But, moving on, if the dismissal of biblical stories partly explains how the Moriah Platform became the focus of scholarly guesses about Temple location, it does not explain everything. For other actions helped to throw focus onto the Moriah Platform. As Martin points out, one of these is the Muslim belief called baraka, in which a stone could be taken from one Temple or holy site and placed at another, whereupon the latter site would take on the same degree of holiness as the first site. Says Martin:
So, a portable stone was used by Omar that was found in the ruins of the former Jewish Temples built in the times of Constantine and Julian. That particular stone was consecrated as a stone to re-inaugurate “Solomon’s Temple.” When Omar placed that stone in the holiest place of the Al Aksa Mosque at the southern end of the Haram esh-Sharif, Muslims could then (and from their point of view, legitimately by applying the custom called baraka) identify the site as being “Solomon’s Temple.” Interestingly, when the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem, Christians also began to call the Al Aksa Mosque by the name “Solomon’s Temple” (the Muslim designation) while they felt that Herod’s extension of the Temple was located at the Dome of the Rock (which they then called the Lord’s Temple).
The belief of baraka may seem strange to most Americans today, but I know of at least one approximate parallel in our own culture. In the process of selling a fairly complete but un-airworthy 1931 Curtis-Wright Junior airplane once owned by my uncle and father, I learned in the process that an old airplane can be “restored” and registered with the FAA if the owner has a clear title to it, even if all that is left of the ‘plane’ is one part, say, the seat. By legal standards the finished result will not be considered a replica but a restored original airplane. Even so, though Omar the Muslim relocated but one stone from the former location of Solomon’s Temple, the Muslim belief in baraka allowed Muslims to refer to it as “Solomon’s Temple.” And in time that belief was given wide credence.
Now, at the time of the Crusades, Benjamin of Tudela, a man knowledgeable in languages and a well- educated traveler active about a century before Marco Polo, visited Jerusalem. One of the things he reported was that the tomb of the Judean Kings had been found on the western hill of Jerusalem about 15 years before his arrival. In fact, what Benjamin heard was sheer hearsay, and the tomb would turn out to be a Crusader tomb. (The tomb of the Judean Kings is still presently unknown.) But the impact of Benjamin’s uncritical report to his readers shifted scholarly attention toward accepting western Jerusalem
as the Zion of David, even to the point where the “Gihon Springs” was moved up the Hinnom Valley 2000 feet from where it actually lay. At this point archaeological thinking went into a literal “Dark Ages,” as the area between western Jerusalem and the Moriah Platform became the new focus. Consequently, the original City of David (Zion) located on the southeastern end of the Moriah Ridge began to ‘drop off the radar,’ so to speak, despite statements by Maimonides and by Kimchi, who knew of its historical importance.
This entire change of focus was aided by an unfortunate misunderstanding, namely, that Josephus’ writings had referred to the original City of David as the “Lower City” and the western part of Jerusalem as the “Higher City.” The confusion lay in the term “Zion” which means “high,” and so it was assumed that the western end, being higher, must have been where the original City of David was located. But this had not always been the case. For Josephus states that the highest point of elevation in the original City had actually been cut down in the time of Simon the Hasmonean (about 140 years before Christ) so that the Temple would be the highest point on the southeastern end of the Moriah Ridge. (This is one thing that upset the Essenes [of Dead Sea Scrolls fame] and helped prompt them to leave Jerusalem.) Between this act and the build-up of western Jerusalem from stone materials from the original City of David, western Jerusalem became elevated until in Herod’s time it was called the “Upper City” even by Josephus. And so, in later ages, the “Upper City” in most people’s minds was associated with “Zion,” with the “Lower City” all but ceasing to have much historical significance.
This unfortunate view prevailed until 1875-1885, when for over a decade W.F. Birch of England published a series of articles on Palestine, including one in 1880 in which he described the inscription of Hezekiah’s tunnel and the tunnel’s route from the Pool of Siloam to the southeastern section of Mount Moriah, thus fixing the site of the original City of David. This settled the issue for scholars about the location of the City of David. Yet presumably for reasons mentioned a moment ago, scholars have not changed their opinions about locating the Temple on the Haram esh-Sharif. Therefore until or unless a ‘smoking gun’ inscription identifying the Temple can be found attached to the original Temple, like that inscription found attached to Hezekiah’s tunnel, we can expect that false theories will continue to be spawned. But, of course, since not one Temple stone was left upon another, no such attached inscription will be found (unless it is found on a bottom stone that was never removed).
