Archaeologica.org

Hello and welcome.

The link supplied is not bringing up a page.

Nnatan, if you could edit the link to eliminate the last comma it will work.

http://www.jerusalem-4thtemple.org

Beagle, remove the comma at the end of the link and it will work.

haven't looked at the sites.

are you saying that water flows downhill?



john

Hey, thanks guys. I got it now.

This is starting to sound like Ernest L. Martin's book.

my question is: how credible is this site and the book?

so they are saying that the accepted remains are not in the right place for solomon's temple?

Martin was one of your boys.

An interesting take on Second Temple Judaism.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/RelS369 ... emple.html

The fixation with 'purification' seems to be a later addition to Judaism...probably after the Babylonian exile. Thus the idea that the "first temple" (Solomon's) had to have elaborate ritual baths is an anachronism. In fact, there probably never was a Solomon's temple...at least in the biblical sense....and we have exactly zero artifacts from that time period relating to it. Cyrus did permit Zerubabbel to build a temple after the exile and the priests seem to have latched on to that like bulldogs going after a steak.

In any case, the Gihon spring seems to have been the only relatively steady water supply for the area so it makes sense that the earliest settlements would have been built near it.