JERUSALEM'S TEMPLE MOUNT: A DOME, A ROCK, & A WALL

Okay; I’m coming clean!

Sifting through 5,000 years of history and the three major Abrahamic religions associated with Jerusalem’s Temple Mount – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – has been a challenge; hence the erratic postings since my Middle East trip.   

I even did some pinch hitting in early May following my return from the Middle East via a destination wedding in Nags Head when my niece married while I worked to fill my historical gap.  One-hundred-fifty years of history behind the Wright Brother’s Museum, Jockey Ridge, and the Bodie Island Lighthouse was just a drop in the bucket compared to the flood of history associated with the Holy Land.   

Wouldn’t you know it; I’m drowning in a flood approaching Biblical proportions.   

To paraphrase Eyal Meiron, a historian at the Ben-Avi Institute for the Study of Eretz Israel, “The Temple Mount is saturated with the history of Jerusalem.”  

That’s what I’m talking about!  

Our tour guide shares a depiction of King Herod's Temple Mount during its heyday.

Before my trip to the Middle East, specifically my tour of Jerusalem’s Archaeological Park, I had no idea the significance of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.  That mount is the same site, according to tradition, where God  . . . 

. . . gathered dust to create Adam; where Abraham stood poised to sacrifice his son Isaac; where the Ark of the Covenant was placed for safekeeping; where the prophet Muhammad traveled in The Night Journey; where the  spiritual junction of Heaven and Earth is located.  Okay, so I missed a few Sundays when it came to my religious education.

I had no idea the proliferation of religions on this one mighty mount.  As the saying goes, we don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.  I are Christian; I felt the dumbfounded pilgrim wandering through the ancient ruins of this sacred Jewish site, following in King Herod’s footprints.   

Ah, the agony of de-feet!

King Herod’s Temple was a renovation of the Second Temple rebuilt atop the ruins of Israel’s First Temple, which was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.  

King Herod’s renovations in the first century BC included a rectangular retaining wall around the slopes of the Temple Mount.  He filled in the area, the size of 27 football fields, with thousands of tons of rubble to form a massive plaza around the temple.    
Jimmy and I, along with the other members of our group, 

Into the Promised Land.

toured the only remains of that Second Temple, the western portion of Herod’s massive retaining wall 

The rocky road to antiquity.

and the impressive, now-blocked southern steps of the Temple Mount.  

The steps, deliberately made of different widths, slowed down pilgrims as they approached the Temple.

We entered Jerusalem's Archaeological Park through the Dung Gate, one of seven gates providing access to the four quarters (the Jewish Quarter, the Muslim Quarter, the Armenian Quarter and the Christian Quarter) inside the Old City of Jerusalem. The eighth gate, the Golden Gate, was sealed with stone years ago during Muslim rule.  Through this blocked gate, it is said, the Messiah will enter ancient Jerusalem after crossing a paper bridge from the Mount of Olives.  No superstition in these parts.  

The Dung Gate, looking from the inside out. Watch where you step!

New excavations from 1993 to 1997 revealed the full length of the Herodian street running along the western wall of the Temple Mount as well as evidence of public bath houses for the purification rites customary at the time before Jews were allowed access to the Temple.

Okay, who dropped the soap?

The base of what was once a massive arch protruded from the western wall approximately 12 meters from the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. 

The walls now stand at two-thirds their original height, once reaching a height of 50 feet.

The arch, known as Robinson’s Arch (so named for the American researcher who was credited with identifying the Herodian period ruins in the 19th century) is believed to have been accessed via stairs leading from the once busy street below.  

Makes a good perch for the birds, now.

The Temple Mount is of seminal religious significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; which undoubtedly explains why Jerusalem was destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times (now that I’ve done my homework, I can pontificate with confidence).  And all this time I thought the current tensions in the Middle East were a relatively new phenomenon.   
Very little appears new when it comes to Old Jerusalem.  Duh!   The golden, Islamic Dome of the Rock, now situated in the center of the Temple Mount, dates to 691 CE, built during Jerusalem’s First Muslim Period (638-1099 CE).  It was built atop the ruins of King Herod’s Second Temple along with the al-Aksa Mosque nearby.  

According to the sages of the Talmud, it was from the rock beneath this dome that the world was created; Mount Moriah, for those biblical and historical scholars, of which we all know I’m neither.  I was beginning to understand the crux of all the tensions in the Middle East though despite my biblical and historical shortcomings. 

THE foundation of our world. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Muslims believe, based on the teachings of the Qur’an, that this Foundation Stone, the summit of Jerusalem’s eastern hill, is the third holiest place in Islam after the Ka’aba in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.  It was here the prophet Muhammad, accompanied by the angel Gabriel, made the Night Journey to the Throne of God from this “furthermost sanctuary,” built by the Umayyad Calip Abd al-Malik following the Muslim conquest of the city by the Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab in 638 CE. 

No, there will not be a test following this post!  

Jews and Christians alike hold that Mount Moriah, the “gateway to heaven,” is where Abraham came close to sacrificing his son to God.   It was here, on Mount Moriah, that the Ark of the Covenant was stored in the First Temple built during King Solomon’s reign, before it was lost (or hidden for safekeeping) when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586 BC. 

No wonder everybody is clamoring for this coveted hilltop.  

Purportedly, in an attempt to rival the Christian domes of its time (i.e. the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulchre) the rotunda, an otherwise unusual architectural design for Muslims, became the focal point atop the Temple Mount for the Islamic miracle of the Isra and Miraj (the Night Journey).   

The dome of the Church of the Selpulchre. Certainly had the feel of a gateway to heaven.

We did not get to visit the Dome of the Rock or the nearby mosque. Access inside both by non-Muslims is no longer permitted.  Jews are religiously forbidden from entering the Temple Mount anyway given the site was once home to the Jewish Temple Holy of Holiest, whose sanctuary has always been off limits to Jews other than the High Priest.  Non-Muslim prayer is also prohibited on the Temple Mount.

Possession appears nine-tenths of the law, and currently that law is Islamic.  

The only portion of the Temple Mount that has been accessible to Jews for prayer during the thousand year Muslim rule has been the infamous exposed portion of King Herod’s Western Wall (the Kotel).  

Men and women are strictly forbidden from praying together.

For nineteen years, from 1948 to 1967, while eastern Jerusalem was under Jordanian rule, Jews were denied access to the Kotel despite the terms of the UN armistice of 1948.   

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan helped revive a traditional Jewish custom when he inserted a written petition into the cracks on the stone wall following the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel reclaimed this remnant of the most sacred of Jewish sites.  

Written prayer requests fill the cracks of the Western Wall.

No breaking news here. I prayed for lasting peace during my visit to the Western Wall; peace for Israelis, for Palestinians, for the hundreds of thousands living in poverty, frustration and humiliation – in this spiritual center of the universe.  

Truth be told, I slipped in a few personal requests, too, during my moving experience at the Wall.