W.F. Burch
The point in all this is that the sacred cubit of 25.0265” can hardly be supposed seriously challenged by academicians and their guesswork about Temple locations on the Moriah Platform. Meanwhile, scholars dismiss the prophecy of Christ about the total destruction of the Temple (assuming they are aware of it), and so, consequently, embrace architectural remnants of ‘stones upon stones’ on the Platform to devise ingenious theories about them. I would not say these attempts by academicians have per se been consciously aimed at explaining away the Bible. Presumably, such theories have evolved naturally from a presuppositional bias against biblical explanations and the once time-honored, historical sources that supported those explanations. In short, archaeologists have become so inoculated against the idea of a historically-reliable Bible, that their own biases escape them.17
And so, until scholars humble themselves and accept God’s Word, along with its prophecies—such as Daniel’s of Christ, and of Christ’s about Jerusalem—one can hardly expect that the dozen or so theories about Temple Location on the DOR platform will go away. Nor can we expect a scholarly acceptance of what the footprint of the original Temple was, based on the true length of the sacred cubit.
ENDNOTES
1 An objection might be raised that because God designed every 50th year to be a “Jubilee Year” (a sabbath year when the land rested and any property under debt reverted back to its original owner), therefore the ‘do-over’ of Daniel’s 490-years (i.e., seventy weeks) should probably be longer. For the Jews were guilty in about 5 of 6 opportunities to observe the 7th year Sabbath within about a 590-year period, and so it would seem likely that at least some of the Jubilee years were not observed. So why aren’t they included?
Indeed, besides Jubilee years there may have been sabbatical festival days during non-sabbatical years which Judah also did not observe, such as Pentecost, or the Feast of Booths, etc. (though Amos 8:5 suggests that at least the weekly sabbath and new moon days were observed, if not in spirit). At any rate, what is the answer to why Jubilee-year violations (if we assume correctly that there were such violations) were not a part of Daniel’s prophecy of the 70 weeks (490 years), or added to the amount of time owed the land for rest it was denied? The answer, it appears, is that God held Israel liable for what he considered the minimum amount of sabbathing they must do, to avoid punishment or chastisement. And that minimum amount was apparently to rest the land one year in seven. (Evidently, the rest of their ‘sabbathing’ failures were overlooked by God in terms of counting consequentially toward the Jews’ exile, though as acts of disobedience God would have accounted their sins, along with all other sins, laid upon the Son during his death on the cross.) This principle seems implied in II Chronicles 36:20-21, where it is said that those exiled would serve Nebuchadnezzar and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, “to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete.” Here the phrase “until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths” seems to particularly have in view a recurrent rest, and so probably the 7th year rest in the 7-year sabbatical cycle. So then, as for Daniel’s prophecy of the 70 weeks, it is apparent that Jubilee years did not figure into them, if there were such violations, since the 490 years obviously refer to ten 49-year cycles [i.e., 10 x (7 x 7)], not nine 50-year cycles plus 40 years of a 10th cycle. In short, the orientation is toward the 7 years of the sabbatical cycle, not the 50 years of the Jubilee cycle. In such matters as these we must remember the Scriptural injunction that no part of Scripture is “of private interpretation,” that is, treated as a context not accountable to be dovetailed with the rest of Scripture. And so since Daniel’s 70 weeks evidently imply the 7-year sabbatical cycle, not the 50-year Jubilee cycle, and therefore the sabbaths mentioned in II Chronicles 36:20-21 should be inferred to mean those of the 7-year cycle.
I would urge readers to always try to grant the benefit of the doubt in instances where the Bible’s reliability is at stake. In the case above, for example, the unbeliever will insist that the “sabbaths” of II Chronicles 36:20-21 must mean every sabbath year including Jubilee years, since no qualifying statement is given. But nothing in the context of II Chronicles 36 necessitates the conclusion that such an idea had to be the intent of the author. Certainly Daniel didn’t understand it that way, when he searched Jeremiah and the scrolls to gain a better understanding of the years to which Jeremiah referred, and Daniel was much closer to Jeremiah’s time than are we. (In fact, Daniel was a contemporary of Jeremiah). Besides this, the prophecy was given to Daniel by an angel. So, again, we must allow the whole of Scripture to inform any question we might have, and not press upon Scripture a kind of legalese interpretation not intended by the biblical authors.
