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00:00Solomon's Temple, the holiest site in Judaism.
00:12Solomon's Temple was the crowning jewel of ancient history.
00:18Was it built from God's own blueprints?
00:21We know that the Babylonians came around the year 586 BC and destroyed the Temple.
00:31We have no extra-biblical evidence for the existence of Solomon.
00:37Did Solomon and the Temple really exist?
00:41Was the Temple attacked and wiped from history?
00:45Holy Land archaeologists search for answers.
00:49It's beautiful to say that the Bible actually describes a very realistic picture.
00:56I see no connection between these remains and the time of Solomon.
01:00I am making a very clear distinction between research and faith.
01:06Was religion's most sacred shrine fact or fiction?
01:19Jerusalem, a crucible of faith and religion.
01:29Many consider it the holiest city in the world.
01:32It's virtually impossible to come up with the number of shrines and holy places sacred to so many different people over so many thousands of years.
01:46This is the central locus of religion.
01:49Biblical scholars say Israel's King David built Jerusalem in the 10th century BC.
01:59After wandering for generations, Jews finally had a home.
02:04But it was King David's son Solomon who God chose to later build the Temple.
02:09The resting place for Judaism's holiest relic.
02:15What made Solomon's Temple unique was the presence of the Ark of the Covenant.
02:22King Solomon is one of the best known figures of the ancient world.
02:41Crowned King of Israel while still a teenager, his wisdom was legendary.
02:47The Temple's location was said to be a hillside steeped in Jewish history.
02:57Now known as the Temple Mount.
03:00The Temple Mount has been considered by tradition to be the location of the Garden of Eden.
03:09It is the place where Abraham came at God's command to sacrifice Isaac.
03:17It is where Solomon built his Temple.
03:22The Temple itself is described in quite a bit of detail in the Book of 1 Kings.
03:27It was 90 feet in length and 30 feet wide.
03:35Solomon's Temple became God's house on earth.
03:42Once the Temple was built by Solomon,
03:45we no longer had the option to bring sacrifice anywhere else.
03:50The Muslims have Mecca, they have Medina, and a third, distant third, they have Jerusalem.
03:56But for us there is only Jerusalem.
03:58That is the direction we have always prayed towards.
04:00It is the direction that has always been in our hearts.
04:03And that is where it is. The Temple Mount is it.
04:06It was the center of Jewish spiritual life. Its legacy quickly spread.
04:15I think the issue of the Temple Mount is a microcosm of life in the rest of the world.
04:21Canadians of faith will care about this, I think, because many people have a sense of the importance of religious sites and religious practice to the spirit of a people.
04:31But today, Israel's holiest shrine is under fire.
04:37Some archaeologists say the Temple, King David and King Solomon, could be exaggerated works of fiction.
04:45Some scholars have a notion of the Temple of Solomon as some sort of great beautiful edifice looking like the Parthenon in Athens or a great temple in Upper Egypt.
05:01This is not the case.
05:02It would be a shocking blow to biblical authority, reducing the 10th century founders to mythical characters of the past.
05:15And it would be a blow to the politics of the region.
05:18Today, the Temple Mount represents the struggle between Jews and Muslims.
05:24Both sides claim it as their own.
05:26This is where the central struggle of humanity is taking place.
05:33So that's Jerusalem, and the center of Jerusalem is the Temple Mount.
05:37It is a contentious debate.
05:41History says two Jewish temples were built here.
05:46Both were destroyed.
05:48For 1400 years, Islam's Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque have stood in their place.
06:00Constructed while Jews were banished from Jerusalem.
06:04But archaeology on the Temple Mount is forbidden.
06:15What lies beneath Islam's sacred shrines remains a mystery.
06:23As archaeologists, I can tell you that Jerusalem is the most complicated site under earth.
06:27The Temple Mount, it's 145,000 square meters in area.
06:35I can safely say this is the largest unknown archaeological site in Israel.
06:46The search for Solomon and Jerusalem's founder, King David, must begin outside the Temple Mount perimeter.
06:53We have to understand that the excavation in Jerusalem is very complicated.
