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The Greek word Jesus used in his prophetic context to describe the Temple and its buildings was heiron (this means the entire Temple including its exterior buildings and walls).

Jesus did not use a Greek word to describe the Temple, since He spoke Aramaic. I know nothing about Aramaic, except for little things like the fact that there is no Aramaic word for "cousin". Translators do the best they can, I know, but some translations are squishier than others, leading to misinterpretations. I wonder what the original Aramaic was? There are no extant originals...

Hyperbole was a common instrument of expression used by rabbis. I had always regarded "not one stone left upon the other" just as such, an emphatic way to describe terrible destruction. I don't know that a literal interpretation of the text is necessary. Biblical Archeology Review last year (or was it the year before, I cannot recall) extensively described the Temple Mount, using the most reliable and learned data today available. It placed the Temple in basically the same area is has always to have been. To realign the Temple theoretically, based more upon envisioned appearances than archaeological evidence is pretty thin. Interesting ideas, though.

My comments to the poster:

It absolutely is the Temple Mount. I have excavated underneath it, and you can still find Temple artifacts in the rubble that the Palestinians have been removing on the Mount to try to remove all traces of the Temple. In fact, Underneath the el Asqa Mosque, I have visited Solomon' stables--the were perserved until the Oslo Accords were signed and the Pals gained more control over the mount (they have destroyed the stables and put in a gigantic mosque). I am familiar with the people this guy quotes, and they are all British "revisionists" archaelogists. HeThere is no question about the authenticity of the site, because below the Temple Mount, on the North Side and below the Fortress is Solomon's quarries. You can still see the cut marks where the stones were quarried (they have been verified.) This guy supports the old Kathleen Kenyon thought (probably was the most revisionist British Archaelogist to ever live.) He calls the Mount by the Palestinian Arabic name "Haram esh-Sharif", and as anyone knows, Islam wasn't invented until the 7th century C.E. This "expert" apparently has not read all of Josephus, because Josephus gave great information concerning Solomon's Stables, Quarries and the Fortress. The British have been trying to De-Jew Jerusalem for Centuries and deny their ownership. They will not succeed. That is why the Palestinians have useless idiots like this--to claim ownership of the Temple Mount. In fact, last week, the Imam at el Asqa denied the Jewishness of the Western Wall.

Another form of proof is Hezikaya's Tunnel. This was tunnel dug from what would become the Temple Mount to the Gihon Springs to the South. It is still there, and you can still walk through it. Josephus talked extensively about that as well.

I agree with you totally. Christ and his contemporaries spoke Aramaic,a Semitic language, not Greek, an Indo-Eurpean one. When you translate from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English, nuances are bound to be lost,

Many fundamentalist Christians believe they must take every word in the Bible literally. The Bible is overflowing with symbolism, hyperbole as you state, and parables. It is not esentially a history in the sense that we understand that term today, although it is an acount of actual events. Parts of it are very easy to comprehend, others not.

Also, the author discounts the fact that what Jospehus is telling us what he thought Eleazar said, presumably heard second or third hand from the alleged few individuals who were hiding when the Masada Defendants killed themselves and their families, and later surrendered to the ROmans. Neither Josphus nor any Roman was actually there.

Ancient authors very frequently will quote speeches made by characters in their narrative they couldn't possibly have heard and were never recorded. What the author really wrote as the person's speech was what the author felt the peson would have said under the circumstances - which is a very different thing.

When Christ said not one stone would be left standing upon another, it may not have had a literal meaning, but rather a figurative one, as you state.

Also, Josephus was not operating in a vacuum. Once the slave of Vespasian, he was given his freedom and assumed the name of his former owner - Flavius from the Flavian family to which Titus and Vespasian belonged.
Josephus had a vested interest in painting a particular picture for his audience - and he wrote for the Romans. The picture he wished to convey was that the Jews were led astray by belligerant and corrupt leaders, that they fought the Romans ferociously, that the Romans were brave in overcoming a stout and courageous foe. He didn't want to denigrate the courage of either his own people nor of the Romans. He also wanted to paint a sympathetic picture of his own people.

Many scholars have questioned Josephus' account about Masada. His description of the site and the Roman method of capturing it have been pretty well substantiated by archeology. But other parts of his story are open to question. Where are the bodies of the suicide victims? Suicide is not permitted in Judaism. What about a similar tale he told about himself when he was captured by the Romans prior to the seige of Jerusalem? (Jospehus was a leader of the revolting Jews until captured by the Romans.)

This is still all speculation until and if intellignet people can excavate the Dome of the Rock and the Harem, events which are unliekly in the near future due to the presence of the Islamic interlopers there.

At any rate, Jerusalem was the City of David, the Capital of the Kingdom of Israel. It should belong to the Jews - ALL of it.

The Muslims should be forced to remove their mosque or learn to behave like civilized people - a most unlikely event.