Locating
Solomon's Temple
THE SOUTHWEST CORNER
Chapter
Seven
The
“Place
of the Trumpeting” and the place above the Xystus reveal the real
location of
the Temple.
It
seems that the location of the Temple has always been hidden in plain
sight in the works of Josephus. Amazing!
We
learn of the Place of the Trumpeting through Josephus as
he describes the towers built by the Jewish Rebels who had taken over
the city
prior to its destruction. The rebels split into two groups and began
warring
against each other. One faction held the Temple and they built towers
on the
corners of the Temple compound to get a higher advantage for their
arrows. One of those towers was built above the Xystus. So first
we need
to find out where that was.
Josephus
traces the path of the northern part of the First
Wall of Jerusalem in The War of the Jews 4.2:
"Now that wall began on the north, at the tower called
"Hippicus," and extended as far as the "Xistus," a place so
called, and then, joining to the council-house, ended at the west
cloister of
the temple."
The Xystus was a plaza used for assembly, to hear public speeches made
from the
west wall of the Temple Mount.
The ruins of the Council House were discovered by Charles Warren in the
1860′s.
It is located near the Western Wall and the bridge over Wilson’s Arch.
The Place of the
Trumpeting was
located
at what is now thought to be the southwest corner of the
Temple Mount.
At the base of the southwest corner the remains of “The Place of the
Trumpeting” stone was found. It lay where it had landed after
the
destruction of the Temple.
Josephus tells the location of the towers that the rebels built.
This
graphic shows two of the towers. Numbers 2 and 4.
The first
tower was built at the northeast corner of the Temple
compound. The second
on the corner of the Temple, across from the Xystus
plaza. The third tower was built on the corner overlooking the
City of David.
Scholars trying to place these towers have great difficulty with the
southern
corner tower. Placing it at the southeast corner of the Mount, as
it is
today, red X on the next map, doesn’t work because it overlooks
the Kidron
Valley not the City. They end up placing it at the southwest
corner. This
places towers 3 and 4 in the same place!
Josephus places the fourth tower at the corner of the “Place of
the
Trumpeting.”
Placing
the towers on Warren’s map helps us to get our bearings.
It is most important
to remember
that the towers were built on corners of the Temple. This
means
that the tower built above the Xystus was built at a corner.
As we can
see there is no longer a corner in that place. But if there
were it
would be built at what used to be the northwest corner of Herod’s 600 x
600
foot Temple.
To know where the temple was actually
located on the Temple Mount we
must combine this with what Josephus said about the size of Herod's
Temple. It
was a furlong in length and a furlong in width. So all we need
to do is start at the tower built on the northwest corner above the
Xystus of
Herod’s Temple and measure a furlong of 600 feet southward.
That
gives us the southwest corner of Herod’s Temple. Then
measure 600 feet towards the east and that gives us the
southeast corner. Then measure north to find the northeast
corner of
Herod’s Temple where Josephus wrote that the first tower was
built.
It wasn’t until the
Place of the Trumpeting stone was found that the puzzle could be put
together,
but I didn’t use the Trumpeting Place to show the location. Instead I
used
scripture, ancient survey maps, pictures of the Mount and Ophel, the
writings
of Josephus and the Jewish writings, such as the Mishna, etc. to
discover
this location.
This graphic shows my
Temple diagram laid over the map with the towers.
……
In this theory there are extra corners in the Temple. The
lower Herodian
extended court, which was the last court to be built, had a stepped
walkway
leading up to where a gate would have been. This gate would have
entered into
the lower Herodian court and Herod’s Royal Stoa. The red arrow
shows
another wall built along side the South wall of the Mount in the above
photo.
Josephus wrote in war of the Jews 5; 5.2 that the bedrock
was at it's
lowest at this point at the southwest corner. From bedrock to the top of
the wall was 300 cubits (437 feet). and then it was filled in to make
it level
with the streets of the city. Is
the southwest corner of the
Temple Mount 437 feet from the top of what would have been a gate at
Robinson's
arch down to where they found the Jewish mikveh under the wall? I
believe
it is around 125 feet from bedrock up to where the top of the
gate would
have reached.
This
is in no way the southwest corner Josephus was speaking
of.
The southwest corner would have been further down
Ophel hill where
the depth was greater. Not only would the wall
appearing above
the street have to reach the level of the rest of the temple, much
taller than
any other wall of the temple...but the buried part of the
wall below the
street would also have to go down much deeper in order to reach
the
bedrock in the Tyropoeon valley at the place I propose for the
southwest
corner. The only way this is possible is if the northwest corner of the
Temple
were at the place above the xystus pre destruction and of course pre
Hadrian's
reshaping of the temple mount area. This Temple
theory is the only one which can account for
all 4 towers in their proper places.
This is positive proof that the
Temple was once located on the Temple Mount and not in the City of
David or the
Dome of the Rock.
South of this
second wall, the western half of the Ophel mound, excavations revealed
important data on the history of early Islamic Jerusalem. Four
edifices, about
90 x 90 meters each, were unearthed and data to the Umayyad period
(7th-8th
centuries CE). These buildings are probably part of an official
facility
erected by the Caliph Al-Walid, and shedding new light on the status of
Jerusalem during the Islamic period.
This stopped the
western half of the Ophel from being excavated down to the level of
that on the
eastern side.
This whole area is now called the Ophel
Archaeological Garden.
This is a photo of
the Western section of the Ophel as it looks today. All work has
stopped
and any ruins from an earlier time will remain hidden.
Continue
Previous Chapter
Return to Table
of
Content
Home Page