How many temples were built in jerusalem

No direct evidence for Solomon's Temple. Even if remnants have been preserved below-ground, the fact that two Muslim shrines stand on the Temple Mount — the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque — means there is no possibility of Israeli archaeologists excavating there. That being said, in , the Waqf the Muslim authority entrusted with the maintenance and functioning of the mount began construction of an underground mosque in the southeastern corner of the Haram, adjacent to Al-Aksa.

When Jewish archaeologists observed that the large quantities of soil and detritus extracted from the site were being dumped a little to the northeast of the Old City, in the Kidron Valley, they organized an ongoing project, called the Temple Mount Sifting Project, to go through the refuse systematically.

Large numbers of items that they date to the First Temple period have been found. After Israel was conquered in about B.

Solomon's Temple sustained several attacks by foreign powers before finally, in B. The residents of Judah were sent into a short-lived exile, in what is present-day Iraq. A rebuilt temple was dedicated in B. That Second Temple was an expanded and significantly upgraded structure whose construction was led by the half-Jewish, half-Edumean Herod, the Roman-appointed king of Judea who died in 4 B.

Finished in about 20 B. The first Jewish Revolt began in 66 C. Following the destruction of the Second Temple during the First Revolt and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem itself, accompanied by the exile of its inhabitants, during the Second Jewish Revolt, in , that Judaism made a sharp turn from being a temple-based cult that relied on daily sacrifices to its god.

It became a mobile faith that revolved around law and prayer, and whose members soon spread out around the Mediterranean basin, and later to more distant points. May it be Thy will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, merciful King, in Thy abundant love again to have mercy on us and on Thy sanctuary; rebuild it speedily and magnify its glory. The Jewish Prayer Book. According to Maimonides it is incumbent on the Jews to maintain the temple in Jerusalem if it is in existence and to rebuild it speedily if it does not.

Many Jews acknowledge from the Tanach that shedding of blood is associated with the remission of sins. Thus the restoration of animal sacrifices in a properly consecrated temple is seen as very important to them. The Third Temple must be placed on the same spot of ground as the First and Second Temples because of the Jewish concept of zones of holiness on Yahweh's sacred mountain. Jesus spoke of the Third Temple building in Jerusalem when discussing with his disciples the chain of events that would bring the close of the present age and his return.

He spoke of an event yet future predicted by Daniel the prophet when the temple in Jerusalem would suffer ultimate defilement by a false Messiah who claimed to be God:. And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.

Since only a properly consecrated temple can be defiled, this passage implies a functioning, dedicated Third Temple and priesthood in existence in the end time at the time Jesus said he would return.

The apostle Paul, writing a few years later, describes this same event:. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God," 2 Thessalonians Another will come in his own name, him you will receive.

In contrast to the earthly city the Book of the Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, describes the heavenly city New Jerusalem, descending from space, as a city which contains no temple at all:.

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. Evidently the Third Temple has a limited life time and use towards the close of the present age. Probably it will be destroyed in the "great earthquake" which is described by Ezekiel and in the Revelation as shaking Jerusalem just prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

In fact, at the time all "the cities of the nations will fall. So it seems safe to say that the Third Temple may be built and destroyed within a decade or two, perhaps less. A rabbinical school or yeshiva for the training of the priests for this temple is presently in existence in the Old City. Sacred vessels and priestly garments have been prepared.

Cedar from Lebanon captured in the north during the war there in has been placed in storage for the next temple, and so on. Thus there has been considerable preparation for the Third Temple by the religious Jews of modern Jerusalem. Both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbis of Jerusalem agree that such a temple will be built as soon as circumstances permit.

There may yet be a fourth Temple built in Israel-the prophet Zechariah c. It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord, and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule upon his throne. And there shall be a priest by his throne, and peaceful understanding shall be between them both. Since orthodox Christians hold to a literal, physical return of Jesus, the construction of the Fourth Temple, they believe, would thus be the responsibility of their Lord, whom they believe to be Yeshua Hamashiach.

This temple may well be that seen by Ezekiel ca. A temple that matches his description has never yet been built. Moreover, the Fourth Temple will evidently not be built at Jerusalem but possibly at Shiloh, some 31 km to the North:.

Of this a square plot of five hundred by five hundred cubits shall be for the sanctuary, with fifty cubits for an open space around it. And in the holy district you shall measure off a section twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand broad, in which shall be the sanctuary, the most holy place.

It shall be the holy portion of the land; it shall be for the priests, who minister in the sanctuary and approach the Lord to minister to him; and it shall be a place for their houses and a holy place for the sanctuary. Another section, twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand cubits broad, shall be for the Levites who minister at the temple, as their possession for cities to live in.

