Kaufman Responds to Jacobson

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My friend David Jacobson is to be congratulated on his two-part article on Herod’s Temple Mount. His overall view of the Mount and his incisive use of comparative architecture are commendable. I am grateful to him for reminding readers about the location of the Temple. Jacobson also deserves praise for his insistence that, even to this day, there are extant remnants of Herod’s Temple.

The application of comparative architecture to the Temple has its limitations, however. The Temple had its own architectural tradition going back to the Tent of Meeting of Mosaic times (Exodus 25–27). This means that a thorough knowledge of the ancient Jewish texts is important to understanding the Temple and its placement, especially tractate Middot¹ of the Mishnah, which embodies Jewish oral tradition and law and provides an accurate and detailed description of the Second Temple.^a

The Jewish concept of sacred and profane applies both to time and space. The sanctity of space was graded.² The closer to the Holy of Holies of the Temple, the greater the degree of sanctity. Thus, the outer Temple court, Har Habbayit—literally, Temple Mount—was holier than the rest of the walled city of Jerusalem. Compared to the area of Har Habbayit, the rest of the city was regarded as profane.

According to the Mishnah, there were five gates to the Temple Mount, or Har Habbayit (Middot 1.3), so we presume that it was surrounded by a wall. Within this enclosure was a low barrier that served as a kind of inner wall of Har Habbayit, called the sorég (Middot 2.3).

The least holy part of the Temple precincts was Har Habbayit, the area between the outer wall and the sorég.³

Beyond the sorég and further in-wards was a level terrace, 10 cubits wide (Middot 2.3), called the heŒl.

Inwards from the heŒl was the Court of the Women, which was holier than the heŒl. The Inner Court was holier than the Court of the Women. And so on.

The ancient rabbinic texts, including Middot, ignore completely the Herodian extension of the Temple Mount described by Jacobson. However, the first-century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus did describe that extension. He stated that Herod doubled the area that had formerly surrounded the House of the Lord, the central edifice within the Inner Court, or Naos, as he called it in Greek.⁴

Herod’s extension beyond Har Habbayit was on the south, west and north. The only wall common between Herod’s Temple Mount and the earlier one was a central-northern part of the eastern wall bracketing the extant Golden Gate.

The direction of the Temple that mattered was east-west, not north-south. The Holy of Holies was situated in the west as a demonstrative negation of the sun cult.⁵

According to Middot 2.1, “Har Habbayit was 500 cubits by 500 cubits.” When scholars like David Jacobson turn to this text, they suppose the shape of Har Habbayit to have been a square. This is a misunderstanding. In Temple times, area was defined by a length of x units times an equal length of x units.⁶ For example, an area of 36 square cubits was not described that way but as an area of 6 cubits by 6 cubits. This does not mean that the area is a square. The expression simply informs us about the size of the area (36 square cubits) without defining its shape.

In locating the Temple on the Temple Mount, Jacobson makes a vital but incorrect assumption. He supposes that the point of intersection of the two Temple Mount axes must have coincided with an important feature of the Temple, and he suggests that this was the altar of sacrifice (part one, p. 62). He is encouraged in this view because the point of intersection cuts the Dome of the Chain from the early Islamic period. This is hardly adequate support for this assumption.

Jacobson logically fixes the east-west axis by drawing a perpendicular to the midpoint of the western wall of Herod’s Temple Mount. Following this logic, the north-south axis should be defined in the same way—by drawing a perpendicular to the midpoint of the southern wall of Herod’s Temple Mount. When this is done, however, the intersection cuts the Dome of the Chain close to its western edge, not through the middle, as he would have it.

More importantly, Jacobson expects Herod’s Temple Mount to have followed a regular plan, like Hebron’s enclosure (part one). But he fails to explain why the western and eastern walls of Herod’s Temple Mount are not parallel!

The line of the central part of the eastern wall was dictated by the foundations of that wall from Solomonic times.⁷ The western wall of Herod’s Temple Mount, however, was set parallel not to this wall but to an inner wall, the western wall of the outer court of Har Habbayit.

Jacobson’s reconstruction orients the Temple 10 degrees south of west. (This follows from the fact that he places the Temple parallel to the southern wall of the Temple Mount, which is aligned 10 degrees south of west.) I conclude the Second Temple was aligned exactly east-west, while the First Temple was approximately 6 degrees south of west (6.2 degrees to be exact; see drawing, below). This is partly based on the general alignment of the east wall of the 061Temple Mount 6 degrees west of north. This orientation agrees with the orientation of a set of archaeological finds I ascribe to the First Temple and with mathematical calculation.⁸

In locating Herod’s Temple within the Temple complex, Jacobson relies on a passage from Josephus’s The Jewish War. However, Jacobson misunderstands the passage. Josephus is really saying that the House is in the middle of the Inner Court. Here is the passage from Josephus (my translation): “The Naos (House of the Lord) itself, the sacred [edifice], situated in the middle, was ascended by twelve steps” (5.207). The section before this deals with the gates of the two principal courts of the Inner Temple. Hence, it is perfectly clear from the context that “middle” refers to the mid-position of the Inner Court and not of Herod’s Temple Mount.

Another error: Jacobson places the Temple altar directly east of the Naos. The rabbis were in dispute as to the exact location of the altar. One rabbi came to the same conclusion as Jacobson, but another maintained that the altar was south of the east-west alignment of the Temple—and this rabbi, says the Talmud, was indisputable; although his testimony is “little [in quantity],” it is “well-sifted” (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 49b).

That the Temple was actually north of the current location of the Dome of the Rock is also supported by later sources. According to Rabbi David Qimhi (RaDaQ, about 1160–1235 C.E.), in his commentary on Isaiah 64:10, “And [the Temple] is still in ruins, [in] that the Temple site was never built on by the nations.” The area to the north of the Dome of the Rock was never built on.

This view is also supported by one Ka‘ab, a Jew who had converted to Islam and was advising Caliph ‘Umar, who had conquered Jerusalem in 637–638 C.E., as to where to set up a mosque. Ka‘ab told the caliph: “Set it up behind the rock [that is, to the north of it] and then you will make one the two kiblahs [directions of prayer], the kiblah of Moses and the kiblah of Muhammad.”⁹ This, too, indicates that the Temple was to the north of the rock, al-Sakhra, the centerpiece of the Dome of the Rock.

My friend David Jacobson is to be congratulated on his two-part article on Herod’s Temple Mount. His overall view of the Mount and his incisive use of comparative architecture are commendable. I am grateful to him for reminding readers about the location of the Temple. Jacobson also deserves praise for his insistence that, even to this day, there are extant remnants of Herod’s Temple. The application of comparative architecture to the Temple has its limitations, however. The Temple had its own architectural tradition going back to the Tent of Meeting of Mosaic times (Exodus 25–27). This means that a […]