New Find Sheds Light on Ancient Site in Jerusalem

AP via Yahoo News ^ | November 23, 2011 | MATTI FRIEDMAN

[lbryce]

Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem's Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world's most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday.

The man usually credited with building the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary is Herod, a Jewish ruler who died in 4 B.C. Herod's monumental compound replaced and expanded a much older Jewish temple complex on the same site.

But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound's Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod's death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall — part of which is venerated as Judaism's holiest prayer site — and that construction was not close to being complete when he died.

"The find changes the way we see the construction, and shows it lasted for longer than we originally thought," said the dig's co-director, Eli Shukron.

[lbryce]

Of course, the Palis contend that the last remnant of the Jewish Temple,destroyed by Rome in 70 AD, the Western Wall, is what's left of some Sheik of Araby's golf course or some version thereof.

[carjic]

ping

[TexasFreeper2009]

I am going to dig a hole underneath the empire state building and drop an Iphone in it :)

Then 1000’s of years from now, some archaeologist can dig it up and claim that the Empire state building was actually built nearly 100 years later than thought!

lol

[Scythian]

Agreed, these stories are dumb. The truth is they don’t know jack squat about history ...

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks lbryce. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. New Theory on When Western Wall Was Built To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

A heart of stone
Nadav Shragai
Friday May 2, 2014
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=17255

...Eli Shukron explains it with an interesting theory. “This stone came from the Temple Mount, from the surplus stones that were used in the construction of the Temple itself. Those stones were high-quality, chiseled and smooth, like this unusual one, which was discovered among the Western Wall’s foundations. This stone was intended for the Second Temple, and stones like it were used to build the Temple — but it was left unused. The builders of the Western Wall brought it down here because it was no longer needed up above — and this is how the other stones of the Temple looked,” he says, adding, “Anyone who passes a hand gently over this stone feels a slightly wavy texture, just like the Talmud describes.”...

Two more surprises awaited Shukron’s diggers at the base of the foundations. The first is a stone weighing a beka from First Temple times — a stone that was used to weigh the silver half-shekel and on which the word “beka” was engraved in Canaanite Hebrew script. Weights of this type have already been found in Israel. The beka is mentioned in the Bible as a unit of weight that was used to weigh the half-shekel that was given by those counted in the census as a way to count them. It was also used later on, in the Tabernacle.

The second surprise has to do with the Western Wall itself — or, actually, with its builders: a chisel about 15 centimeters (6 inches) long that was evidently used to carve the stones of the Western Wall. It was found in a pile of rubble at the bottom of the wall. Shukron believes that one of the workers carving the stone dropped it while he was working on scaffolding on an upper foundation of the wall. “It seems that he didn’t bother to go down or that he simply forgot about it,” Shukron says.

[SunkenCiv]

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

[M Kehoe]

Didn’t Herrod have two sons?

Weren’t they pretty industrious?

No, I’m not talking offspring industrious.

5.56mm

[ducttape45]

There are those who say that the so called "Western Wall" is not even a part of the old Temple Mount to begin with and is instead part of a Roman fortification used to house Roman soldiers.

If we take the Bible literally, and also account for the written works of Josephus the Jewish historian, the Temple was completely destroyed and nothing remains of it, NOTHING.

So all of these discoveries are for naught if the true Temple location is not where these people are looking at to begin with.