There are two basic levels, for if we were to strip away all structures, we would see a hill. The Dome of the Rock, on its peak, dominates a higher platform. Beneath our feet (on the lower level near the Mughrabi gate) is a series of stacked vaults. Were it not for them, we would find ourselves deep in the Cheesemakers' Valley.  

This lower platform corresponds to the level of the outer court in Herod's Temple. (Jacobson , p. 60.) Here the Romans set their battering rams, slamming outward. We have seen the stones lying on the street below.

It was on this level, forty years before, that Jesus upset the tables of the money-changers (Luke 19:45-46 ).

If we had been here then, we would have seen, along the south side, the royal stoa (portico, cloister). "This cloister," wrote Josephus, "deserves to be mentioned better than any other under the sun." Antiquities XV 11.5.

The roof of the stoa would have been about as high as the top of the dome of al-Aqsa today. It had four rows of columns, making three aisles. On either side of the middle one, the pillars were 27 feet high and so thick that it took three adults to surround them. (Archaeologists have found pieces of columns with a diameter of 4.5 feet.) By way of comparison, the columns of Italian marble in al-Aqsa today, including the capitals, rise 15 feet; the central ceiling, however, is about as high as the original pillars would have been.

The royal portico stretched the entire length of the southern wall. (Contra Josephus) On the Temple side, it was open to the so-called outer courtyard, where Gentiles were permitted to assemble as well as Jews. Many Gentiles had an enormous interest in Judaism and the Temple.

E.P. Sanders (pp. 113-114) has imagined what it was like for a Jewish family visiting the Temple.

I shall follow his description, putting my additions in parentheses. First, they have money set aside for the pilgrimage: this is the "second tithe" (the first went to the priests). It amounts to a tenth of the year's produce. It is for their own use, but it must be spent in Jerusalem. Let us suppose a set of circumstances: during the year, the wife had a child; she went to her uncle's funeral; the husband cheated a neighbor financially. They cannot, under such conditions, enter the Temple. The woman became impure by giving birth, so she must wait the requisite period (40 days for a son, 80 for a daughter), then take a ritual bath. But she also has corpse impurity. Its removal takes seven days.

We'll suppose a priest comes to her village and sprinkles her on the third and seventh days with the requisite mixture of water and ash. As for the man, he has repaid his neighbor and added a fifth.

Under these conditions, and provided the wife isn't menstruating, they may take a ritual bath and enter the sacred precinct.

They go, then, toward Jerusalem. On first seeing the Temple, they sing Psalm 122. If they see it from the Mount of Olives in the morning, it blazes like the sun:

It was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendor, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun's own rays. But this temple appeared to strangers, when they were coming to it at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow; for as to those parts of it that were not gilt, they were exceeding white. ( War   V 5.6)

Having found lodging or set up camp, the exemplary family members immerse in a public ritual bath and abstain from sex that night. The next day is not yet the festival itself. It is a day when people bring private offerings. In order to buy sacrificial animals, they must have acceptable coinage, namely, Tyrian shekels. Although these have the image of a god named Melqart, they are the coins the priests demand. [Mishnah, Berakhot 8.7]. Their silver content is over 90%. If you arrive with any other coinage, you have to exchange it for the Tyrian. Hence, the moneychangers.)

Outside, the family buys a ram for the man's guilt offering and a lamb as a thank offering. Then they approach from the south end, as most people do. (This is the traditional direction to come from, harking back to Solomon's Temple, when the Jerusalemites lived south of the building.) They go through what is today the walled-in Triple Gate and find themselves in a tunnel that leads beneath the Royal Portico and up into the outer court. 
 
Sanders here has them turn into the Royal Portico and buy two unblemished doves for the woman's offering after childbirth. (Yet they might have brought them in from outside.) Now they proceed across the court to a balustrade, called the soreg, passing inscriptions warning Gentiles not to go closer on pain of death.

Let us put Sanders aside for a moment. One of these inscriptions has been found complete; there is also a fragment of another. But where was the soreg? (For what follows, see Jacobson in the Biblical Archaeological Review [Sept.-Oct. 1999], to whom I am indebted for much of this description. -- SL) Captain Charles Wilson made a map of the Haram in 1864, and on it we can see a flight of 4 steps that has since disappeared beneath a terrace wall. There is also an old photograph showing these steps. The soreg was probably near them, perhaps just before them.
 


