Jerusalem’s Old City isn’t the oldest part of Jerusalem. That’s the City of David, just to its southeast. Doron Spielman was there as part of the team when three astounding discoveries were made there, documenting our Jewish people’s ancient presence – King David’s palace, the real Pool of Siloam, and the Pilgrimage Road connecting the Pool to the Temple Mount. Just opened in full to the public, it’s the route pilgrims, including the most famous, took after purifying themselves in the Pool up to the Temple. You can traverse in their footsteps today.
Among the Jewish heritage-damaging myths we ourselves repeat is that “the Western Wall is the sole surviving remnant of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. It’s not, and no one presents the general reader with the extant evidence written in stone more authoritatively than archeological architect Leen Ritmeyer who worked for years with Benjamin Mazar and other on-the-site archeologists. In Sherlock Holmes-worthy blends of observation and reasoning, Ritmeyer documents the substantial remains of Herod’s Mount that are still there, where the First Temple’s 500 cubit square Temple Mount had lain, where on the Mount the Temples had stood, and where in their Holy of Holies, Mount Moriah’s summit, es Sakra, The Rock, can still be seen today the slot carved by King Solomon for the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Biblical Archeology Review’s Hershel Shanks assessed Ritmeyer makes “quite a good case.”
This is the thorough full version of what Ritmeyer laid out for laymen in Secrets. You’ll read here in deeper detail what’s still there that’s Herodian, Hasmonean and even a bit First Temple; about the gates and their interiors, some of which are also still there, about the underground tunnels and cisterns, about the Temples themselves and their Holy of Holies, including the place for the Ark. The Temples really were there. The evidence, still there, is written in stone.
This moving tour through Samaria, Jerusalem and Judea by Friedman and Pompeo, touring religious and historical places revered by Jews and Christians, was scheduled to play in American theaters for only two nights. On both it draw greater audiences than any other film, and its run was extended. Now you can get the DVD and see and hear and share in what visiting these places meant to this religious Christian and religious Jew.
Not for beginners, but if you’d like to come as close as you can to one exceedingly moving find on a dig after another, Masada’s your book. Famed archeologist and military leader Yadin put it this way: “It is not my purpose to offer a dry scientific record, rather it is to enable the reader to share our remarkable experience.” Does he succeed? Yes, he does.
