In spite of UNESCO disapproval Israelis have been excavating since the 1967 Six-Day War with great vigor in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, especially along the southern city wall. Numerous finds have resulted for just about every period of Jerusalem from Biblical times until the Middle Ages. The discoveries have particularly illuminated the city of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Byzan tine (c. A.D. 300-650) periods. Because New Testament Jerusalem, largely built by or during the reign of Herod the Great, has undergone the most restoration, this article will limit itself to the finds of this period made in the Holy City.
The Temple platform in southeast Jerusalem today contains two buildings that are holy to Moslems—the Dome of the Rock (over the original Temple site) and the el-Aqsa Mosque. Just south of the Temple platform, between the Tyropean Valley on the left and the Kidron Valley on the right, is the Old Testament city of Jerusalem, now covered with the houses of a modern Arab village.
The first group of excavations dealt with in this article are taking place just south of the Temple plat form, along the entire length of its southern wall, turning slightly north and following the western wall until the borders of the Wailing Wall (Western Wall is now preferred) bring the excavations to an end. Prior to excavation, very few buildings had been erected in modern times between the Temple platform wall and the road that runs roughly parallel to it. Bedouins pitched their tents here and allowed their sheep and goats to browse.
During Christ's time Jerusalem extended mainly to the south and west of the Temple grounds. Within this area many interesting remains have been uncovered from the late first century B.C. and the early first century A.D. The Fortress of Antonia, where Pilate judged Christ and from where He began to carry the cross to Calvary, the great Pal ace of Herod, the palaces of some of the high priests, and various remains of walls and gates are among these finds, which have been reported previously.
Even before the recent excavations began, scholars already knew that the huge beveled stones near the present bottom of the Temple plat form wall were those erected by Herod the Great and were in existence during the time of Christ. The great size of the stones was often used to illustrate the extremely violent destruction required to fulfill Christ's prophecy that there would " 'not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down'" (Luke 21:6, R.S.V.).
Imagine then the surprise of archeologists as they began excavating the dirt along the wall and uncovered stones that completely dwarfed those exposed above ground! After several long seasons of arduous digging, a stepped street was uncovered that ran along the base of the wall dating to the time of Christ. As shown in the accompanying illustration, the largest stones in the wall were right at eye level, in plain sight of Jesus and the disciples. These must have been the stones to which Christ referred. One cornerstone measures approximately 4 feet high by 6 feet wide by 36 feet long and weighs more than 200 tons! Christ's prophecy suggested more than mere destruction; it hinted at cataclysm!
Deep debris dating from the A.D. 70 destruction of the Temple area lay on top of the street and greatly hampered the excavations. Some of these stones showed definite signs of burning; others contained beautiful, typically Roman sculptured designs indicating that they were part of decorative features on the upper most levels, such as capitals and architraves.
Based on these stones, the foundation remains of the buildings surrounding the wall, and various descriptions of the Temple found in the Bible, Josephus (see The Wars of the Jews, book 5), and other contemporary writers, scholars believe a re construction of the southern end of the Temple complex during the time of Christ would look something like the accompanying sketch.
Using this reconstruction as a model, we can describe how Christ and the disciples would likely have entered the Temple. The most impressive entrance must have been the grand staircase on the south (on the right in the sketch). This stair case was more than 150 feet long and led up to the formidable south wall, topped by a large, beautiful stoa, the southeastern corner of which was probably the Temple pinnacle of Christ's second temptation. Dug into this stairway at several places (not shown on the model) were two mikvot, or ritual washing pools, large enough for complete immersion if necessary, so that the visitor could cleanse himself before entering the holy precincts of the Temple.
After entering one of two multiple gateways the visitor ascended a sloping tunnel to the main floor of the Temple compound, the emergence of which can be seen to the left of the great stoa on top of the south wall.
Alternatively, the visitor could enter the western end of the great Royal Stoa (identified by some as Solomon's Portico of the Bible) by ascending the arched stairway at the southwestern corner of the plat form. The architectural decoration of this stoa makes it a first-rate piece of ancient beauty. A third entrance, which crossed the Tyropean Valley by means of an arched bridge, was for those coming from the area of Herod's Palace in the western part of the city.
Today almost nothing remains of this magnificent structure, justly famous in all the Roman world. Be cause the great southern stairway is carved out of the bedrock, most of it remains, but in a very worn and battered condition. Besides the bottom courses of stones in the platform wall, only a thirty-foot stretch of the street paralleling the platform wall still exists, and two or three courses of the bottoms of the arches can be seen on the arched stairway. (The last arch of the bridge has been preserved in a medieval building.) Nothing of the great stoa is yet to be found except the fragmented debris lying around the bottom of the wall.
Since Christ's prophecy specifically predicted total destruction of the Temple area, how are we to interpret even these slight remains? Although most likely the prophecy indicates the general magnitude and completeness of the coming destruction rather than dealing in specifics of individual stones, a literal explanation is also possible. Except for a very few places, the destruction debris itself seems to have covered completely the few undestroyed portions, burying them until twentieth-century archeologists unearthed them. In other words, practically everything that could be destroyed was destroyed in A.D. 70.
West along the present city wall, three sets of excavations have uncovered large areas of ruins representing periods from Old Testament times through the Crusader period. Some sections of these excavations have been turned into an archeological park where the visitor can view the Holy City of ages past.
The principal finds in this sector were private dwellings, most of them quite lavish. Perched on the highest hill in the city and well up wind of the poorer and more industrial areas to the east, these mansions, many of which date from the time of Christ, contained mosaic floors of fine quality and even private mikvot, some constructed with columned porticos. Elaborate ritual cleansing places such as found in these private dwellings illustrate eloquently the type of vanity and legalism that Christ encountered and that He preached against, especially in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican praying in the Temple (Luke 18:10-14).
In this area, too, meters of ash-filled debris testify to a massive and violent destruction that brought the Herodian structures to an end. Most certainly, this was part of the A.D. 70 destruction.
The third area of excavations lies just outside the south end of the west city wall, near the Jaffa Gate. The Herodian city wall at this point was found to have been twenty-four feet (about 7.5 meters) thick, one of the thickest walls found in the Roman Near East. To overcome such defenses a besieging army would have needed special siege machines and a lot of patience. Therefore, the siege ramp discovered against this wall, built of rough but typically Roman stones, takes on special interest. Presumably, such machines would be towed up the ramp and could have operated above the top of the wall. The ramp has not yet been securely dated, but quite likely it represents the Roman siege of A.D. 70.
These excavations confirm the Biblical record on several levels. Clear evidence has been found of a large scale, violent destruction in A.D. 70 of both the Temple area and the rest of the city. The wealth, legalism, and vanity of New Testament Jerusalem's upper society have been clearly illustrated. Architectural fragments found in the excavations show that the Temple com pound was one of the great monuments of the early Roman period. Finally, faith in prophecy—especially the prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem and, by extension, that of last-day events—is soundly confirmed.
