While being involved with David Morton in the creation of a 3D of the Temple for my
location (contributing the
measurements, layout and design for him) I have come to understand
a great
deal more about the Temple. One of those things concerns the many
animals brought in for sacrifice. How did they get into the
Temple? Where were they sold? There were many thousands of
animals brought in on a single day, such as Passover, and other feast
days or celebrations.
(This is written in accordance with my
Temple location which is at the south end of the Temple Mount, with its
southern court beyond the south wall of the Mount on the Ophel.)
We know from the scriptures that on the north city wall, that Nehemiah
repaired, was the
Sheep gate. Also a gate right around the corner on the city wall was
the Miphkad gate. The gate that is there now is a Muslim built
gate that some people call the Golden Gate, believing it to be the
famed East gate of the Temple Mount, but Nehemiah rebuilt the city wall
only, not a single wall of the Temple in his account. Deep below this gate is an
ancient gate believed to be the original gate Miphkad that Nehemiah
spoke
of. Miphkad has much to do with the Red Heifer. The word means
inspector and was probably where the final inspection of the red heifer
took place. However it is written that only nine red heifer
sacrifices took place from the time of Solomon until the destruction of
the Temple in 70 AD. Sheep and cattle were kept separate,
as they are today. So I believe the young bulls that were needed
for
sacrifice were most likely brought in through the miphkad gate. Goats would have been brought in through the sheep gate.
So let's begin this study with how the animals were brought into
Solomon's/Zerubbabel's Temple. Solomon's Temple had no west gate,
the north gate later became damaged and was not rebuilt. So these
animals were not corraled in the north court. or they would have had a
great need to repair the damaged. A new north gate was built by
Herod when he extended the
north court.
The East gate was
entered into by way of Solomon's Porch/Portico and entered directly
into the Women's court. The Women's court was not a place for the
corralling of the thousands of animals needed. It had other
functions. This only leaves the southern court for the
corralling and sale of these animals.
Once inside the city wall enclosure the animals had to be managed and then
herded to the Temple and into corrals, where they would be sold to the Jews
coming to the Temple to make a sacrifice. This was a big
business. At one point a famous High Priest and his family owned
all of the shops, and overcharged, which made the people very upset.
The family were the richest people in the city.
In this map the
Nehemiah wall is shown with blue lines. The Tower Meah later was enlarged,
with many towers added, and called Fort Baris. Fort Baris did not
connect with a wall to the temple, but had an underground passge from
the fort to the temple. This left open land for the many animals
to be coralled and then herded in groups into the temple via the west
side of the lower southern court. The red arrows indicate the path of the animals on these maps.
The lower
court was the southern court of both Solomon's/Zerubbabel's temple, and also
Herod's Temple It was Josephus that called this
court the Lower Court,
because the Temple was on a higher part of the hill. The Herodian
extension of this lower court, by Herod's grandson, was most likely
only begun in the time of Jesus and wasn't completed until a few years
before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. On the western side of Solomon's
Temple there was a man-made
drainage ditch which flowed at the bottom of the Tyropoeon Valley and
ultimately emptied into
the Kidron Valley. The maintenance for these corrals would have
required small drains going down to that drainage ditch to handle the
copious amount of urine needing to be drained away. This leads me to
believe the animals were corralled on the western side of the southern court.
Before the Herodian's extened the courts, the Tyropoeon Valley was a steep
valley on the west side of the Temple. A walkway or path needed
to be built along the west wall of the Temple for the animals to
be brought into the west side of the southern court from the Sheep and
Miphkad gates at the north end of the city wall.
This changed when Herod the Great built Fort Antonia in place of Fort
Baris and connected Fort Antonia to the Temple with a wall. The
path for the animals was cut off and had to change.
Herod the Great died in 4 BC but the work continued on the west wall
with Herod's son, Herod Agrippa I, and later the southern court was
extended under his grandson, Herod Agrippa II.
When Herod Agrippa I began building the west wall northward in a
straight line, as it is today, then a tunnel was needed to connect from this
new wall to Herod the Great's west wall, which was angeled following
the path of the Nehemiah wall. This tunnel, or gate, is named
Warren's Gate, after the explorer Charles Warren and is shown on his maps. So the animals
were herded from the sheep and Miphkad gates around to the new tunnel
going from the old west wall to the new west wall as shown in the next
map.
With the Herodian's building of the west wall the Tyropoeon Valley was
filled in and brought up to the street level of the west hill, and a
first century street was built along the west wall. The street,
however, was built for people not animals. To accommodate the
animals the Herodians built a string of shops along the west wall with
a walkway on top of the shops. At the level of the top of the
shops both Warren's gate and Barclay's gate have their
thresholds. The animals entered the walkway through Warren's gate
and continued southward, but some of the animals could be brought
up through Barclay's gate to a barn in the upper west court to be sold.
This would be where people entering from the west by means of
Robinson's arch bridge could purchase animals for sacrifice. The
rest of the animals were brought down to the alleyway between the upper
court and the southern/lower court. In this alley were two
separate entrances, one for sheep/goats and one for young bulls.
The arched entrance, which I believe was for the young bulls, and the red heifer, can still be seen in the
alley today.
.....
This illustration below shows the path they followed to
reach the alleyway.
When the 3D of the Temple is complete, many months from now, we will be making a video showing
how the animals entered the west side of the southern court of the Temple.
...
..
