Torah In Middle Bronze Age Archaeology

Jewish Male Circumcision At 8 Days Old

Israelite rituals that preceded the Old Testament were transcribed into it and many have been retained through the ages including by today's contemporary Orthodox Jews. For example; post wedding celebrations are held by families and friends each day for seven days, the practice was first described by Jacob's father-in-law. Or male circumcision on the eight day after birth was instituted by Abraham for his son Isaac. Or the passage of Levite priesthood that continues to be passed from father to son in todays Jewish communities. Each of these rituals began hundreds of years before Moses transcribed the Old Testament. Ongoing practice of Biblical traditions underlie the authenticity of orthodox Judaism. 

One such glaring example relates temple worship and was recently discovered in a stone temple carved in the bedrock of Mount Moriah's eastern slope - we will call this complex Temple Zero since it precedes Jerusalem's First and Second Temple. Carbon dated evidence from the bedrock surface proves that Temple Zero has not been used for worship after1535 BCE around the time Jacobs Family emigrated from the region. The small number of artifacts discovered in Temple Zero and their periods obfuscated clues as too how the site was originally used, but its original Middle Bronze Age, bedrock bound, features strongly relate to Biblical writings, Jewish laws, customs and traditions.

This collection of videos captures the recent tour of Temple Zero

The most essential and uniquely Jewish feature, is Temple Zero's western orientation, precisely defined by the altar platform (Room 1 above) and matzevah (room 4). No other Middle Bronze Age cultic structure, with a western orientation, exists in Israel. All other cults, of this time, faced east to pay homage to the sun. Monotheism, attributed to Abraham and the high priest of Salem, Malchi-Tzedek to whom Abraham tithed, turned against the sun.

More than six hundred years later this orientation found its way into the western facing structure and priestly practices in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle that Moses built, then into Jerusalem's permanent Temples. Finally synagogues of the world expressed this by facing prayer structures toward the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and priestly services turned their backs to the entrance. The cultic origins of Christianity enshrined the orientation of its priests and altars toward the rising sun in the east and in modern churches priests face toward the entrance. 

Until the temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt, the daily Orthodox ritual is to verbalize the prescribed sacrificial offerings of Jerusalem's temples. However, well before contemporary prayer was instituted, the Book of Leviticus, as evidenced by the 2000 year old burnt Leviticus scroll described sacrificial rites in detail, yet Temple Zero already facilitated many of these. Mostly these sacrificial rites are expounded in Jewish law requiring animals, wine, flour, oil and water. These laws describe that purity was retained only in stone or bedrock vessels. The construct and features of Temple Zero facilitated these rituals hundreds of years before the Leviticus text was transcribed by Moses.

The main elements of Jewish sacrifice includes oil, flour, wine and young domesticated sheep. Only unblemished animals could be sacrificed for the holy altar, this always biased selection to younger animals. Carved low in the bedrock of the room 5 (see below) that was once used to process slaughtered animals for the offering altar, we found a place to tether animals. The tether was low (~30cm) to the ground which supports its primary use for younger, smaller animals. 

Animal tether. Simulated use seen in image below

Olives would have been pressed to protect purity by flowing oil into a bedrock or a stone vessel that was not connected to a pipe or channel, typically used for vollumous production. These features are evident in the oil press (room 2) carved into the bedrock of the mountain. Once pressed oil would have been cupped out of the bedrock vessel into a stone vessel and immediately poured over refined or parched flour and offered with a sacrifice.

Pouring liquids onto corners of the altar included wine, water or blood that once flowed into a liquids channel to a pit or onto dust that was cleared daily and deposited outside the area of the temple. During slaughter blood from the animals neck was captured in a convex based stone vessel. At the base of the altar, a convex vessel would rest in its concave counterpart carved in the bedrock (see Room 1 below) in preparation for sprinkling blood of the sacrificed animal on the altar.  

The South-East (SE) corner of the foundation of the First and Second Temple altar drew on a tradition (Zevachim 53b) sourced in the biblical verse that it was in the tribal territory of Judah, the other corners were in Benjamin: “Benjamin is a wolf that tears apart; in the morning he devours the prey, and in the evening he divides the spoil” (Genesis 49:27). Now, based on Ronny Reich's declaration that the Gihon Spring was known as Ein Shemesh, the tradition conclusively followed the altar at Temple Zero. 

These rich features on the bedrock of Temple Zero support the Jewish origins of our pre-Biblical Israelite (Jacob) heritage and are uncannily aligned with the declaration in Deuteronomy 33:4 that:  

תּוֹרָ֥ה צִוָּה־לָ֖נוּ מֹשֶׁ֑ה מוֹרָשָׁ֖ה קְהִלַּ֥ת יַעֲקֹֽב׃ 

The Torah Moses charged us with is the heritage of the congregation of Jacob.

 

Water, Water Everywhere, Will Archaeologists Drink?

On the eastern slopes of the City of David, a Middle Bronze Age water system, remnants of a reservoir and a water channel was carbon dated to 1515 BCE. There is no other later evidence of water supply to rooms of the rock-cut-temple. No alternative water system exists, yet despite the absence of later evidence some archaeologists, still insist that the rock-cut-temple, in its present form, should instead be dated to the Iron Age. Academic isolation and over simplification of context, distorts understanding at this complex, ancient location. However, the video below offers the most comprehensive explanation. Before viewing, it's important to illustrate the passage of water as it once flowed to the rooms, more than 3500 years ago (follow the Area U/C map below). 