It is to be his property in Israel. And my princes shall no more oppress my people; but they shall let the house of Israel have the land according to their tribes. The portion which you shall set apart for the Lord shall be twenty-five thousand cubits in length, and twenty thousand in breadth. According to many Bible scholars, the fourth or "millennial temple" Ezekiel , will be memorial, a teaching center to instruct men about the holiness of God and proper worship.

As sinful men and women continue to be born into the world in the Millennium the temple is supposed to remind everyone of the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross, as the "Lamb of God," some two thousand years earlier.

Though the Biblical emphasis is never on temple buildings but on men and their character, scripture does not negate the use of shadows and symbols. Literal physical realities are said to be given in order to teach about the enduring, permanent spiritual realities they point to.

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the Lord. But this is the man to whom I look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. The Old Testament describes how an army led by David, the second king of ancient Israel, breached the walls of Jebus around B.

David then built a palace nearby and created his capital, Jerusalem. At the site of a threshing floor atop the mountain, where farmers had separated grains from chaff, David constructed a sacrificial altar.

Scholars, however, have pieced together a tentative portrait of the Beit Hamikdash from descriptions in the Bible and architectural remains of sanctuaries elsewhere in the region built during the same era. It is envisioned as a complex of richly painted and gilded courts, constructed with cedar, fir and sandalwood. The rooms would have been built around an inner sanctum—the Holy of Holies—where the ark of the covenant, an acacia-wood chest covered with gold and containing the original Ten Commandments, was said to have been stored.

Until recently, Palestinians generally acknowledged that the Beit Hamikdash existed. This too is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt and peace offerings. Arafat suggested the site of the Temple Mount might have been in the West Bank town of Nablus, known as Shechem in ancient times.

But Natsheh—sipping Arabic coffee in his office at Waqf headquarters, a year-old former Sufi monastery in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City—is dubious. The ark of the covenant disappeared, possibly hidden from the conquerors.

Following the conquest of Jerusalem by the Persians in B. He enclosed the holy site within a foot-high retaining wall constructed of limestone blocks quarried from the Jerusalem Hills and constructed a far more expansive version of the Second Temple.

He wanted also to compete with God. On a cloudless morning, I join historian Meiron for a tour of the Temple Mount. Today, hundreds of Orthodox Jews are gathered in devotion before the remnant of that wall—a ritual that perhaps first occurred in the fourth century A. During the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, this area was a warren of Arab houses, and Jews who wanted to pray here had to squeeze into a foot-wide corridor in front of the Herodian stones.

After Israel claimed sovereignty over East Jerusalem in , it demolished the Arab houses, creating the plaza.

Israel erected the wooden structure after an earthen ramp collapsed in , following an earthquake and heavy snowfall. But members of both the Jewish and Muslim communities opposed the plan. And the Israeli activist group Peace Now warned the project might alarm Muslims since the new route and size of the bridge three times the original ramp would increase non-Muslim traffic to the Mount.

Indeed, when Israel began a legally required archaeological survey of the planned construction site, Palestinians and Arab Israelis joined in a chorus of protest. They claimed the Israeli excavations—although conducted several yards outside the walls of the sacred compound—threatened the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. For the time being, non-Muslim visitors continue to use the temporary wooden bridge that has been in place for seven years.

Such disputes inevitably send ripples throughout the international community. And in November , the Palestinian Authority created a diplomatic kerfuffle when it published a study declaring the Western Wall was not a Jewish holy site at all, but part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Today, the scene is calm. At various spots on the wide, leafy plaza Palestinian men gather in study groups, reading the Koran. We ascend steps toward the magnificent Dome of the Rock—which was built during the same period as the Al-Aqsa Mosque to the south, between A.

Its provenance remains a subject of debate among historians, pitting the majority, who claim early Muslims built it, against those who insist it is a Byzantine Christian structure. But other historians counter that the eastern entrance to the Mount, where the Golden Gate was built, was important to the Byzantines because their interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew holds that Jesus entered the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives to the east when he joined his disciples for the Passover meal.

And in A. Fifteen years later, after defeating the Persians, Heraclius, a Byzantine emperor, is said to have brought the True Cross back to the holy city—passing from the Mount of Olives to the Temple Mount, and then to the Holy Sepulchre. In addition, Barkay has found archival photographs taken during renovations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the late s that appear to reveal Byzantine mosaics beneath the structure—further evidence that some sort of public building had been constructed at the site.

After the war his father—who had spent a year in a Nazi forced labor camp in Ukraine—established the first Israeli delegation in Budapest, and the family emigrated to Israel in Barkay earned his doctorate in archaeology at Tel Aviv University. In , exploring a series of ancient burial caves in an area of Jerusalem above the Valley of Hinnom, he made a remarkable discovery: two 2,year-old silver scrolls delicately etched with the priestly blessing that Aaron and his sons bestowed on the children of Israel, as mentioned in the Book of Numbers.