes?

From Thursday’s New York Times:

Within Jerusalem’s holiest site, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, lies an explosive historical question that cuts to the essence of competing claims to what may be the world’s most contested piece of real estate.

The question, which many books and scholarly treatises have never definitively answered, is whether the 37-acre site, home to Islam’s sacred Dome of the Rock shrine and Al Aqsa Mosque, was also the precise location of two ancient Jewish temples, one built on the remains of the other, and both long since gone.

The second paragraph frames the issue of the temples’ location as a matter of legitimate difference—in fact, a bone of serious contention among experts. So let it be clear: There is absolutely no controversy whatsoever among historians in the field, anywhere in the world, about the existence of two successive temples dedicated to the God of Israel that stood on what is variously known as the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif.

This bears repeating: Two temples dedicated to the God of Israel certainly stood on the Temple Mount. All historians believe this. There is scholarly dispute about the existence of Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount in much the same way as there is a dispute about whether or not the earth is flat, which is to say, this is not a debate among historians, but between scholars and propagandists.

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/194129/scholars-debunk-times-article-on-temple-mount

[Little Tich]

1. The OP is completely wrong.

The location of the First Temple has never been verified, although it's very probable it was situated on top of the Temple Mount. Merely believing something doesn't prove anything.

I read an article in the Smithsonian Magazine about this, and while it's long, it provides some background information that proves my point:

What is Beneath the Temple Mount?
Source: SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE, APRIL 2011
(snip from third page)

“The Temple Mount was the Parthenon of the Jews,” says Barkay, describing how worshipers would have climbed a steep set of stairs to get to it. “You would feel every step of the climb in your limbs and your lungs.”

Still, “we know nothing about the First Temple, because there are no traces of its physical remains,” says Benjamin Kedar, a history professor at Hebrew University and chairman of the board of directors at the IAA. Scholars, however, have pieced together a tentative portrait of the Beit Hamikdash from descriptions in the Bible and architectural remains of sanctuaries elsewhere in the region built during the same era. It is envisioned as a complex of richly painted and gilded courts, constructed with cedar, fir and sandalwood. 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. A 1929 publication, A Brief Guide to the Haram al-Sharif, written by Waqf historian Aref al Aref, declares that the Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s temple is beyond dispute. 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.” But in recent decades, amid the intensifying quarrel over the sovereignty of East Jerusalem, a growing number of Palestinian officials and academics have voiced doubts. “I will not allow it to be written of me that I have...confirmed the existence of the so-called Temple beneath the Mount,” Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat told President Bill Clinton at the Camp David peace talks in 2000. Arafat suggested the site of the Temple Mount might have been in the West Bank town of Nablus, known as Shechem in ancient times.

Five years after the Camp David talks, Barkay’s sifting project turned up a lump of black clay with a seal impression inscribed with the name, in ancient Hebrew, “[Gea]lyahu [son of] Immer.” In the Book of Jeremiah, a son of Immer—Pashur—is identified as chief administrator of the First Temple. Barkay suggests that the seal’s owner could have been Pashur’s brother. If so, it’s a “significant find,” he says—the first Hebrew inscription from the First Temple period to be found on the Mount itself.

(end snip)

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-is-beneath-the-temple-mount-920764/

[oberliner]

2. The Smithsonian Magazine article corroborates almost everything written in the OP.

Even the paragraphs you excerpted here aligns with what is written in the OP.

Bizarre that you would contradict your own statement ("completely wrong&quot with your own provided link.

For instance:

In the first century B.C., King Herod undertook a massive reshaping of the Temple Mount. He filled up the slopes surrounding the mount’s summit and expanded it to its present size. He enclosed the holy site within a 100-foot-high retaining wall constructed of limestone blocks quarried from the Jerusalem Hills and constructed a far more expansive version of the Second Temple. “Herod’s attitude was, ‘Anything you can do, I can do better and larger,’” says Barkay. “It was part of his megalomania. He wanted also to compete with God.”

Barkay says he and his co-workers have turned up physical evidence that hints at the grandeur of the Second Temple, including pieces of what appear to be opus sectile floor tiles—elements of a technique in Herod’s time that used stone of various colors and shapes to create geometric patterns. (Describing the temple, the ancient historian Jo­sephus wrote of an open-air courtyard “laid with stones of all sorts.”) Other discoveries might offer glimpses of daily religious rituals—notably ivory and bone combs that could have been used in preparation for a ritual mikvah, or purifying bath, before entering the courts’ sanctified interior.

[Little Tich]

3. That's the Second Temple...

How does the existence of the Second Temple prove the location of the first one? I'm not really sure you understand the contents of the Smithsonian article...

[oberliner]

5. The Second Temple, by definition, means there was a First Temple

Otherwise, why refer to it as The Second Temple?

Anyway, the OP says that no serious historian disputes that there was a temple and that the only people who are reticent about acknowledging this are politically motivated.

The Smithsonian article supports both of those statements.

As do the actual words of the historians quoted in both the NY Times article and the OP.

Which is why the NY Times issued a correction.

[Little Tich]

14. Sorry, I don't do circular reasoning.

When it comes to proving whether a certain building stood somewhere or not, it's necessary to find the actual building or its foundations. I have watched a lot of "Time Team" and that's one of the lessons I learned from watching that particular show.

[geek tragedy]

4. that's the second temple, not the first.

And, really, what's the deal with venerating the public works of Herod, who was a petty, monstrous tyrant and also a sycophant to Rome?

Do 21st Century Jews really believe that a deity of divine wisdom and morality was represented on earth by Herod?

[oberliner]

6. You can't have a second something without a first something

In any case, the OP makes the point it makes using the words of the actual historians quoted in the NY Times article who have written extensively on the subject.

As to why people venerate the things the venerate, who knows.

Personally, I think it is crazy that people go nuts over the drawing of a cartoon, but such is the world we live in.

[Mosby]

7. Your second question doesn't make sense

Herod was a king of Judea, a converted jew.

Many Jews at the time despised him and his family, especially religious Jews.

[geek tragedy]

8. so why are his buildings treated as more than

historical artifices and archaeology sites?

[Mosby]

9. Because they contained the Kodesh Kodashim

Where the ark of the covenant was kept.

[geek tragedy]

10. but that's no longer there. nt

[Mosby]

11. Let me make this simpler

It's not up to you to decide what is holy to Jews or Muslims or Christians.

Its presumptuous and offensive.

[geek tragedy]

12. my my, very touchy and easily aggrieved

no wonder there's so much intolerance and bloodshed in that part of the world

[King_David]

15. If i never kew you better , that could be misconstrued as a bigoted statement,

Lucky we all know you better.

That is what hyper-partisanship does to one, especially in this group.

[FBaggins]

13. This includes a scholar that the Times used as a source

I am one of the specialists interviewed for “Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place” (news article, Oct. 9).

The question of the existence and location of two successive temples on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is not nearly as contested as the article suggests.

Literary sources leave little doubt that there were two successive ancient temples in Jerusalem dedicated to the God of Israel (the first destroyed in 586 B.C., and the second in 70 A.D.). These sources and archaeological remains indicate that both temples stood somewhere on the Temple Mount.

The only real question is the precise location of the temple(s) on the Temple Mount. The site of the Dome of the Rock is the most likely spot for various reasons, despite the lack of archaeological evidence or excavations. I know of no credible scholars who question the existence of the two temples or who deny that they stood somewhere on the Temple Mount.

JODI MAGNESS

Chapel Hill, N.C.

The writer is a professor specializing in early Judaism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.