Room 2 (with tethered animal for slaughter) 

Room 1 (with impression of sacrificial altar on platform)

Water passage. Room 2 (center-foreground)
 Room 1 (upper right-background)

 

Area U water system leading to Area C rooms (1 and 2)

The video explains that the rock-cut-temple was active up until 1500 BCE (Middle Bronze), then buried, out of site until 700 BCE (Iron), exposed at that time, reburied during wall construction and finally excavated 13 years ago.

Jerusalem and Jacob - Calling Archaeology Detectives

Fifty years and tens of millions of dollars have failed to explain 700 years of missing evidence from ancient Jerusalem's eastern slope, at the City of David. The gap perpetuates confusion among archaeologists, who otherwise would prefer to date the significant rock-cut-temple to the Iron Age. You see, between the Middle Bronze (3500 years ago) and Iron Age (2800 years ago) no direct evidence, in the rock-cut-temple, has been discovered and that presents a problem. 

Rock-cut-temple on eastern slope after ground cover was finally cleared in 2023.
The adjacent house, which was built 20 years ago, on compressed ground cover, is now suspended on steel plates with pilons to bedrock

Around the rock-cut-temple, there is undisputed, carbon dated evidence of occupation and Middle Bronze Age use up until 3500 years ago, then +700 years of nothing, and plenty Iron Age evidence after that. The dearth of Iron Age evidence, starting around 2800 years ago, dominates academic papers and influences narratives about the significant rock-cut-temple, yet this evidence gap, that screams the loudest, is ignored by archaeologists. In this case the absence of evidence proves the evidence!

If not for two samples (#9964/5) of organic matter, trapped below and above plaster layers of a man made channel that once fed water into at least the southern-most rock-cut-room, archaeologists would have a more simplified proof of Iron Age origins.

Sample #9964 lay undisturbed, protected by natural ground cover, above the plaster channel for 3500 years. Sample #9965 was protected by the plaster layers of the channel above it. 

At blue line B (map below) the U (Sample #9964) and X (Sample #9965)

"B" marks the excavation site of organic samples, from above and below the plastered water channel.
Other samples #9181/9962 (top) and building 1948 (right) dated between 1820-1510 BCE. 

Water channel flowed from a reservoir to the bedrock floor.
No evidence of an Iron Age water channel and reservoir has been located 

The barrage of published Iron Age evidence and the inferred dating of the rock-cut-temple is refuted by carbon dated samples at several locations. However, most powerful are #9964 and #9965 two 3500 year old, Middle Bronze Age, organic samples that date the water channel construction and last use. Similar plaster layers, on the bedrock, in the western, rear end of a storage room, present insufficient proof of Iron Age shaping of bed rock. Such plaster remnants, dated to the Iron Age, may have been laid by Iron Age occupiers of the homes constructed above the bedrock.

A solution is not easily forthcoming because absence of evidence is an insufficient academic standard of proof. The water channel remains the strongest proof of use and there is no other evidence of water service to the temple. Unfortunately, +700 years after the water channel was last used, in preparation for construction of the City's eastern defensive wall, the rock-cut-temple was cleared to the bedrock to accommodate the 4 meter wide wall. Immediately west, the water channel was recently traced, running, from the remains of a reservoir (at blue B), underneath Iron Age homes to the southernmost rock-cut-room. However, archaeologists won't confirm that the channels Middle Bronze Age construction is directly linked to construction of the rock-cut-temple. Instead, they promote an alternative, unproven, theory that the water channel was cut (at blue B) by constructors and at the southern rock-cut-room during its Iron Age construction. This hypothesis only exacerbates the absence of an Iron Age water system.

Clearance of the area by Iron Age wall constructors, remains the best explanation for the absence of direct evidence, but what, if any direct evidence, was cleared from the bedrock at that time remains a mystery and whether the rock-cut-temple had been buried under ground cover, for +700 years, before the wall constructors cleared it, remains inconclusive. 

Any suggestion that #9964, and other samples #9181 and #9962 survived, in situ, above ground, for +700 years, while Iron Age Area U and rock-cut-temple was apparently constructed, exposed or in active use is preposterous. More likely the last use of the rock-cut-rooms is also tied to the date of sample #9964 and construction of the rock-cut-rooms dated to sample #9965 sometime between 1615 BCE and 1880 BCE or prior.

Accumulated ground cover concealing the rock-cut-temple site as it was in 2012.
Adjacent house built on compressed ground cover.

Promotion of an academic theory for Iron Age construction of the rock-cut-temple is further refuted by surviving evidence immediately north (#9181 and #9962), of sample #9964 (from the water channel) and east, from below building 1948, dated to 1820 BCE and in mortar 1.2m above bedrock dated to 1605 BCE. These additional samples strongly increase the probability of a Middle Bronze Age origin and suggest that a significant Iron Age construction of the rock-cut-temple would have disrupted at least #9181 and #9962 laying bare on the surface of these excavated areas. 

Academia faces significant challenges in admitting a Middle Bronze Age origin because of Iron Age bias in tangential data and the Biblical alignment to the archaeological last use, defined by at least sample #9964. The period of carbon dating overlaps patriarch Jacob who, Jewish commentators attest stayed briefly on Mount Moriah. According to Biblical chronology Jacob's first encounter on Mount Moriah took place in 1573 BCE. Then, he and his family arrived on Mount Moriah in 1553 BCE and left the region in 1523 BCE. Jacob immigrated to Egypt, where his descendants remained for 250 years before they returned to their ancestral land. The overlapping 100 year use of the water channel (1535 BCE) with time of Jacob makes this discovery remarkable particularly because of its potentially exciting context to the  rock-cut-temple and matzevah found within the temple location. According to the Bible Jacob erected a matzevah at this location (Genesis 35:14).

The matzevah, "standing stone" or anointing pillar at the rock-cut-temple.

The video above tells the comprehensive story.