Temple Mount, Jerusalem

The Temple Mount, or in Hebrew, Har haBáyit, is a religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem. Due to its importance for Judaism, Christianity and Islam it is one of the most contested religious sites in the world.

The Temple Mount is the holiest site for Judaism. The name Temple Mount came about because the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem stood there. The First Temple was built c. 967 BC, destroyed c. 586 BC by the Babylonians, and the Second Temple rebuilt c. 516 BC, destroyed in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. To the Muslims, the place is known as the Noble Sanctuary. It is the site of two major Muslim religious shrines, the Dome of the Rock, built c. 690 AD and Al-Aqsa Mosque, built c. 710.

Under the Jordanian rule of East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, Jews and other non-Arab people were forbidden from entering the Old City. After the Israeli forces gained control of the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, Jewish and non-Arab visits to the site resumed. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority claim sovereignty over the site, which remains a key issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israeli government has granted management of the site to a Muslim Council (Waqf).

Due to the extreme political sensitivity of the site, very little archaeological digging has been done on the Temple Mount itself. Protests commonly occur whenever archaeologists conduct projects on or near the Mount. Aside from visual observation of surface features, most other archaeological knowledge of the site comes from the 19th century survey carried out by Charles Wilson and Charles Warren.


Temple Mount, Jerusalem

The Temple Mount in the Talmud and the Bible

According to an Aggada in the Talmud, the world was created from the Foundation Stone on the Temple Mount. The Bible says that the place where Abraham fulfilled God's test to see if he would be willing to sacrifice his son Isaac was Mount Moriah, which according to the Talmud was another name for the Temple Mount.

In the Bible, Jacob dreamt about angels ascending and descending a ladder while sleeping on a stone. According to the Talmud, this took place on the Temple Mount. According to the Bible, King David purchased a threshing floor owned by Aravnah the Jebusite overlooking Jerusalem upon the cessation of a plague, to erect an altar. He wanted to construct a permanent temple there, but as his hands were "bloodied", he was forbidden to do so himself, so this task was left to his son Solomon, who completed the task c. 950 BC.

Jewish religious law concerning entry to the Temple Mount

According to Christian sources from the Byzantine period, when Jews were allowed to visit the Temple ruins, they would anoint the rock. According to Islamic tradition, immediately after the Dome of the Rock was constructed, five Jewish families from Jerusalem were employed to clean it and to prepare wicks for its lamps. The earliest known mention of a rabbinic prohibition on Jews entering the Temple Mount appears in a letter from Jerusalem by Rabbi Obadia da Bartinoro to his father in 1488, i.e., during the Mamluk period.

Rabbinical consensus in both the Religious Zionist and the Haredi streams of Orthodox holds that it is forbidden for Jews to enter the Temple Mount. Many rabbis have issued prohibitions against entering the Temple Mount because of the danger of entering the area of the Temple courtyard and the impossibility of fulfilling the ritual requirement of cleansing oneself with the ashes of a red heifer (see Numbers 19), and declared it punishable with karet, death by heavenly decree.

The boundaries of the areas which are completely forbidden, while having large portions in common, are delineated differently by various rabbinic authorities. Some rabbis, primarily belonging to right-wing Religious Zionism, disagree with the majority position and maintain that it is permitted and even commendable to visit those parts of the Temple Mount which according to most medieval rabbinic authorities do not lead to any controversy, even though rabbinical consensus nowadays maintains that the entire Temple Mount including those areas is off-limits to Jews.

In May 2007, a group of right-wing Religious Zionist rabbis entered the Temple Mount. This elicited widespread criticism from other religious Jews and from secular Israelis, accusing the rabbis of provoking the Arabs. An editorial in the newspaper Haaretz accused the rabbis of "knowingly and irresponsibly bringing a burning torch closer to the most flammable hill in the Middle East," and noted that rabbinical consensus in both the Haredi and the Religious Zionist worlds forbids Jews from entering the Temple Mount.

On May 16, Rabbi Avraham Shapiro, former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel and rosh yeshiva of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, reiterated that it is forbidden for Jews to enter the Temple Mount. The Litvish Haredi newspaper Yated Ne'eman, which is controlled by leading Litvish Haredi rabbis including Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv and Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, accused the rabbis of transgressing a decree punishable by "death through the hands of heaven," an issur koreis in (Ashkenazi) Hebrew.

Significance of the Temple Mount to the Muslims

The Temple Mount is traditionally regarded by Muslims as the third most important Islamic holy site, after Mecca and Medina. Some Muslims see Mashad in Iran as being more holy to Islam as well. The primary reason for the Temple Mount's importance, however, is because both Kings David and Solomon are regarded as Prophets, and the Temple is mentioned in Qur'an 17:7, and described in much more detail in the noncanonical Qisas al-Anbiya as one of the earliest and most noteworthy places of worship of God.

In fact, Muslims faced the Temple Mount during prayer until Muhammad was later commanded to change the direction of prayer toward the Kaaba. (The Kaaba's sanctity has a similar basis in the Islamic tradition that it was built, or rebuilt, by Abraham.) In addition to this, the "farthest Mosque" (al-masjid al-Aqsa) in verse (17:1) of the Qur'an is traditionally interpreted by Muslims as referring to the site at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on which the mosque of that name now stands. References to Jerusalem and events there have been made mostly in various states of ambiguity, in the Quran, and many times in the Hadith.

Another reason for the importance of the Temple Mount in Islam is because it is believed that in 621, Muhammad arrived there after a miraculous nocturnal journey aboard the winged steed named Buraq, to take a brief tour of heaven with the Archangel Gabriel. This happened during Muhammad's time in Mecca, years before Muslims conquered Jerusalem (638).

Significance of the Temple Mount to the Christians

The Temple in Jerusalem is mentioned many times in the New Testament (for example, Mark 11:11) in addition to the Old Testament. Jesus prays there (Mark 11:25-26) and chases away money changers and other merchants from the courtyard, turning over their tables and accusing them of desecrating a sacred place with secular ways. Jesus also predicts the destruction of the Second Temple (Matthew 24:2) and allegorically compares his body to a temple that will be torn down and raised up again in three days.

Though some Christians believe that the temple will be reconstructed before, or concurrent with, the Second Coming of Christ, the Temple Mount is largely unimportant to the beliefs and worship of most Christians. To wit, the New Testament recounts a story of a Samaritan woman asking Jesus about the appropriate place to worship, Jerusalem or the Samaritan holy place at Mt. Gerazim, to which Jesus replies, "neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father... But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth." Thus, the Christian concept of worship is entirely spiritual, and not based on any particular physical location, specifically including the Temple Mount.

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