Here is a real “blast from the past.” Ernest Martin had released his theories on the Jewish Temple in the time of Jesus not being located up over where the dome of the Rock is today, but to the south in the “City of David” area. In this lecture, given in the year 2000 at a BAS seminar, offers an overview of Martin’s new proposal as well as the more standard view most historians and archaeologists hold. My own view I do not lay out here and subsequent discussions have added a lot in the past 20 years, but this first presentation at an academic conference stands as an important part of the unfolding story. I might also add that there is no need to suppose that the 1st Temple and the 2nd Temple were at the same location–it is possible, maybe likely, but Martin originally defended his view only for first Temple (10th c. BCE) down into the Persian period.
Unfortunately, this question is not merely an academic one–but for Jews who want to honor the Temple Mount, Muslims who consider the Haram the 3rd most sacred site in Islam, and millions of evangelical Christians who expect a new Jewish Temple that will be taken over by the “AntiChrist,” the issues become heated and even have been the catalysts for violence on all SIDES in the past 50 years.
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