The Southern Stairs of the Temple Mount

The IBR Gospels group has been back in the States about a week, but the memories of our experience in Jerusalem, Galilee, and with the film crew are still very present in our minds. For me one of the most striking experiences was being on the stairs at the southern end of the temple mount. Herod the Great’s accomplishment—and those working long after his death—to expand the temple mount was a phenomenal achievement. Retaining walls with huge stones enabled the topography to be reshaped so that the temple mount was doubled in size to approximately thirty-five acres. The stairs at the southern end led to the double and triple Huldah gates through which visitors to the temple would have entered an underground passageway. This elaborate passageway went under the Royal Portico and came up to the temple mount. The area just below the stairs (and elsewhere also) is dominated by mikva’ot, Jewish purification pools, which allowed visitors to purify themselves before ascending to the temple mount. Many mikva’ot have a small barrier down the middle of the stairs. This barrier would separate those exiting from those entering so that the former would not be contaminated by the latter. We had an interesting discussion about this process while standing in a mikva. Note the picture from inside the mikva. The broad stairway is so fascinating to me because it provided access for people to the Huldah gates, because it is clearly goes back to Herod’s temple, and because, if we know anywhere that Jesus walked, it is here. I am not emotional about places Jesus walked, but this place is special.

Something else is striking about being on the temple mount. Herod’s architectural achievement is stunning, and even a little knowledge of Judaism underscores how absolutely central the temple was for all Jews. The early Christians too continued to teach and pray in the temple even toward the end of Paul’s ministry. What more important place was there where people who loved God should go to pray? Early Christians rarely polemicized against the temple. Hebrews argues the temple is obsolete, not that it is bad. Still, for all this appreciation for the temple something changed. First, there is a temple replacement motif, especially in the Gospel of John. The presence of God is seen in Jesus, not on the temple mount. Second, after the resurrection Christians were soon unlike nearly anyone else and would have appeared odd to everyone. Even if some Jewish Christians prayed in the temple, they had neither temple nor priest. Cities in the Greco-Roman world had numerous temples, and virtually every religion had temples and priests. The Qumran community spiritualized temple and cultus but always with the expectation that one day the polluted temple would be set right. Christians spiritualized the temple and cultus too—most obviously at 1 Peter 2:4-5, but they knew they did not need a temple or priests. With Jesus they knew of a sacrifice that ended all sacrifice.