Monthly Archive for August, 2008

Temple Mount ban

Published
by
Leen Ritmeyer
on August 30, 2008
in Excavations, Products, Research and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

Here you can read one of the latest articles on “Jews in the Temple Area: A ‘Mount’-ing Controversy”. Three rabbis, Rabbi Yoseph, Rabbi Elyashiv and Kanievsky, demand a complete ban on Jews entering any part of the Temple Mount on the grounds that the ritual purity of the area might be violated.

On the other hand, there are a growing number of rabbis, such as Rabbi Moshe Tendler, Rabbi Yehuda Kreuzer and the rabbis of the Temple Institute, who believe that Jews should be allowed to enter onto the Temple Mount, and in an interview with IsraelNationalNews, Rabbi Kreutzer cited a well-known rabbinical source: “In short, the Radbaz [a leading halachic authority from the 1500s] ruled that the Dome of the Rock is the Foundation Stone in the Holy of Holies…. He wrote that without a doubt this is the identity of the place. He wrote in a definite way the definite identity of the place,” Kreuzner reiterated. “If so, it’s possible to do the measurements.”

The “measurements” have been done already, for there is so much archaeological evidence to show that the Rock inside the Dome of the Rock is the Foundation Stone, that is indeed possible to set out the precise location of the Temple and its courts. For the last 30 years, I have used the information of Middot, Josephus and archaeology to analyze the Temple Mount.

The pre-Herodian Temple Mount was a square platform of 500 cubits, inside of which was the soreg, a partition screen to keep out Gentiles and Jews who were disqualified from entering the inner courts. Further inside was the Court of the Women and the Azarah, the court around the temple itself, which was accessible to priests only.

The location of the soreg in the southern court depends on the location of two Temple Mount mikvaot, Cisterns 6 and 36 according to Warren’s enumeration, and the soreg should be located just to the north of them. Mikvaot were used for ritual bathing, which, of course, needs to be done before entering the holy area. Even if the rabbis would stay outside of the soreg, there is ample space on the Temple Mount for them to walk on.

The Court of the Women was located east of the raised Muslim platform and the Azarah was located on this platform. By staying off the platform, rabbis could never defile the Holy of Holies, which was located inside the Dome of the Rock. Even walking on the raised platform, there is no danger of trespassing on the Holy of Holies.

If the fear of the rabbis is to tread of the area of the Holy of Holies alone, then they should stay outside of the Dome of the Rock and the rest of the Temple Mount should be accessible to them.

On the detailed plan below, the pre-Herodian Temple Mount is indicated in yellow. and the soreg in the southern court is just north of the two mikvaot. The raised Muslim platform is grey and the Herodian Temple Complex is in red.

… under construction …

Published
by
Leen Ritmeyer
on August 25, 2008
in Site Info
. 1 Comment

Over the next couple of days we are going to be making changes to the layout of the blog and online store… if something stops working, don’t worry; we’ll be back online soon!

The Gamla Synagogue

Published
by
Leen Ritmeyer
on August 9, 2008
in Excavations, History, News and Site Info
. 0 Comments

The ESV Study Bible has now started a blog and today an interesting post was put up about the Gamla Synagogue. When I first started to work for the ESV Study Bible, I was shown a beautiful reconstruction painting of this synagogue which had a red tiled roof. The artist did not know that roof tiles were only introduced to the Land of Israel in the Roman period and were much used in the Byzantine period. Most of the roofs of churches and synagogues at that time had pitched roofs, covered with tiles.

Not so, however, during the Herodian period, when the Gamla Synagogue was built. Some tiles may have been imported for large public buildings, but most of the roofs were flat, especially in the Golan where wood is scarce. In 1973, just after the Yom Kippur War, I was asked to accompany a group of IDF archaeologists, who were doing a survey in the territory that had been newly captured from Syria. It was here that I was first introduced to buildings made of basalt blocks. Not only the walls, but the door and window frames were all made of basalt stones and the roof was made of long basalt slabs, which rested on corbels which projected from the walls.

I was quite sure that the Gamla Synagogue had a similar flat roof and that is what it shown in the drawing below (used by permission). As an interesting aside and as mentioned in a previous blog, this type of roof construction would explain how the paralytic man could have been let down through the “tiling” (Luke 5.19) in order to be healed by Jesus. It is more than likely that the roof of the house in Capernaum, where the houses were also made of basalt, was made of long basalt slabs laid at a short distance from each other and which were then covered with flat basalt tiles. After removing these tiles and taking away the basalt cross beams, a space would have been created large enough to let a man down through.

A similar flat roof construction would have been used in the Gamla Synagogue. It has been a privilege to have worked with the ESV Study Bible and Maltings Partnership and the painting below is the result of our joint endeavors:gamla-synagogue.jpg

Jerusalem reconstruction drawings

Published
by
Leen Ritmeyer
on August 9, 2008
in History, Jerusalem, Research and Temple Mount
. 2 Comments

In the middle of this promotional movie for the new ESV Study Bible (available from 15 October, 2008), you can see my reconstructions of Jerusalem and the Temple in the various periods and which have been painted beautifully by Maltings Partnership, U.K.

First you see the City of David, followed by Solomon’s Jerusalem and Temple. You can then view Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah, followed by Herodian Jerusalem and the spectacular Temple Mount and also zoom in to the Temple itself.

Here is the video:

The Temple Mount gates

Published
by
Leen Ritmeyer
on August 1, 2008
in History, Jerusalem, News, Research, Site Info and Temple Mount
. 3 Comments

Tonight, Friday the 1st of August, is also the beginning of the Hebrew month Ab. On the 9th of this month the Jews remember the destruction of the two temples that stood on Mount Moriah, but tonight, they march around the gates of the Temple Mount to express their desire is to build a new Temple.

The ceremony is called “Sivuv She’arim” - going round the gates - and this is the seventh year that they have marched round the gates of the Temple Mount. You can read the Jerusalem Post report here.

The founder of Sivuv She’arim, Rabbi Tzvi Rogin, used to visit our home, when we lived in Yorkshire, and we had many animated discussions about the Temple Mount. Our family once participated in this ceremony and it was an exhilarating experience.

For those of you who don’t know all the Temple Mount gates, here is a drawing showing their location:

tmgatenames.jpg

The original names of the gates of the Herodian Temple Mount walls are not known. They possibly never had names.

Today we refer to the gates in the Western Wall (from north to south) as Warren’s Gate, Wilson’s Arch (which was part of a bridge and led to a gate which was built into the western portico), Barclay’s Gate and Robinson’s Arch - which supported a stairway leading to a gate, which was also built into the western portico. Warren, Wilson, Barclay and Robinson were explorers, who worked in Jerusalem in the late 1800’s.

There are two Herodian gates in the Southern Wall, the Double Gate and the Triple Gate. These gates are sometimes erroneously called the Huldah Gates, for these were located on the Temple Mount and were not part of the Herodian retaining walls.

There were two gates in the Eastern Wall, a small gate near the south-east corner, which led into what is now called the Solomon’s Stables and the main eastern gate, which was located where the Golden Gate now stands. Inside this gate are two monolithic gate posts which belonged to the earlier Shushan Gate.

There may have been another Herodian gate in the northern wall, but no remains have been found and it is only once mentioned by Josephus.

The earlier square Temple Mount, which was originally constructed by King Hezekiah, had five gates and their names are known. In the west was the Coponius Gate, the two gates in the southern wall were called the Huldah Gates. We have already mentioned the Shushan Gate in the eastern wall and the gate in the northern wall was called the Tadi Gate. This gate may have been buried underground by the Herodian expansion to the north.