Various scholars have taken Josephus’ statement, that the Temple was a stadium square—a statement made, writing in Rome, by an author whose measurements are often self-contradictory[66]—and have thus sought to confine Herod’s Temple to an area 600 feet square in the south-west angle of the Haram. To this theory, which originated with the late Mr. Fergusson, several objections seem to me fatal.
(1.) Josephus, whom they quote, also says that the town-wall of Jerusalem on Ophel, south of the Temple, joined the eastern cloister of the Temple (Wars, V. iv. 2). This wall Sir Charles Warren discovered joining the east wall of the Haram. Thus, according to Josephus himself, the south-east angle of the present Haram was the south-east angle of Herod’s Temple.
(2.) No walls such as are required by these theorists are known inside the Haram, nor is there any break in the south wall at the point where they suppose the S.E. angle to have been.
(3.) There is also the statement by Josephus that the Temple was on the top of the hill, and I have shown by sections published in the Builder (January 25, 1879), that according to their theory foundations of between thirty and ninety feet are inevitably necessary to carry down to the known levels of the rock the heavy base of the great central fane. Writers who treat only of the plan without taking this practical builder’s objection into consideration may not admit the strength of this argument, but to those who have themselves built it should have force, and no ingenuity can escape from the necessity of such foundations. In the same paper I have shown that a plan, placing the Holy House on the present Sakhrah rock, necessitates only three or four feet of foundation in all parts of the Temple area. (See further Conder’s “Handbook to the Bible,” pp. 359-385, and “Tent Work in Palestine,” vol. i. chap, xii., for full details as to the levels).
(4.) The site of Antonia, as described by Josephus, most plainly agrees with the present rock at the north-west corner of the Haram. Such a site for Antonia cannot be reconciled with the theory confining the Temple to a small portion of the Haram.
(5.) These scholars also ignore the very important and detailed account in the Talmud, which cannot be reconciled with the small area in question. This account dates from only about half a century after the time of Josephus, a time when the ruins of the Temple might still be traceable and known to the author. The account gives us every measurement, enabling us to make a plan, and by aid of the number of steps stated—in agreement with Josephus—to calculate the levels of the various courts. My plan, based on these measurements, occurs in the books above quoted and in the Jerusalem volume of the “Memoirs of Western Palestine.” By this restoration we are able to account for the great passages north of the Dome of the Rock, and can identify the gates mentioned in the Talmud with existing gateways.
The theory in question seems to me, therefore, to strain the meaning of one particular statement and to ignore several others equally important by the same author. It declines to accept the outcome of exploration in the recovery of the Ophel wall; and it supposes walls and a rock scarp to exist where no traces are found of such walls and where such a scarp is impossible. It must, therefore, be regarded as the survival of earlier opinion, which will in time give place to the facts clearly indicated by excavation.
As regards the site of the Holy Sepulchre, Mr. Fergusson’s theory may be considered defunct. Professor Hayter Lewis has taken up the argument which I attempted in 1878, and has added further details of architectural criticism. He agrees with others in accepting the historic accounts contained in inscriptions and in Arab chronicles which attribute the Dome of the Rock to Abd el Melek, and he accepts my three propositions:—1st, That older material was re-used in the structure; 2nd, That the outer walls are attributable to the restoration of the building in the ninth century; 3rd, That the Dome of the Chain was the model of the Dome of the Rock. These three propositions were argued in 1878 (“Tent Work in Palestine”).
It is now generally agreed that Constantine’s basilica of the Holy Sepulchre stood on the present site of the church, and there are, of course, many who regard Constantine’s site as of necessity the true one, while other writers have adopted the theory to which I drew attention in 1878, placing Calvary at the present Jeremiah’s Grotto. The main argument against the traditional site is that it must have been within the “second wall,” which was then the outer wall on the north, whereas we learn from the Epistle that “Christ suffered without the gate” (Heb. xiii. 12). It is certain that the position is suspiciously central. Some have tried to draw the second wall so as to exclude the church. The recovery of the rock sections shows how impossible is the line they propose, which is drawn in a valley commanded from outside. The west end of the second wall was discovered in 1886 within a few feet of the point shown as probable on my plan of 1878, and I believe this discovery to be the death-blow to the claims of the traditional site.