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Temple Mount Chronology | ||||||||
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Nehemiah’s wall gives us some important information that helps identify where the Temple was NOT located.
Nehemiah wrote that the Tower of the Hundred (Meah) was in the north wall as the drawing below indicates. It was the fortification against an attack from the North on the Temple and City of David. Nehemiah did not rebuild any of the Temple walls. He only rebuilt the City walls.
The Tower of Sammeah {Meah=hundred). Perhaps a 100 cubits high. Located on the old North wall, called by archaeologists the Ancient North Wall. Nehemiah tells us that Tower of meah was between the Sheep Gate and the Tower of Hananeel in the North Wall.
The Meah tower on the north wall was replaced with the Baris Tower/ fortress after the Hasmoneans defeated Antiochus IV in 163 AD. Later the Baris was increased in size dramatically by Herod and called Fort Antonia.
It is believed by Leen Ritmyer, and I agree, that Hezekiah (700B BC) built the lower portions of the east wall (in blue) all the way from the bend in the east wall to just beyond the east gate, at that point the wall went westward across the mount.
The ruins of the oldest east gate still remain under the east gate we see today. Nehemiah called this older gate in Hezekiah's wall the Commanders Gate, which as we can see was located at the very north end of the old east wall in blue, but after the east wall was extended on both the north and the south ends then the gate in the east wall is a little more centralized.
The true East Gate, and East wall, of Solomon’s Temple were never rebuilt by Herod. He said it was too beautiful, and his builders did not have permission to touch it.
There is no way this east gate entered directly into the woman’s court in the time of Nehemiah.
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Map of Jerusalem First Century
Yellow area would have been the
city walls in the time of Nehemiah.
Herod rebuilt this wall and also
built a wall around the North quarter of the city (in green).
Later Herod Agrippa I built a third
city wall increasing the size of the City of Jerusalem, including the suburbs
and Bezetha hill (New City) in purple. At this time he connected
his new city wall to the pre-existing temple mount wall, further fortifying
the Mount area. That explains why there is no northern wall of the
Temple mount we see today.
May 4, 2014 -The above map has been recently updated
because of this description by Josephus
War of the Jews Book 5. 4. 2
.......The second wall took its beginning from that gate which
they called "Gennath," which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed
the northern quarter of the city, and reached as far as the tower Antonia.
The beginning of the third wall was at the tower Hippicus,..................................It
was Agrippa who encompassed the parts added to the old city with this wall,
which had been all naked before; for as the city grew more populous, it
gradually crept beyond its old limits, and those parts of it that stood
northward of the temple, and joined that hill to the city, made it considerably
larger, and occasioned that hill, which is in number the fourth, and
is called "Bezetha," to be inhabited also.
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