Iddo Katz says he and fellow Israeli archaeologists “don’t have a doubt” the First and Second Temples were situated on the site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
If you go
IDDO KATZ will present “The Temple Mount: Recent Finds in the Light of Future Relations” on Tuesday, April 15, at 7 p.m. at the Wilf Jewish Community Campus in Scotch Plains. It is the third in a series of four lectures on contemporary Israel.
The event is hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey and cosponsored by the Israel Support Committee of Congregation Beth Israel, Temple Emanu-El, and Temple Beth-El Mekor Chayim and by the Jewish Educational Center/Elmora Avenue Shul and JEC/Adath Israel Shul in Elizabeth.
Admission is $10 for each lecture or $18 for the remaining lectures.
April 10, 2008
New discoveries found underneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem “throw light on the existence of the Jewish Temples there,” according to archaeologist Iddo Katz.
The Israeli Ministry of Tourism travel guide will deliver a talk on the significance to Jews everywhere of those recent finds on Tuesday evening, April 15, at the Wilf Jewish Community Campus in Scotch Plains.
Katz’s presentation, “The Temple Mount: Recent Finds in the Light of Future Relations,” is the third in a series of four lectures on contemporary Israel at the JCC.
Katz told NJJN in a phone interview from his home in Tel Aviv that the archaeological discoveries he will discuss center on Mount Moriah. The Bible refers to it as the site where Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac.
“It is crucial for Jews everywhere to understand our claims to this land,” said Katz, who also served as executive director of the Israel Aliyah Center in New York from 2002 to 2005.
While archaeologists have not conclusively proved that the First and Second Temples stood on that site, excavated soil from a recent expansion of the al-Aqsa Mosque there — carried out by the Waqf, the Muslim authority that governs the Muslim holy sites — “shows that there was a very large and important building on that site, and many different artifacts give us clues as to its use,” said Katz.
And although, he said, “we have yet to find something that definitively declares, ‘This was an Israelite or Jewish Temple,’ there was unearthed a rock that is inscribed with the message ‘To the Trumpeting Place.’ Another [find] is a stone that marks the place where shofars would have been blown to mark the start of Shabbat.”
According to Katz, coins from across the Near and Far East have been found in debris from the Temple Mount and in archaeological digs around the Kotel, the westernmost retaining wall of the Temple Mount, and around the southern retaining wall.
The New Testament describes Jesus’ dispute with money-changers outside the Holy Temple, and some speculate the coins could be evidence of such activity.
Despite Katz’s convictions that the Temple Mount was the site of the First and Second Temples, he emphasized that “archaeology is a science. Science is built on theories and proofs.” Establishing the Temples’ exact location before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 “is an issue of finding evidence in the right context.”
Real people
At the JCC, Katz will use a multimedia presentation to highlight some of the relevant discoveries at the site, including those associated with the Western Wall tunnels, which run underneath the Kotel.
Many mikva’ot, or ritual baths, have been excavated outside of the western and southern retaining walls of the Temple Mount. Katz also will cite evidence of a ritual bath that could have been used by kohanim before their priestly service in the Temple.
Katz said he plans to address issues of whether the Bible and archaeology are at odds. Some scholars say that current archaeological finds across Israel contradict the Bible, but Katz and his associates believe they can be reconciled.
“The Bible and archaeology talk about things on different levels,” Katz said.
Katz also wants to put to rest the idea that the Temples never existed on the Jerusalem site, which is a relatively new accusation that he believes stems from anti-Israeli feelings.
A stone, above, uncovered in archaelogical explorations in the Temple Mount area is thought to have marked “beit ha’t’kiah,” the place “where shofars would have been blown to mark the start of Shabbat,” according to Iddo Katz; arrow heads, left, from the Roman and Babylonian periods found in debris from work at the Temple Mount.
Several of the artifacts Katz will discuss predate Islam, but don’t necessarily reference either the First or Second Temple.
As a former area manager on an archaeological site in biblical Shiloh, Katz cites the example of finding a shard with writing referencing the House of David.
“From that we see that King David and the Davidic dynasty were not just fiction, but real people in history,” Katz said.
In addition to leading tours of Israel and serving as the area manager on archaeological excavation sites, Katz is creating a series of multimedia presentations on biblical archaeology that incorporate “biblical texts with archaeology and geography of ancient and modern Israel.”
Marcy Behrmann Frank is a freelance writer in Elizabeth.
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