Temple and the Antonia (J. Murphy-O'Connor)

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The Expository Times

DOI: 10.1177/0014524605054821 2005; 116; 325 The Expository Times

Jerome Murphy-O’connor The Temple and the Antonia

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T H E E X P O S I T O R Y T I M E S 325

A R T I C L E S

Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, and New Delhi)DOI: 10.1177/0014524605054821

Dr George Wesley Buchanan recently published a series of articles in this periodical arguing (a) that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was

built in the City of David on the Ophel Ridge above the Gihon Spring, and (b) that the vast esplanade hitherto considered to be the site of the temple, and now venerated by Muslims as the Haram esh-Sharif, was in fact the site of the Antonia fortress.1 In referring to these studies in the body of the text which follows I shall use the year followed by the page number in brackets.

Dr Buchanan makes frequent reference to recent archaeological discoveries on the Ophel Ridge, which makes his argument appear complicated, and uncontrollable except by specialized archaeologists. In fact his thesis rests on one simple observation.

When I thought of Ezekiel’s account of the way the water would flow out from under the threshold of the temple and on down to the Dead Sea (Ezek. 47:1), I immediately realized that the Jerusalem temple had to be located on the ridge above the spring of Siloam and not on the dry mound where the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque are now located. Ezekiel was a good geographer. He had lived in Jerusalem, and knew the topography and geography of the land. . . . He was not just imagining the way things had once been (2004, 289).

In other words, we are invited to believe that Ezekiel wrote of something that he saw.

The Temple and the AntoniaY

By JEROME MURPHY-O’CONNOR, OPÉcole Biblique et Archéologique Français, Jerusalem

Ezekiel 47:1 does not describe a physical reality, and so cannot be used to localize the Solomonic temple over the Gihon Spring. The channels leading from the spring were not designed to force water vertically to the surface of the ridge. The Haram es-Sharif was never the Antonia fortress; it was the site of the Jewish temple.

The Text of Ezekiel

Certainly Dr Buchanan takes Ezekiel literally. In his articles he insists again and again that water flowed through the temple from west to east, a point to which I shall return. The continuation of Ezekiel’s text, however, poses problems that Dr Buchanan does not appear to have considered.

He brought me out by the north gate and led me right round outside as far as the outer east gate where the water flowed out on the right-hand side. The man went off to the east holding his measuring line and measured off 1000 cubits. He made me wade across the stream; the water reached my ankles. He measured off another 1000 and made me wade across the stream again; the water reached my knees. He measured off another 1000 and made me wade across the stream again; the water reached my waist. He measured off another 1000; it was now a river which I could not cross (Ezek 47:2–5).

Our task now is to attempt to match this description to what is actually found outside Buchanan’s postulated temple on the Ophel Ridge. There are two types of cubit, the long cubit measuring 52 cm and the short cubit measuring 47 cm. The Guide measured off 4,000 cubits before Ezekiel reached deep water. Thus the prophet had waded either 2,080 m or 1,880 m, and had not yet reached mid stream, so these figures must be doubled to give the minimum width of the river. Many of the readers of The Expository Times, I am sure, have visited Jerusalem, and will retain a vivid memory of the Kidron Valley running down from Gethsemane,

1 ‘The Tower of Siloam’, The Expository Times, 115.2 (2003), 37–45; ‘Running Water at the Temple of Zion’, The Expository Times 115.9 (2004), 289–92; ‘The Area of the Temple at Zion’, The Expository Times 116.6 (2005), 181–89.



326 T H E E X P O S I T O R Y T I M E S T H E E X P O S I T O R Y T I M E S 327

and separating the Ophel Ridge from the Mount of Olives. Can they imagine a river some two miles wide in this valley, which is only about 500 m at its widest point? What would happen were this volume of water channelled vertically, as we shall see is essential to Dr Buchanan’s thesis?

Furthermore, when Ezekiel gets back to the bank he says, ‘I saw an enormous number of trees on each bank of the river’ (47:7). One has the impression that these had not been there when he ventured into the river! If they had, the width of the Kidron Valley at the point where we know that there was an east gate c. 1900 bc would have been even more restricted. Today it just contains a two-lane road. However great a geographer Ezekiel was, in ch. 47 he is certainly not describing the Kidron Valley at any point in its history.

One last point, according to Ezekiel, ‘The water flows east down to the Arabah and to the sea, and flowing into the sea it makes its waters wholesome’ (47:8). The sea can only be the Dead Sea whose salt-laden waters permit nothing to live in them. Even in bygone years when the Jordan River poured a volume of water comparable to that of Ezekiel into the Dead Sea, the rate of evaporation was so high that there was no significant change in the saline content of the water. Note the marvellous detail in the seventh-century ad mosaic map in Madaba, Jordan, where a fish swimming down the Jordan River meets another turning back at the entrance to the Dead Sea.

