Tunnel Exposes New Areas of Temple Mount - The BAS Library
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Tunnel Exposes New Areas of Temple Mount

Tunnel adjacent to western wall of Temple Mount dug by religious authorities

By Michael A. Zimmerman

Near the prayer area of the western wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a little-known excavation has continued for years. The project has received almost no public notice. The entire dig remains underground, hidden from daylight, only occasionally open to small groups. Unseen by most of the thousands who visit or pray at the exposed western wall, a 600-foot tunnel has been dug next to the buried lower courses of the western wall of the Temple Mount, north of the traditional prayer area. This tunnel, beneath Arab shops and houses is referred to, by those who know of […]

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Footnotes

1.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the tenth century B.C. and was destroyed in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians. The Second Temple period began with the restoration of Solomon’s temple by the Jews who resumed from the Babylonian exile in 539 B.C. This restored Temple was greatly improved and the area of the Temple Mount was doubled by Herod the Great in the first century B.C. Herod’s Temple, often referred to as the Second Temple, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. It is said that the Romans left standing most of the Temple Mount retaining walls to commemorate the magnitude of their victory over the Jews in the first century.