06:59There's layers above layers.
07:01Some of the structures have been reused.
07:03Some of them, we don't really know what is myth and what is reality.
07:07Next, the search for King David.
07:11His son, King Solomon.
07:13And history's most famous sacred shrine.
07:16Was it destroyed and lost forever?
07:20Or did it ever exist at all?
07:27Just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Temple Mount,
07:31archaeologists are searching for Israel's 10th century B.C. kings, David and Solomon.
07:36If we're talking about the Biblical period and Biblical figures, of course, we start with King David.
07:52Ailat Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University is searching for King David's lost palace.
08:06The Bible says that Haram King of Israel built the palace for King David.
08:14They were allies.
08:18He just, you know, became the king of all Israel.
08:21And he suggested to build a palace for him.
08:25So the question is where the palace was built.
08:29Mazar believes it was built here, on an ancient site known as the stepped stone structure.
08:36The site has puzzled investigators for decades.
08:40Mazar says her analysis of ancient relics is revealing a window into the time of King David.
08:47This area was not constructed until the 10th century B.C.
08:52We know this date because of the pottery that is coming from the lowest floor layer.
08:59So it's a huge construction that supports something on the top.
09:03This is probably, as it seems now, according to the date, according to the structure, the sophistication, the location, everything it shows and indicates for a very high probability that we're talking about King David's palace.
09:18At the Tel Dan archeological site, on the northern border of Lebanon, an ancient inscription was discovered in the 1990s.
09:33It brings King David to life.
09:37The Tel Dan inscription is inscribed on a smooth surface of basalt.
09:56The letters were linear letters.
10:01And these letters were made using a chisel and a hammer.
10:06And they would have been readable by a small portion of the population.
10:11But it was clearly designed to be observed and seen by people who were coming and going from the city.
10:26In other words, it's a sort of propaganda.
10:27It was an inscription proclaiming the victory of the Aramean king over a coalition of numerous other kings, among them the king of the house of Israel and the king of the house of David.
10:42Archeologist David Elan says the Tel Dan Stella offered the first solid evidence to the existence of King David.
10:49Before it was found, in 1992-93, in several pieces, David was considered by many to be a purely mythological figure.
11:03When that was found, then we had an inscription with the name of David that was nearly contemporaneous with his life span,
11:10that indicated that he was probably an historical figure and the establisher of a royal dynasty that served for hundreds of years.
11:23And just outside the holy city of Bethlehem, Dr. Yossi Garfinkel is revealing more evidence of King David.
11:31And this time, David is leading an empire.
11:34And our site was really the first time that we have a fortified city in Judah from the time of King David.
11:42This is the big discovery.
11:46At the site known as Herbek Kayafa, Garfinkel believes these fortified remains are the lost biblical city of Sharaim.
11:55A city called Sharaim is mentioned three times in the biblical tradition.
12:07And in this tradition, the city is associated with the Valley of Deilah and associated with King David.
12:13And the meaning of Sharaim is two gates.
12:16And here, this city is located in the Valley of Deilah, and in the city we have two gates.
12:19So the biblical tradition and the site fits each other perfectly.
12:25The region was thought to be uninhabited in the 10th century.
12:29But radiocarbon analysis of ancient olive pits proved otherwise.
12:34And the big surprise was in the year 2008 after we sent four olive pits to Oxford University for dating.
12:42And the dating was from the time of King David.
12:43And this was really amazing.
12:45I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the letter.
12:50Garfinkel believes this is not only where King David ruled his empire.
12:55He believes Herbek Kayafa is where David emerged as a great warrior.
13:01The site of the Battle of David and Goliath.
13:04According to the biblical tradition, the Philistine came and parked near Soho.
13:13And the people of Israel with Saul were standing opposite the Philistine for 40 days.
13:18And each day Goliath, a huge Philistine warrior, a giant, came out and said,
13:22Choose between you one person that will fight me.
13:25And if we win, you will be our slaves.
13:27And if you win, we will be your slaves.
13:30And this was the situation for 40 days.
13:31And then one day David came.
