Second Temple Mount during Herod’s era has been found
We all know how the Temple Mount is the most important Jewish religious site and has been used for thousands of years. And why is it so important? Because it is the place where people go to communicate with God. This communication could take place only in two different ways according to Judaism – the Temple Mount and through the Tabernacle. We also know that the instructions for constructing the Tabernacle were given to Moses directly from God, according to religious texts. This has led some to believe that the Tabernacle was in fact a communication device which utilised advanced technology.
The first Temple was built by King Solomon in 957 BC and it was destroyed by the Babylonians four centuries later. It was during the reign of Herod the Great that the Temple was rebuilt again and became known as Herod’s Temple. The second temple was destroyed in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.
Recently, wooden beams used in Herod’s Temple were discovered in the Al-Aqsa Mosque where they were used as tie beams ad bond timbers.
It is known that in the past, material from old temples and buildings were used to build new buildings – which unfortunately has also resulted in the destruction of many old temples. We can see such a scenario in the Pyramids of Egypt, in Ancient Greece and many other monuments all over the world.
When in the 1940s a restoration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque took place, many beams were removed from different parts of the Mosque and this was when archaeologists noticed that some of those beams had been re-used from earlier time periods. Carbon testing on the beams confirmed that some of them go back even beyond the Second Temple Mount back to the first Temple Mount of King Solomon. One beam was dated to be 2834 years old!
One of those beams comes from the time of the Herod’s Temple and the columns impressed into the beam have an interval which is similar to the one used in a basilica that stood on the Southern end of the Temple Mount. This one beam possibly verifies the hypothesis that it comes from the Second Temple Mount, more than 2000 years ago.
By John Black