Clearly when Ezekiel describes the water flowing from the temple he is doing something other than describing a phenomenon that he witnessed.2 Why, then, should we take the reference to the source of the water in the temple literally? Should Dr Buchanan maintain that there is a shift in literary form between Ezekiel 47 verse 1 and verses 2–12, it would be most interesting to see him demonstrate it.

Raising Water to the Top of the RidgeTo explain the physical phenomenon that he reads into Ezekiel 47:1 Dr Buchanan says,

Before Hezekiah’s tunnel was built, this strong spring [Gihon] entered a well-developed shaft

and tunnel to force that water to the surface on top of the ridge. The shaft, called Warren’s shaft arose, perpendicular from the source at the spring. The shaft was 40 feet in height where it met the 130-foot horizontal tunnel that rose out of the ground [sic!] and brought the water from outside the walls to the surface of the land. From the tunnel the water appeared inside of the temple area, near the border of the Tyropoeon Valley (2005, 184; cf. 2004, 290).

The illustration of the ancient water systems of Jerusalem given in 2005, 185 is perfectly accurate, and when read correctly damns Dr Buchanan’s thesis definitively.3 The oldest rock-cut tunnel is that leading from the vaulted chamber. After a sharp drop it ran horizontally to the slope outside, where it overlooked a round rock-cut pool protected by two massive towers. This system is dated to the nineteenth century bc. Contemporary with this tunnel is another which runs along the east slope of the Ophel Ridge to the south and empties into Birket al-Hamra. Sometime in the eighth century bc the floor of the upper horizontal tunnel was lowered by cutting into the Mizzi Athmar. This led to the accidental discovery of Warren’s shaft, which is a natural charstic phenomenon, not as Dr Buchanan claims a construction (2004, 290). From the bottom of the shaft miners tunnelled first to the round rock-cut pool, and later directly to the spring. Not long before 701 bc Hezekiah’s tunnel was cut.

Warren’s shaft is critical to Dr Buchanan’s thesis, but its existence was not known and it was not connected to the spring at the time of Solomon. The eighth century bc date of the discovery of the shaft is firmly fixed by pottery found in the cutting waste. Therefore, the shaft cannot have supplied water first to the Jebusites (2005, 185), and then to the postulated first temple on the ridge. It is completely false to say that ‘the Jebusites had a superb running water system three thousand years ago that David and later kings continued to use’ (2005, 189; cf. 2004, 290). From the eighth century bc onwards it is theoretically possible that water should be forced

2 For recent suggestions, see M. Zwickel, ‘Die Tempelquelle Ezechiel 47: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung’, Evangelische Theologie 55 (1995), 140–54; N. D. Terblanche, ‘An Abundance of Living Waters: The Intertextual Relationship between Zechariah 14:8 and Ezekiel 47:1–12’, Old Testament Essays 17.1 (2004), 120–29.

3 On the order in which the various channels and tunnels were cut, and the precise dating, see R. Reich and E. Shukron, ‘The System of Rock-Cut Tunnels near Gihon in Jerusalem Reconsidered’, Revue Biblique 107 (2000), 5–17. The same two authors have also published a popular version, ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel. Warren’s Shaft Theory of David’s Conquest Shattered’, BAR 25.1 (1999), 22–33, 72.




up Warren’s shaft as Dr Buchanan claims, but there is not the slightest archaeological evidence that this was in fact the case.

What evidence there is militates against his thesis. For water to rise up a 40-foot shaft there must be nowhere else for it to go. At Gihon there was an alternative, namely, the channel running south to Birket al-Hamra, and there is no evidence that it was ever blocked. The situation became worse when Hezekiah cut his tunnel to bring water to the Pool of Siloam. This destroyed any possible pressure chamber that would force water up Warren’s shaft. Yet Dr Buchanan maintains that the two systems were in operation at the same time. He envisages ‘a system whereby part of the spring could still fill the [vertical] water channel and provide all the needed water in the city, but the rest would have been channelled through the tunnel to the Pool of Siloam’ (2004, 291). In his view, the sole purpose of the Pool of Siloam was to retain the overflow of the spring while an enemy was in the vicinity.