13:34And when David came and he heard the story, he said,
13:36No problem, I am volunteering to fight the Philistine giant.
13:44And what he did, he went to the river, collected five stones.
13:47And then he came against the Philistine.
14:04Sling a stone into his forehead.
14:09And killed him in one moment.
14:10But as David Alon warns, proving King David is one thing.
14:19Solomon and his temple remain a mystery.
14:23Solomon may or may not have existed.
14:26As to his temple, did Solomon build it or not?
14:29That's a whole other question.
14:30The archaeological sites of Tel Dan and Kribek Kayafa offer the first real evidence to the existence of King David.
14:43But while King David was a great warrior, the temple of God was built by a man of peace.
15:00The tradition says that David established the kingdom and he started to collect building material to build a temple, but he never managed to do it.
15:07Now, according to the biblical text, it was Solomon who was the chosen one.
15:30King Solomon, immortalized in the Old Testament, carries a legacy that has survived.
15:36thousands of years.
15:39Solomon was famed throughout the ancient world for his wisdom.
15:44When he ascended the throne, he was given a choice by the Lord for any gift he desired.
15:52And the request that he made was for wisdom.
15:57With that wisdom, he constructed the most impressive religious shrine on earth.
16:02Solomon's temple was seven years in the making.
16:12It took 70,000 laborers on the temple mount and it created the most enduring and legendary mythologically rich structure of the ancient world.
16:24The famed temple of God.
16:29The famed temple of God.
16:41But that's just the Bible's interpretation.
16:43No archaeological evidence of Solomon has ever been found.
16:48Until now.
16:50We are now in the middle of the Temple Mount on the north and the city of David on the south.
16:57And this is the area of the Acropolis of King Solomon.
17:01Archaeologist Eilat Mazar believes she has found the first example of Solomonic ruins set between King David's palace and the Temple Mount itself.
17:14Now we can show the actual date of this part of the fortification line.
17:20is as early as the second part of the 10th century BCE.
17:28This is exactly the time of King Solomon and this is exactly what the Bible says.
17:32They are the only Solomonic ruins ever found.
17:46Just meters from the legendary site of the temple.
17:51Standing here at the city gate, we see that this area is actually on a low level relatively to the area of the Temple Mount.
17:59This is more and less what people in ancient times in the first temple period needed to do in order to come closer to the temple that King Solomon built.
18:13They needed to cross the awful area where King Solomon's palace was and come near the area of the temple itself.
18:21For decades, no one knew how far back this site dated.
18:26Mazar's analysis of ancient pottery has convinced her we are on the temple's threshold.
18:38In order to know when the structure was built, we have mainly two floor layers.
18:44The upper one gives us the date of the latest floor, but if we take the material only from the lowest floor, we will have the construction date.
18:54Every little tiny piece of shard we examined, taking only from within.
19:04And the most amazing thing is that the pottery is no later than the late 10th century.
19:11Any other suggestion will be just a game. It's not serious.
19:23With archaeology in the Temple Mount forbidden, Mazar's Ofel site is as close as investigators will ever get to finding Solomon's Temple.
19:31But throughout the Holy Land, there is compelling evidence to its existence.
19:43According to David Elan, a near replica of Solomon's Temple can be found at Tel Dan.
19:49So we're at a pilgrimage route, a road, with shops on either side of them.
20:02Pilgrims would have come with their animals to bring their first sacrifice.
20:08They also would have made purchases or made trades.
20:11This would have been something that you saw in Jerusalem, in the Temple.
20:15Commerce was everywhere.
20:16As we continue into the city, we become increasingly more engaged in the cultic, religious aspect of the site.
20:31Finally, a deserted holy structure at the summit.
20:35A rare glimpse of what Solomon's Temple may have looked like.
20:39And in front of us, we see the huge horned altar made of stone.
20:46And we see the temple on top of the platform.
20:49This whole compound is like the Temple Mount compound.
20:53And now we're walking up the stairs onto the highest platform, which is where the actual temple building, the abode of God, was located.
21:11Normally, we wouldn't be able to go up here. Only the priests could come up here.