To judge from the photograph and Wilson's map, the steps were probably each about a cubit high (18 inches): too high for human comfort. There are examples in classical Greek temples of such high steps (perhaps for the god); the pattern is typically interrupted by flights of shallower steps, friendly to mortals.



A broad Herodian staircase has been unearthed before the Double Gate in the southern retaining wall. Its steps are parallel to the four on Wilson's plan. They are, however, mortal-friendly.

Near the four steps too, there must have been a staircase of mortal-friendly steps. Josephus says there were 14 steps from the lower platform to a terrace or rampart (hel ). (Mishnah, however, says 12.) These would have been the friendlier steps.

The terrace was 15 feet deep, says Josephus (and the Mishnah too). Then, he writes, came a high protective wall with gates in it. One ascended to these gates by another 5 steps. That would bring us to the level of the Court of the Priests, but still not to the height of the upper platform as it is today. Another 12 steps led up from the Court of the Priests to the floor of the sanctuary, which (figuring half a cubit per step, as the Mishnah has it) would have been slightly higher than the present platform.

If we look at Wilson's map of the Haram (below), we see that the Dome of the Rock appears off center. Yet it is probably standing, we shall see, where the Temple was. This sanctuary must have seemed central enough for Josephus to remark that it was "in the middle" ( Jewish War V 188-212 [5.4]).  If the southern edge of the upper platform was not where it is today, but farther south, at the top of the staircase that included the four steps on Wilson's plan, we would not have an impression of asymmetry.




Our imagined family goes past the soreg and ascends the 14 steps. They are not yet at the level of today's upper platform. Not being priests, they head to the right. The woman enters the Court of Women through a gate in the southern protective wall, but here she need not ascend steps, because this far east the level inside is the same (and lower than today's upper platform). She gives her birds to a Levite, explaining that they are for a childbirth. Then she ascends perhaps to a gallery, from which she can watch what the Levite does with them.

Her husband goes around the protective wall to the east and then through its eastern gate. He goes straight through the Court of Women, climbing fifteen steps to another gate. These steps, writes Josephus, were "shallower than the five at the other gates." ( Jewish War V 188-212 [5.3].) They would have brought him to the higher level, corresponding to that of the upper platform today. He enters through the gate to the Court of Israel.

Continuing with Sanders' account: The man finds a Levite, who takes the lamb and holds it. He brings the ram to a priest, puts his hands on its head, confesses what he did, and explains that he has made restitution to the person he wronged. He and a Levite then lift the animal partly over the parapet dividing the Court of Priests from that of Israel. Josephus says this parapet was eighteen inches high.  (The Mishnah puts it at 4.5 feet! Had its authors ever tried lifting an animal?!) The priest puts a basin beneath its throat (to collect the blood, which he will pour around the base of the altar). The man pulls back the head of the ram and slits its carotid arteries.

Sanders comments:

(S)laughter was not an everyday experience. Many people ate fowl once a week, but red meat only a few times a year. Slaughter of a quadruped...was a special occasion: it was anticipated, the senses were sharpened, and the quick flood of blood evoked an emotional response.... The act was surrounded by mystery and awe, and in this respect the Jerusalem temple outdid its pagan counterparts. The days of purification in advance..., the majesty of the setting, the physical actions -- selecting fat, unblemished victims, seeing them inspected by experts, walking with them to within a few yards of the flaming altar, handing them over, laying hands on the head,confessing... dedicating the animal, slitting its throat, or even just holding it -- these guaranteed the meaningfulness and awesomeness of the moment. ( Sanders , pp. 114-116.)
After pouring the blood at the altar, the priest takes the ram away to butcher. The man takes the lamb from the Levite. Another priest comes with a basin, and they slaughter the lamb. Meanwhile, the woman's Levite has found a priest to sacrifice the two birds.

Perhaps ten minutes later, says Sanders, the priest who had taken the lamb, which was a thank offering, brings the meat back. The man waves its breast before the altar, then hands it together with the right thigh to the priest. He leaves with the rest of the meat, meeting his wife, who has been watching from the gallery. They go to the campsite and join their friends for the feast.

If you want to view this material on a live tour guided by Dr. Steve Langfur, please start here .