Wall Perspective

      This sketch below shows where I believe the Temple compound was located, half inside the Temple Mount walls and half outside the south wall in the Ophel area. You will be amazed at the evidence left behind telling us exactly where that Temple was stood.   I know that it is hard to visualize how the old temple fits into  the landscape of what we see today, so I will add the drawing below to help you.

1. Drawing of what Herod's Temple might have looked like in 66 AD before it was destroyed.


View looking North from the old City of David.

The rock that the Dome of the Rock mosque is built on can be seen back behind the temple compound.

2. After the destruction in 70 AD. The compound lay in ruins (buildings either burnt to the ground or torn down. The walls knocked down by the catapults, and remaining parts systematically removed by the Roman's). And a new wall built leading from Herod's inner Temple wall to the south east corner.


Red arrows on the picture shows where there are "straight joints" in the wall today showing where the south east corner the wall had once ended. Their is another straight joint where Herod's inner Temple wall also ended.

     The south wall, that we see today on the mount, was built straight through the CENTER of where Herod's temple compound had been  located,  cutting it into two sections, as you can see by the wall I put through the center of  this drawing. As the front section (Ophel area)  was torn down stone by stone, and the stones were recycled and used to continue Herod's  inner wall to the southeast corner,   forming a new, continuous southern wall that we see today on the Mount.

The front section of the compound, located in the Ophel area was torn down and covered with dirt.   When the work was complete it looked as if the Temple and compound never existed.


This is the end result of Titus' work of destroying all evidence of the Temple and Temple complex
      Inside the southern wall, the temple walls were torn down, and also buried as the ground level was brought up to pretty much what we see today.

Note: The top upper layers of the wall we see today,  were added in height by the Muslim's when building the mosque.  But the lower stones are Herod stones, perfectly laid courses (layers) of stone, from the south west corner almost to the Triple Gate, but it appears to all be recycled Herod stones from that point clear to the southeast corner and around up to the second "straight joint" on the eastern wall.

      Josephus, who lived through this time in history records a speech being made after the wars ended and Titus' men had destroyed the city and taken down the Temple, stone by stone.
(approximately 72 AD) War of the Jews: Book 7 - Chapter 8
Quote:
7) ........ Where is this city that was believed to have God himself inhabiting therein? It is now demolished to the very foundations, and hath nothing but that monument of it preserved, I mean the camp of those that hath destroyed it, which still dwells upon its ruins;

     This "monument" are the gigantic walls that encompass the Temple Mount today.  Only one small portion of it, the wailing wall, remains of the Temple walls that Herod built when increasing the size of the temple fortress.

     Titus' men so ingeniously disguised the southern portion of the mount as to make it look as if no Jewish Temple had ever stood there.
 
 

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