21:23Next, across one of the world's most fortified borders.
21:27And beneath the controversial walls of Old Jerusalem, the foundation stones and the ancient materials of Solomon's Lost Temple.
21:41Throughout the Holy Land, investigators are tracing the building blocks of Solomon's Temple.
21:48Solomon's Temple was built of stone, of course, but the stone was covered with the cedars of Lebanon.
21:57And those cedars were then covered in gold.
22:04The brass, bronze, and copper for Solomon's Temple were all cast in Jericho along the Jordan Valley.
22:17Materials poured in from all over the region.
22:23It was one of the largest logistical projects in history.
22:27Now, 150 kilometers outside Jerusalem, the source for the Temple's precious metals may be revealed.
22:43We are in Jordan, we are in southern Jordan, in Kapoor or district of Finan.
22:58Archaeologist Muhammad Najjar is part of a team that has surveyed more than 200 mines throughout Jordan's ancient Edomite Kingdom.
23:13This area is the largest copper ore district in the Liban.
23:18While it was known that precious metals had been produced here for centuries, Najjar's work now reveals that copper was mined here during the reign of King Solomon.
23:32Before we started our project here, everybody was thinking that the Edomites are not visible, archaeologically speaking, before the seventh century.
23:47Today, visible evidence remains of a vast mining empire.
24:02Some of these copper mines shafts can go down for about 50 meters or 70 meters.
24:14And then, when you reach the copper ore deposit, you start to expand in different directions.
24:23It was horrible, I mean, for the ancient miners.
24:35Slaves had been sent here, criminals.
24:44There are some evidence that some of the ancient miners were sitting inside the mines for months.
25:01Just miles from Finan's mines, smelting operations turned raw materials into workable metals.
25:07This is one of the smelting sites in Finan area.
25:17What we see is the waste product.
25:19We see the slags, the waste product of copper smelting.
25:24We calculated the amount of copper produced here at about 200,000 tons of copper.
25:44Najjar believes the mines at Finan may be a missing link to Solomon's Temple.
25:49We know the description of the temple, and we know that it had been decorated with copper plates and copper pillars.
26:06Finan area where we are standing now is only 150 kilometers southeast of Jerusalem.
26:14So, it would make perfect sense that the copper used in the decoration of the temple was produced here.
26:35Back in Jerusalem, the best visible evidence for Solomon's Temple may lie directly beneath the old city walls.
26:43The author James Wasserman has studied Solomon's Temple for more than five years.
26:56He explores a network of caverns known as Solomon's Quarry, extending five blocks beneath the old city.
27:04This limestone is called Melech stone, which is royal stone.
27:21And this is presumably the stone from which Solomon's Temple was quarried.
27:29In the shadow of the remains, he uncovers a window into temple construction techniques employed thousands of years ago.
27:42The process by which these immense blocks were quarried involved taking stones like this and cutting, chiseling their essential shape, leaving them attached on the ground next to each other.
28:01And next to each other, there would be a whole war, let's say, of these kinds of stones.
28:08And then they would wedge boards in between them, beams in between each of the stones.
28:15They would be very narrowly together with one another.
28:20And then pour water on the boards.
28:23And then as the wood, the beams expanded, the idea would be that it would actually break off from the floor of the bedrock.
28:35And this is almost an example of what one of them may have looked like.
28:41The number of blocks that were used are almost incomprehensible.
28:51We're talking about all of the walls of the old city of Jerusalem were built of these rocks, presumably from this very quarry, let alone the temples themselves.
29:04The general stones were two and a half tons each, quite, quite massive.
29:12There were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands involved in the construction.
29:22From early evidence of King David at Tel Dan to Eilat-Mazar's Solomonic ruins,
29:29Biblical archaeologists have made a strong case for Solomon's temple and the Old Testament's historical timeline.
29:38But for some opponents, it is not enough.
29:42The more I read into biblical scholarship, we understood that one cannot read the biblical story in a naive way as if one reads, you know, the newspaper of yesterday.
