Saturday, January 8, 2011

The Jewish Temple could not possibly have been located on the Haram ash- Sharif


The universally held belief that the Jewish Temple was located on the platform of the Haram ash-Sharif is simply, wrong. The Temple could not possibly been located there. Here is why:

Josephus gives us as an eye-witness the dimensions of Herold's Temple. Its area was a perfect square 600' x 600' - a little more than eight acres or the size of a city block in Chicago.

Josephus tells us that its southwest corner plunged 245 feet into the bed of the Kedron Valley, a distance of 40 - 45 stories, which is why it was called the Pinnacle of the Temple from which Satan tempted Jesus to through himself off to "prove" his trust in God in the Gospel accounts of Matthewn4:5 and Luke 4:9.

We also know that two colonnades also 600', or another city block long connected the Temple from its northwest corner to the Antonia.

The Antonia was located higher than the Temple. It dominated it and blocked the view of it from the north.

Thus we have minimally a three square block collection of skyscrapers rising from 40 -45 stories to more than 50 stories including the four towers on the Antonia.

These skyscraper would have stood more than 200 feet higher than the Mount of Olives, and would have been one of the engineering Seven Wonders of the World of the Roman Empire.

The location of the Jewish Temple there is a physical impossibility.

It has been objected by the few critics who have deigned to examine the Silwan location thesis that Josephus is engaging in "wild exaggerations." While there may be exaggerations in the head counts and the body counts, which are always estimates and often guess work, Josephus would not have exaggerated the physically observable dimensions of the Temple, which were no doubt touted by every Jewish pilgrimage guide of the day.

Moreover, among Josephus' readers was the emperor Titus who spent five months capturing the Temple and ending the Jewish revolt and another three months destroying every building in Jewish Jerusalem with particular attention to tearing down the Temple to its foundation stones.

Titus surely would have noticed Josephus lying about the fact that the Temple platform was 45 stories high. The Haram location of the Temple thesis falls on this alone.

What is needed is for serious scholars particularly of Roman, Late Antiquity, and Islamic eras to seriously investigate and weigh the evidence that Ernest L. Martin has marshaled for the first time in his writings.




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