Another example of granting the Bible the benefit of the doubt is the question of whether Daniel used Tishri reckoning when he wrote his book. And in fact we have already shown from Ezekiel 40:1 that the Jews used Tishri reckoning by the time Daniel was in his 50s. But the person bent on disbelieving the Bible can always argue that when Daniel (in 1:1) states that he went into exile in the 3rd year of Jehoiakim, he started his book while still a teenager and so may have used Nisan reckoning. This in turn would mean the exile could not have been longer than about 68½ ‘normal’ years, and may have been as short as about 67½ years. Or the unbeliever might argue that just because Tishri reckoning allows an exile of 69 ‘normal’ years, it could just as likely have been closer to 68, since the exile may have come at the end of Jehoiakim’s 3rd year instead of at its beginning. And if we are to counter such a line of thought by showing that the reason God lengthened the year by 5¼ days instead of some other number (such as 2½ or 3¾ or 6¼) was because the difference in the 360-day and 365+- day calendars during the exile would have ‘drifted’ the 360-day calendar backward until the exile resulted in a quid prop quo time fulfillment of allowing the land to rest, while at the same time ‘resetting’ the year so that the Jews would again be at the top of their agricultural, 7-year sabbatical cycle upon their return to the Land in the beginning of Tishri, the unbeliever will mark all this down to coincidence, as he may be expected to do with every other remarkable proof. (This point about calendar drift during the exile will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.) But of course the average unbeliever will unlikely be bothered with the minutia of arguments presented here, and so merely parrot what academic skeptics have already told him what to think—that the book of Daniel is certainly a 2nd century BC work. To all this we can only reply that one is better advised to assume the Bible is accurate whenever evidences suggest they can be.
2 Note that Daniel in 12:11 speaks of 1290, not 1260 days. It appears this is because he includes that period of time after the Tribulation spoken of by Christ, when the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Mt. 24:29).
3 a half-bowl made of bronze, about 10.4 feet high and 20.8 feet across, supported on 12 oxen also cast of bronze.
4 The following excerpts are from Peter Thompkins’s book on the Great Pyramid, which my brother David sent to me along with some of his own thoughts interspersed. The remarkable thing here is that David’s measurement for the biblical cubit, deduced from the present value of 1/10 millionth of the earth’s polar radius and applied to the measurements of Solomon’s Sea, yielded a value of 22.4149 liters, well within the acceptable margin of error for the estimate of a molar volume of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure. His calculation supports the conclusions of men like John Taylor, Piazzi Smyth, and David Davidson. Especially remarkable is Davidson’s insight and findings at the Great Pyramid during his follow- up of Smyth’s work, described at the end of this collection of excerpts from Thompkins’s book. Davidson was within 1/3 of an inch over the entire length of one side of the base, of what today is the measurement needed to yield a sacred cubit, 10,000,000 of which equal the present
Peter Tompkins
estimate for the polar radius of the earth. Says Thompkins:
A Gifted mathmetician and amateur astronomer, Taylor made models to scale of the pyramid and began to analyze the results from a mathematician’s point of view. To account for the discrepancies in the length of the base reported by successive travelers—which increased progressively from the 693 feet of Greaves to the 763.62 feet of the French—it occurred to Taylor that as each measurer had arrived on the scene, more sand and rubble had been cleared from the base. Each had measured accurately, but at a constantly deeper layer of masonry….
…Analyzing Herodotus’ report of what the Egyptian priests had told him about the surface of each face of the Pyramid, Taylor concluded they had been designed to be equal in area to the square of the Pyramid’s height. If so, this meant the building was of a particular if not unique geometric construction; no other pyramid has these proportions.
Taylor then discovered that if he divided the perimeter of the Pyramid by twice its height, it gave him a quotient of 3.144, remarkably close to the value of π which is computed as 3.14159+. In other words, the height of the Pyramid appeared to be in relation to the perimeter of its base as the radius of a circle is to its circumference….
Searching for a reason for such a π proportion in the Pyramid, Taylor concluded that the perimeter might have been intended to represent the circumference of the earth at the equator while the height represented the distance from the earth’s center to the pole….