29:52Next, Dr. Israel Finkelstein separates fact from faith on Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
29:59In the heart of Israel, a scientific standoff.
30:09Were King David and Solomon real?
30:13Is the Temple a work of fiction?
30:15Most archaeologists believe these biblical secrets lie hidden beneath thousands of years of conflict.
30:25But some archaeologists believe the conflict is the Bible itself.
30:42Now, a new approach to archaeology is challenging Israel's past.
30:55Low chronology claims the 10th century timelines of David, Solomon and the Temple are wrong.
31:07The author Israel Finkelstein is the father of low chronology.
31:12Israel Finkelstein created a revolution of sorts in our profession.
31:19Until Finkelstein came around in the mid-1990s, most archaeologists were looking at the biblical text in a sort of naive fashion as straight out history.
31:30In my opinion, Israel Finkelstein is close to brilliant.
31:35He likes to tear down sacred cows and not everybody likes that.
31:40Two hours north of Jerusalem lies the heart of Finkelstein's low chronology.
31:47This is Megiddo, better known by its apocalyptic Greek translation, Armageddon.
31:58Here, Finkelstein put the Bible to the test, challenging 10th century ruins believed to be a palace of King Solomon.
32:06First we see the famous palace which had been excavated by Iga el-Yadin, the great Israeli archaeologist.
32:16It has recently been re-excavated by us and partially reconstructed.
32:21Yadin dated the monument to the time of King Solomon and took it as one of the best examples of the greatness of the days of Solomon and the Kingdom of Solomon.
32:32Radiocarbon dating has shifted the dates of this site by more than a century, forcing Solomon out of Megiddo's history books.
32:45With all this evidence which comes from re-evaluating the stratigraphy, re-evaluating the poetry and radiocarbon studies, radiocarbon dating in recent years,
32:55there can be no doubt that this building, this palace, dates to the beginning of the 9th century, to the time of the Northern Kingdom of Israel,
33:02and not to the days of Solomon in the 10th century BC.
33:09Finkelstein says Megiddo is just one example of a flawed system of archaeology, relying on the Bible for historical accuracy.
33:18There is a general understanding and agreement that the biblical story on David and Solomon was put in writing the way we see today,
33:28not earlier than the late 7th century BC, that is to say about three centuries after the days of Solomon.
33:35And during the three centuries there were elaborations and extensions and expansions of the story according to the needs,
33:43theological and ideological, of the authors, of the people of the time.
33:48He disputes the findings of archaeologists throughout the region, including Eilat Mazar's palace of King David.
34:00The excavation of the building which is described by Eilat Mazar as the palace of King David,
34:05first and foremost is a very important excavation.
34:08However, I don't think that one can identify one single big building which dates to the 10th century BC as the palace of King David.
34:17I would date it to the 9th century BC and I see no connection to the time of King David.
34:28And he believes Yossi Garfinkel's findings at Herbert Kayafa are flawed.
34:38He says radiocarbon dating of discarded olive pits is not enough to prove King David's 10th century BC empire.
34:47It does not, I think, say anything about the great united monarchy.
34:52I don't think that it shows a very elaborate administration of the time.
34:58It does not imply that David ruled over great territory.
35:04So, Herbert Kayafa tells us a lot and does not tell us other things.
35:11And this is the whole trick in archaeology, how to bridge between finds and interpretation.
35:18But Yossi Garfinkel says Herbert Kayafa has delivered low chronology's fatal blow.
35:25A low chronology is collapsing in one moment.
35:31It's not slowly, but once Herbert Kayafa was found, a fortified city and 10 radiocarbon dating from Oxford University made on olive pits
35:41proving the city to be formed from about 1050 BC to about 970 BC.
35:47If you take the biblical chronology, it's earlier than Solomon.
35:50Finally, Finkelstein claims Eilat Mazar's dating of Solomonic ruins at the Ophel site may be centuries off.
36:02There is also this notion there of the city wall of Jerusalem from the time of King Solomon.
36:09I see no connection between these remains and the time of Solomon.
36:12I see solid evidence from the point of view of archaeology, poetry, the way we date poetry.
