The Jewish Temple Mount: Holy Grail for the Nations—Part 1
The Temple Mount, located in the heart of Israel’s capital Jerusalem, is coveted as a holy grail by the nations, but only actually revered as holy by the Jewish people. Currently still occupied by Muslims, this holiest site of Judaism is a geopolitical explosive that occupies a unique and crucial place in the End Times: a ‘bowl of intoxication’ for the nations, where past, present and future will converge in fateful ways for them.
Built by King Solomon as part of the construction of the First Temple and doubled in area by Herod nearly a thousand years later, the Temple Mount covers approximately 145 thousand square metres (14.5 acres) and is considered the largest square of antiquity. It is located on Mount Moriah, where, according to Jewish tradition, the cornerstone of the earth, the ‘Even Shiah’, is located and where the first man Adam was also created. Moreover, it is the place where God sent Abraham, then living in Beersheva, to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering. In Jewish tradition, therefore, the Temple Mount is described as ‘HaMakom’: The Place — the heart of all things in the undermoon.
Tabernacle
Moriah is a summit on the central part of the north-south running Judeo- Samaritan ridge, but at 741 metres it is not the highest. The Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus, located (north) east of it, both tower about 85 metres above it, and the mountain located southwest of Moriah, which today bears the name ‘Zion’, nearly 25 metres.
That precisely Moriah was chosen is extraordinarily appropriate from a ritual standpoint, since idols were always practiced on the highest mountaintops and thus were inherently unclean for Jewish worship. We also see this principle in Israel’s first capital Shilo, where the tabernacle containing the Ark of the Covenant stood for 369 years on an insignificant hill surrounded by high mountains.
Moriah, Salem, Jebus and Zion
The Temple Mount forms part of an intricate play of words regarding designations of the city of Jerusalem and the mountains surrounding it.
Despite its exalted position, urban development never took place on the Temple Mount. This was due to the lack of a natural water source. There was one in the adjacent Kidron Valley. This Gihon spring became the only water supply for the town of Salem (‘Peace’) which was located on a lower but very defendable southern spur of the Moriah. After Salem (also called Jebus after the Jebusites living there) was conquered by King David, it was given the name ‘Fortress of Zion’ and ‘City of David’.
David then bought the threshing floor located on Moriah from the Jebusite Arauna and built an altar to the God of Israel there. On that site, his son Solomon later built the First Temple.
Later, the name Jerusalem already mentioned in the biblical book of Joshua (10) came back into use for the entire city. ‘Zion’ afterwards became a synonym for Jerusalem and again later for the entire Land of Israel. Zionism as a Jewish return ideology obviously refers to this.
Jerusalem and Temple Mount not Really Sacred to Islam
It is dogma that Jerusalem is a holy city for Judaism, Christianity and Islam and that the same is true of the Temple Mount. This is factually correct for the first two religions, but not for Islam.
Jerusalem plays a central role in Judaism, as the eternal and indivisible religious and political capital of the Jewish people, and as the focal point of the Messianic redemption promised by God Himself. In it, the Temple Mount is the only place where the Jewish Third Temple can and will be built. The Western Wall (‘Wailing Wall’) is not Judaism’s holiest site, but the Temple Mount diagonally above it, currently still occupied by Muslims, is.
Consequently, Jerusalem plays a central role in the Jewish liturgy and daily prayer cycle. When praying, Jews always turn toward the Temple Mount, wherever they are.
Despite expulsions and exiles, Jews in the Diaspora throughout the millennia have kept alive the memory of and desire to return to Jerusalem, to Zion.
Jerusalem is also a holy city for Christians because they carry the Jewish books of the Bible in their tradition and because of the New Testament events that took place in Jerusalem, which have their physical manifestation in numerous bona fide Christian holy sites.
However, to the extent that Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are holy to Muslims, it is a holiness derived from Jewish and Christian traditions.
Jerusalem and Islam
Jerusalem does not appear once in the Qur’an, nor did events relevant to Islam take place there. The Islamic relationship with the city was artificially linked to Qur’anic verse 17:2, which recounts Islam founder Muhammad’s nocturnal air journey with the winged horse Boerak to the ‘distant mosque’ (‘Al-Aksa’). But Muhammad died in the year 632, and at that time there was no mosque in Jerusalem at all.
Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslims six years after Muhammad’s death. And it wasn’t until 660 that a (wooden) mosque was erected in the Temple Mount on the ruins of a Byzantine church. Not until 715, by order of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walied, ruling from Damascus, was a permanent structure erected there and named ‘Al- Masjied Al-Aksa’ (the distant mosque). With this, Jerusalem was incorporated post hoc into the Qur’an and the city was given a prominent but false role in the life of the Islam founder.
But when Muslims pray on the Temple Mount they do so tellingly in the direction of Mecca and with their backsides facing the spot where the Jewish Temples stood.
