USU researcher says Dome of the Rock not really where Temple of Solomon was
Three religious groups reverence the site where the Dome of the Rock stands in Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem. They’ve made it clear throughout history they cannot agree to disagree about the true reason for its sacredness. According to the research of a Utah State University anthropology professor, they may not need to.
Jewish tradition says more than a millennium ago the Temple of Solomon spoken of in the Old Testament stood where the Dome of the Rock stands now. But this is purely tradition, said USU professor Richley Crapo.
“Most discussions by biblical archeologists stay on a symbolic level; they use things like what seems symbolically appropriate or assume the temple would need to go in the middle of a certain area,” Crapo said. “Those kinds of things have to do more with aesthetic than hard information.”
He can’t remember the details of the conversation that first sparked his curiosity about the temple’s true location, but it set him on a year-long search through ancient documents and archaeological evidence to find it. The evidence he’s collected is more or less complete, he said, and in a year or so he’ll publish his conclusion – the Temple of Solomon actually stood about 40 feet south of where the Dome of the Rock stands now.
The temple itself is completely gone. It made it through two episodes of destruction – even after the second, when it was left in ruins by the Romans, Jews managed to continue worship services within the walls. But when the Roman emperor Hadrian decided he’d had enough of Jewish rebellion in A.D. 135, he bulldozed the temple to the dirt and built a pagan temple where it stood. Even the pagan temple is gone now.
“No one knows really where it was,” he said. “In essence, what I tried to do was to see if from ancient documents written closer to the time when it stood I could find enough information to mark its exact location.”
Most of his research took him deep into ancient books. They spell out plenty of details about the temple – how it was constructed, how worship services were performed inside, even exact dimensions of rooms and walls – but say nothing about location. So Crapo read between the lines, added evidence from archaeologists from the mid-1800s, and came up with five major points of evidence that the temple could not have stood where the Dome of the Rock is now and must have stood in the location he has identified to the south.
A fountain called the Al Kass stands where he thinks the temple once was, about 40 feet south of the Dome of the Rock.
“The water comes from Jerusalem City Water Supply or something now,” Crapo said.
But a contemporary Israeli architect found the fountain is located at the end of an ancient aqueduct, which Crapo believes fed underground cisterns where water was stored under the temple for micvahs, ritual baths performed in five locations in the temple. The aqueduct ends at 2,420 feet above sea level. The Dome of the Rock is at 2,240 feet above sea level. Crapo points to the math – if the temple had stood there, the aqueduct would have been of no use because the water would have had to travel another 20 feet uphill.
Crapo also found evidence of the underground cisterns, documented by archaeologist Charles Wilson in 1856. Crapo used the temple dimensions found in the Mishnah – written in A.D. 200 based on accounts of rabbis who lived while the temple still stood – to draw out the temple plans. Laid over Wilson’s findings, Crapo’s illustration places the five bathing areas right on top of the ancient cisterns.
Stories and side information found in the Bible and the writings of Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, offered further evidence. For instance, Josephus wrote that the temple couldn’t be seen from the north because a hill obstructed the view.
“The Dome of the Rock can be seen from the north clear to Ramallah,” Crapo said. Ramallah is a city miles to the northwest of Jerusalem.
No matter how loudly the evidence speaks, though, Crapo said he anticipates arguments.
“Everything is disputable,” he said. “I’m trying to find real, concrete evidence, one way or the other.”
He hopes ultimately his findings will help guide archaeologists to the remains of the temple – but it may never happen. Even if his findings are accepted, the political climate in Jerusalem isn’t, and may never be, conducive to archeological digging in Haran Al-Sharif.
“It’s a very complex political situation,” Crapo said.
Most rabbis prefer Jews not go onto the Haran at all.
“Its very sacredness means rabbis are not troubled by the fact that the temple site isn’t accessible to Jews today,” Crapo said.
But in theory, his findings could be a solution to the thousands of years of disagreement over the area.
“In the best of all possible worlds, if Israelis and Palestinians got along wonderfully and there was a lot of sort of ecumenical brotherhood between them in respect to these issues,” Crapo said, “a compromise would be potentially possible.”