Posted by Beast Rabban
It appears that construction work fitting a pipeline to the al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount has uncovered the remains of part of the Second Temple. This is obviously a find of immense importance to Jews and Christians. Gaby Barkai, a senior Israeli archaeologist, has called for the construction work to halt for the remains to be properly investigated. See here.
There has been considerable conflict between archaeologists and the Muslim authorities administering the al-Aqsa mosque in recent years. A few years ago the waqf – Islamic charitable organisation administering the mosque commenced construction work as part of a maintenance and restoration programme. However, in doing so they burrowed into Temple Mount itself and uncovered archaeologically valuable material from the pre-Islamic periods, including Jewish artifacts and remains. Scandalously, this material was simply dumped along with the other construction rubbish. The archaeology appeared to have been deliberately mixed with construction debris as part of a programme to erase the pre-Islamic archaeology there. Unfortunately, there have been assertions in part of the Islamic world that the Temple Mount was never a Jewish site. If the remains are indeed part of Herod’s Temple, then this will be a sound disproof of such historical revisionism.
For a scholarly and detailed critique of the way the construction work has threatened the precious archaeology and historic buildings on the Mount, see this piece from Biblical Archaeology Review.
Proper archaeological investigation of remains from the Mount offers to add much to our understanding of the milieu in which Christ lived and ministered, and it’s been the case that the descriptions of Jerusalem in St. John’s Gospel are so detailed that they support the idea that it may have been written by an eyewitness and the trustworthy nature of the Gospel’s witness to our Lord’s ministry. Hopefully, a way can be found to prevent further destruction of the Mount’s archaeology without exacerbating the religious tensions in this politically and religiously sensitive area further.
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