The Jewish Temple is in Silwan

It has been unquestioned and unquestionable orthodoxy for the last millennium that the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem were located on the platform of the Haram ash-Sharif with its stunning masterpiece of Islamic architecture, the Dome of the Rock.

There is a mass of evidence, however, that the location of all the Jewish Temples was located one block, or 600 feet south of the Haram underneath the northern part of the poor Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan that occupies the entire southeastern ridge of Jerusalem that is the site of the original City of David, which is the origin of the City of Jerusalem we know today.

The Silwan Location thesis has been most fully articulated so far by Ernest L. Martin in his book The Temples Jerusalem Forgot and in his subsequent articles at Associates For Scriptural Knowledge. (ASK) In future posts I will lay out the arguments and evidence for the Silwan location.

The corollary of the Silwan location of the Temple is the location of Fort Antonia over the entire platform of the Haram ash-Sharif. It has no connection whatsoever with anything Jewish at all.

The first fortress to guard the Temple to the south in Silwan was built by the Jewish king Simon the Hasmonaean during his reign 147 - 135 BCE, and known as the Baris.

Herod the Great greatly expanded the Baris and renamed it the Antonia in honor of Mark Anthony who lost our the Octavian who became the emperor to succeed the Caesar, as the emperor Augustus Caesar.

In 6 BC the Antonia passed out of Jewish control and became the center of Roman control over Jerusalem. It was designed as a standard Roman Praetorium or military camp to hold a legion of 5000 soldiers with another 5000 support personnel.

After 6 BCE it was no longer a part of Jewish Jerusalem. It is not "the Temple Mount". Jews wailing at the Western Wall are wailing at the walls of the Roman fortress from which the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE by Titus, who subsequently became emperor.

The actual wailing wall is located under the home of poor Palestinians one block south of the Haram ash-Sharif.

The entirety of the Haram is the Fort Antonia.

Below is a reconstruction of the Temple at its correct Silwan location, with its block-long dual collonades connecting it to Fort Antonia. Image is from the ASK website.