But it was evident to Taylor that the builders of the Pyramid could not have used for their calculations such a unit as the British foot, which fitted neither the height nor the base exactly; he therefore looked for a unit that would retain the π proportion and fit the Pyramid in whole numbers.
John Taylor (1781 – 1864). Besides his interest in pyramidology, he was Keats’ publisher.
When he came to 366:116.5 [366 ÷ 116.5] he was struck by the similarity of 366 to the number of days in the year and wondered if the Egyptians might have intentionally divided the perimeter of the Pyramid into units of the solar year.
He then noticed that if he converted the perimeter into inches, it came to very nearly 100 times 366. Also he was surprised to see that if he divided the base by 25 inches, he obtained the same 366 result. Could the ancient Egyptians have used a unit so close to the British inch? And a cubit of 25 such inches?
(Verbatim from pp. 70 and 72 of Peter Thompkins’s book, Secrets of the Great Pyramid)
[David’s] note: This is verbatim out of Thompkins’s book. Notice in this paragraph that there is a discrepancy.
100 x 366 and then divided by 25 does not yield 366. It is apparent in reading Tompkins book that at times he should be saying not the base but one of the four sides of the Pyramid’s base. The north side of the Pyramid at the base was the best preserved and was the one apparently measured the most often.
…Smyth’s prime preoccupation was still with establishing whether Taylor’s π proportion was really incorporated in the structure….
…He also chose to take the mean of the 763.62-foot base line measured by the French and the 764 feet measured by Howard-Vyse, and got 763.81—a difference of barely 3 inches on a length of 763 feet.
This was an arbitrary act, but the result produced an astounding value for π in the Great Pyramid proportions of 3.14159+.
…Searching for a reason for the incorporation in the Pyramid of this relation of the radius of a circle to its circumference, Smyth pursued Taylor’s theory of the base being divided into 366 units to coincide with the number of days in the year….
[David’s] note: Same mistake again by Thompkins. He should be saying one of the four sides of the Pyramid’s base, probably the north side.
…To be absolutely precise, the perimeter should have measured 36,524.2 Pyramid inches. This would require that each side be 9140.18 British inches. The measure obtained by Howard-Vyse and the French savants, though within 6 inches of each other, were both about 2 feet too long….
The only solution appeared to be to dig up the sockets and remeasure the base line more accurately; but time and money were running short. Fortunately two engineers from Glasgow, Messrs. Inglis and Aiton, happened to pass through Egypt on their way from a tour of the Holy Land. Cajoled by their fellow Scot, they agreed to help him uncover the sockets originally found by the French (which had once more become covered with debris in the intervening half century) and make a truly accurate survey.
Following Smyth’s complex computations, the engineers were able to uncover not only the sockets but a perfectly leveled stretch of pavement at the perimeter of the base.
To measure the distance between the sockets, up and around the debris, required a great deal of digging and moving of rocks. But Smyth could not tarry. His own instruments were already packed and his passage had been booked by the British consul. When the engineers promised to take great care in their measurements and forward the results to Scotland, Smyth disconsolately agreed to depart as scheduled….
…Back in Scotland, Piazzi Smyth received the results of the engineers’ survey; these gave a much shorter length of 9110 inches for a side of the Pyramid. Smyth concluded that the true length must be the mean between this figure and the longer one of 9168 inches obtained by Howard-Vyse, or 9140 inches, which was just 1 inch less than was required for Smyth’s theory, resulting in a year of 365.2 days instead of the precise 365.24 required by theory….
…From the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Smyth received a gold medal for the careful measurements he had taken in Egypt; these he published in monographs, and in a three-volume opus running to 1600 pages entitled Life and Work at the Great Pyramid of Jeezeh during the Months of January, February, March and April, A.D. 1865.
The work was not well received. As much of a religious zealot as had been his predecessor Taylor, Smyth was unable to account for the mathematics displayed by the ancient Egyptians. Like Taylor he was obliged to attribute this science to Divine Wisdom, somehow imparted to an earthly architect who had constructed the Pyramid under the direct influence of revelation. “The Bible,” said Smyth, “tells us that in very early historic days, wisdom, and metrical instructions for buildings, were occasionally imparted perfect and complete, for some special and unknown purpose, to chosen men, by the Author of all wisdom.”