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Extending northward from the ridge of the
original Jerusalem is the
hill upon which Solomon built the Temple. There has been no archaeological
excavation in the inner area of the Temple, but an
informed guess is that the sanctuary containing the Holy of
Holies stood where the Dome of the Rock
is today.
Solomon surrounded the Temple with a wall. Its north
side (where the city was still most vulnerable) probably ran along
the north side of the platform with the arches. (A moat just north
of this platform may have been dug at this time.) There
would be little point in such expansion, however, unless there was
a large enough army in the city to defend this longer wall. For Solomon's
reign was one of internal dissent (see 1
Kings 11:14-40), which led to the split in the kingdom after his
death.
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To provide for a larger population, Solomon built
the "millo." (1
Kings 9:15). This may mean that he filled the area between the
original city and the Temple Mount, erecting houses there. (Later
construction wiped out any trace, except for a single public building
from the First Temple period.) He also improved the water supply.
The Gihon or "gusher," if left to itself, flowed only at intervals.
The king dug reservoirs on the southern end of the city to catch and
hold its water.
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These then
were the dimensions of Jerusalem down to the time of King Hezekiah. It was the
city the prophet Isaiah referred to as Zion.
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 In the
8th century BC, Assyria expanded, conquering much of the Levant, including
the northern kingdom of Israel. Those areas that retained independence had
to pay heavy tribute. When Sargon II of Assyria died in 705,
the tribute-payers, among them Hezekiah of Judah, prepared a revolt.
Knowing that the Assyrian army would soon be approaching, Hezekiah
took measures: he stored up supplies in the cities and readied them
to absorb large numbers of refugees from the villages. In Jerusalem,
he extended the wall to the hill on the other side of the valley later
known as the Tyropoeon: the Cheesemakers' Valley. Pieces
of this wall have been exposed in the Jewish quarter, but it is not
yet clear how far to the west the expanded city went.
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This larger
Jerusalem needed more water. It was Hezekiah, apparently, who had a basin dug in
a valley north of the Temple (cf. 2 Kings 18:17). (It later became the
northern basin of the Pools of Bethesda.)
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 Hezekiah also had a winding tunnel
excavated, leading the water of the Gihon spring 1750 feet to a pool
in the south, far enough from the Mt. of Olives that a wall could
protect the water-drawers from Assyrian arrows.
Jerusalem survived the Assyrian attack, though again by paying
heavy tribute. It did not survive the Babylonians, however, in 586 BC. The
Temple was destroyed, and the people went into
exile. |
The Period of the Second Temple
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When Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon, he published
an edict (538 BC) allowing the Jews to return. Both Temple and city were
rebuilt on a modest scale. Jerusalem does not seem to have extended beyond
the old Solomonic boundaries.
After Alexander defeated the Persians,
his successors in Syria, the Seleucids, took over the land, including
Jerusalem and the Temple. Sensitive to the rising power of Rome, the
Seleucid ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, sought to homogenize his
empire. He tried to bring the Jews into line with the
dominant pagan cult. He took over Jerusalem, sacrificing a pig on the
altar of the Temple. Five brothers from the priestly house of Hasmon,
known as the Maccabees, launched a revolt.
The Hasmoneans captured Jerusalem from
the Seleucids in 164 BC. They re-dedicated
the Temple, inaugurating the festival of Hanukah (Hebrew for "dedication").
In the following decades, they expanded the city to its natural defense
lines: the Hinnom Valley on the south and west and the Kidron on the
east. If we could shove the present Old City south a bit and
perch its southern wall over the Hinnom, we would almost have it.
To this much larger city, the Hasmoneans would have had to bring water.
Since they had the technology of the aqueduct, it makes sense
to assume that they were the ones who first led water to Jerusalem
from a strong spring south of Bethlehem, in the area known as
Solomon's Pools.
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Taking over in 37 BC, Herod made Jerusalem the focus of great projects.
He received permission from the Jewish priests to tear down the modest
Second Temple and build it anew. He expanded its platforms on all
sides except the east, where the hill slopes steeply to the Kidron.
We can see this older eastern wall (above). If we start at its southern
corner, then follow the lower courses 105 feet to the right (north),
we note a sudden change in the way the stones are cut. Those 105 feet
were Herod's addition. The lower courses north of it are probably
Hasmonean, maybe older. This was the outer wall of "Solomon's
portico," where Jesus taught .
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Herod tore
down much of the Hasmonean city, rebuilding it in grand Hellenistic style. He
built a new wall, extending Jerusalem northward as far as today's Damascus Gate.
According to
Josephus, Herod included a theatre and a hippodrome (neither has been found).
The platform of his palace is on the Old City's west side in today's Armenian
quarter: it is almost a thousand feet long. Towers guarded it, three of
them on its vulnerable north. The lower part of one is still there. The
towers had names; this one was probably Hippicus or Phasael.
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Later the procurators stayed in the palace
when visiting Jerusalem. From Josephus we learn that in
66 AD, one of them set up his tribunal before
it and condemned Jewish demonstrators to crucifixion. Since this
was also the highest part of the Herodian city, some think it
may have been the "Gabbatha" (Hebrew, high place) of the Gospel (John
19:13), where Pilate condemned Jesus. In that case, the Via
Dolorosa started there.
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One important part of today's Old City was not
within the Herodian walls: the area where we today see the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher. We know it was not within the walls, because
it contains graves from the Herodian period, and Jews do not and did
not bury their dead inside their cities. This point will be important
for the question of the Sepulcher's authenticity.
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We return to Herod's Temple compound. It
extended from the black-domed al-Aqsa
Mosque of today (then a huge colonnaded stoa or portico)
past the Dome of the Rock, as far as there are trees. At its northwest
corner there is now a minaret; from it, stretching toward us, was
the Antonia Fortress, high enough to be in visual contact with Phasael
and the other towers on the west side. The Antonia had the double
function of guarding against attacks from the north and enabling the
ruler to supervise the Temple area, where protest demonstrations
might start. Since the day of Jesus' trial was a Passover, according
to the synoptic gospels, it makes sense
that Pontius Pilate would have been here that morning, watching for
trouble. Here is another possibility, then (the traditional one, in
fact) for the beginning of the Via Dolorosa.
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The platform was an irregular polygon, roughly 1500 feet long by 1000
wide. It was the biggest structure ever built as a single project, having 35
acres, large enough to accommodate 400,000 pilgrims, as sometimes it still does
during Muslim festivals. The Temple compound took up a fifth of the
city.
"Now the outward face of the temple in its front ...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." (Josephus War, V 5.6.)
Such was the Temple and the city that Jesus saw on coming over the Mt. of
Olives.
Jerusalem:
An Introduction
Gethsemane
View from the Mt. of Olives
The first Jerusalem
Jerusalem from Solomon to Herod
Jesus' entry into Jerusalem
The Cemeteries, the Golden Gate and Judgment
Day
Dominus Flevit ("The Lord weeps")
©
2003
Near East Tourist Agency
(NET)
Text
© 2003 Stephen
Langfur
Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN
STANDARD BIBLE(r),
(c) Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977,
1995 by
The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
(www.Lockman.org)
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