36:24They should all be dated to late monarchic times.
36:27It's probably in the late 8th and 7th century BC.
36:31Eilat Mazar disagrees.
36:34It's not later.
36:35It's not earlier.
36:36And we can see in parallel to other sites that they have an earlier material and later material that this is the date that needs to be suggested.
36:45So this is the only place for the time being that we can point on structures that were so nicely preserved from the time of King Solomon all over Jerusalem.
36:57While archaeologists debate the existence of Solomon's empire, the Bible records its demise.
37:14King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
37:20His lust angered God, bringing an end to his reign and a curse on Israel.
37:30One of the other ways in which Solomon became quite famous was, shall we say, in his personal relationships and the number of wives that he had or at least the number of relationships he had with foreign women.
37:43It is at least purported by some that he constructed temples or idols even to some of these foreign women.
37:56Some of those grand plans like that are maybe a little too grand or were bound to fail in the long run.
38:02It seems that some of these different wives that Solomon brought in led him astray.
38:08It was a collapse of power that had far-reaching implications, leading to one of history's bloodiest battles.
38:21Solomon was punished by the Lord.
38:25Upon his death his kingdom was divided by a civil war.
38:34The ramifications of Solomon's fall.
38:40The division and weakening of the kingdom of Israel has had consequences that last until the present day.
38:57With the downfall of King Solomon, Jerusalem's destiny was doomed.
39:03Solomon's kingdom was split in two, finally conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.
39:16The siege of Jerusalem lasted 30 months.
39:20Finally, Babylonian armies broke through the city walls.
39:26We know that the Babylonians came around the year 586 B.C. and destroyed the temple.
39:45This is because Jerusalem revolt against the Babylonian hegemony in the ancient Near East.
39:51In 586, Nebuchadnezzar's armies completely overran Jerusalem, destroyed the temple,
40:20burned the houses, burned the palace, broke down the city walls, and destroyed whatever was left of the temple of Solomon.
40:33As the Babylonians came there, they took part of the people to exile, they took the king to exile, they took some of the prophets to exile.
40:46They basically came and destroyed the temple and the whole surrounding area around Jerusalem.
40:52Jews were driven from their homeland for 70 years, a turning point in history.
41:07Thousands of years later, the temple, its symbolism, and its controversy continues to be felt throughout the world.
41:15For me, the allegory of Solomon's temple is sufficient.
41:30It is sufficient for me to understand that God will indwell the purity of my heart if I welcome his presence within that heart.
41:45We have so many traditions. David and Solomon is just part of a very long tradition.
41:53You know, this is 3,000 years of history, and I see the whole 3,000 years as one unit.
42:00There are some people who have a mistaken notion that somehow this temple was a place where God lived,
42:08as if God was some sort of being that needed a house of that.
42:11That's not what God needs. God fills the whole universe. It's not what God is for.
42:15All Canadians and all peoples in the world need to understand and read the Jewish tradition,
42:24not to become Jews necessarily.
42:26But I think if everybody in the world, all religions, all peoples, read Jewish history,
42:32they will find something in Jewish history that refracts back to their history and makes it clear.
42:39The Temple Mount is very important for me as an Israeli, as a Jew.
42:49Not from the point of view of faith, but rather from the point of view of its role in the history of ancient Israel,
42:59as well as in the history of later periods, of Roman times, of the Second Temple,
43:04of the longings of Jews many centuries later to the longing for Jerusalem,
43:10for the Temple Mount, for the Wailing Wall.
43:13All this, again, makes one big accumulation, which is the centerpiece of my heritage and my culture.
43:20From David's victories in Jerusalem...
43:46From David's victories in Jerusalem...
43:51To Solomon's downfall...
43:54The Temple Mount has been the scene of joy and hardship.
44:02Beyond the Babylonian exile, new chapters would continue...
44:07With a second Temple...
44:09The Temple Mount is the destruction...
44:10And today, the prophecy of a third Temple.
44:17It is the world's most controversial parcel of land.
44:23Three thousand years after being deemed sacred ground...
44:28It continues to define the future.
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