(May 2, 2013 at 10:08 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Sagiv makes some interesting points particularly with his photographic work. Have you ever read this?
http://www.churchathome.com/articles/tem...salem.html
A fundie xtian named Ernest Martin also questioned the location of the temple(s). Oddly, he made a very good point for a horrible reason but I don't want to muddy the waters in case you haven't heard of this....yet.
New website to me. Thank you. Let me read and think and get back to you or be sure to remind me. These are some quick thoughts.
"It was built directly over the subterranean Spring of Gihon, and there were caves within its subsurface." I have read this. I cannot find the original.
"Pure water was an indispensable requirement for the essential rituals of the temple. Because of this spring of pure water, the temple was a microcosm of the Garden of Eden."
In principle such statements very useful but they are potentially misleading if you follow the author. He may have a good point but the rest can be BS. Consider pure water was indispensable. I agree a thousand percent but the existence of Jerusalem, forget the temple, also depended upon it. So many times I have read something perfectly reasonable like this followed by "therefore David chose the city."
As to Josephus, I don't think I have mentioned it here before, but it is the absence of mention of so many things essential the present day beliefs. In this case if the temple really were on the same hill as the barracks how is there possibly no mention of this? In 76 the garrison tried to fight its way out of the city and died. One would sort of think that and the Romans returning would one way or another mention the temple was next to the barracks.
I mean like the temple was responsible for the revolt. Why did not the barracks go over to the temple and get rid of the priests and the temple? Why would anyone try to escape the city when the enemy HQ was a couple hundred feet away?
Way back when I found a website of some rather old reconstruction of the top of the hill about a man who tried to physically reconstruct it from descriptions. He expressed surprise that there was no temple but that there was a BYT STRT. All of these descriptions are Roman era.
" No Rock Outcropping Associated with the Temple There is no reference in Scripture or any secular historical source that describes a natural outcropping of rock located at the highest point of the ridge or hill that was associated with the Temple Mount."
That is the sort of thing that makes this hard. There is a rock outcropping which is surrounded by the present Dome of the Rock. There is and there is not while trying to make sense of no one saying exactly where the temple was. I did once find a Josephus passage suggesting the Romans in 76 took the high ground and descended on the temple but upon review it was really ambiguous.
"Before 70 AD, the Jews often used the word “Siloam” to describe the whole system of the Gihon Spring—Siloam Pool, Hezekiah’s underground tunnel and the channels into the Kidron Valley. (Christians did not use the name “Gihon” but continued to use “Siloam” to describe this water network even into modern times.)"
That is the one that makes it for me. There is no question that a sluicegate was opened to clean out the inner sacrifice room. You have to have a source of water to do that. You do not have people carry up water by the amphoraful to dump into something behind a sluicegate.