Even if Warren’s shaft functioned in the way Dr Buchanan claims, it could not have brought water to the temple. He insists again and again ‘The shaft and tunnel brought the water from the spring to the top of the ridge where the temple was constructed’ (2005, 186 my emphasis). Obviously he did not realize the significance of the heights above sea-level given in his own drawing (2005, 185). The highest point of the tunnel is 661.91 m above sea-level, but the top of the ridge is given as 696.19 m above sea-level. In other words, the arrival point of the tunnel is 34.28 m too low to supply water to the ridge! Even if we were to lop off a couple of metres to bring the ridge down to bedrock, it still would not work.

Moreover, if water came out of the tunnel, it would be on the wrong side of the hill. To quote Dr Buchanan again, ‘The place where the water came out of the ground was near the west wall of the enclosure’ (2005, 186). Clearly the text of Ezekiel has blinded him to the fact shown in his own drawing. The exit of the tunnel is on the east side of the ridge, on the slope of the Kidron Valley not that of the Tyropoeon Valley.

Dr Buchanan correctly reports that both The Letter of Aristeas (89) and Tacitus (Histories 5.12) mention a perennial spring within the temple. I can only say that wherever that temple was, it was not on the Ophel Ridge in Jerusalem.

The Location of the Antonia Fortress

In a previous paper I argued against Ernest Martin’s The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot 4 that if the claim that the Jewish temple was located above the Gihon Spring is to have any chance of success, it must offer a convincing explanation of the function of the vast area today known as the Haram esh-Sharif. Martin argued that it was the Antonia fortress, which was built as the camp of a Roman legion. In this he is now followed by Dr Buchanan (2005, 186–88). I put forward a series of arguments that this could not be the case:5 (1) permanent Roman camps had rounded corners whereas those of the Haram are angular; (2) legion camps uniformly had one gate in each of the four walls, but in the first century bc the Haram had nine gates, 2 in the east wall, 2 in the south wall, 4 in the west wall facing the city, and 1 in the north wall; (3) the average size of a permanent legion camp was 50 acres whereas the Haram is only 36 acres; (4) no legion camp was ever surrounded by porticos, but the Haram had porticos in the Herodian period as is witnessed by the beam-sockets in the cliff beneath the Omariyya School; (5) no legion camp would have had on the summit of its southern wall, and facing outwards, a stone inscribed in Hebrew ‘To the place of trumpeting’, yet one was found smashed on the Herodian street at the south-west corner of the Haram esh-Sharif.

All of these points are studiously ignored by Dr Buchanan, who contents himself with repeating Martin’s assertion that Josephus’ description of the garrison of the Antonia as a tagma Rômaiôn (Jewish War 5.244) should be translated ‘a Roman legion’ (2005, 187). This is simply not true. The primary meaning of tagma is ‘an organized, disciplined body of men’, and Josephus can use it not only of military units of various sizes, but also of the Essenes6 and of the Sadducees ( Jewish War 2.164).7 Thus, one cannot argue from tagma to the size of the Antonia fortress.

Even more decisive against Buchanan is the simple fact that no Roman legion was ever based in Palestine until after the fall of Jerusalem in ad 70. Herod the

4 Portland, OR: ASK Publications, 2000.5 J. Murphy-O’Connor, ‘Where was the Antonia Fortress?’,

Revue Biblique 111 (2004), 82–83.6 Jewish War 2.122, 125, 143, 160, 161.7 Karl Heinrich Rengstorf (ed.), A Complete Concordance

to Flavius Josephus, vol. 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1983), 153.




Great did not build the Antonia to house a Roman legion, as Martin claims,8 because at that stage Palestine was an independent kingdom, and Rome did not confide any of its precious legions to client kings, no matter how cherished they were. Once the Roman procurators/prefects took charge in ad 6 the situation was as follows,

Normally, only auxiliary troops were stationed in provinces administered by a prefect or procurator, and they served under his command. This was also the case in Judaea. Legions were stationed in Syria, three in 4 bc and four from Tiberius onward. But until Vespasian only auxiliary troops were stationed in Judaea, and most of them were recruited in the country itself.9

When necessary Roman legions were brought in from Syria, e.g., after the death of Herod the Great in 4 bc, and when the uprising began in ad 66, but when they had finished their task of subduing the Jews they went back to base. Dr Buchanan makes much of the number of troops led by Cestius Gallus, and invites us to assume that they were housed in the Antonia when they reached Jerusalem (2005, 187). Josephus, however, explicitly tells us that Cestius never succeeded in entering Jerusalem ( Jewish War 2.540).

A further argument used by Dr Buchanan to suggest the presence of a large number of Roman troops in the Antionia is the presence of a ‘cohort’ (speira) led by a ‘military tribune’ (chiliarchos) at the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane (John 18:12). He insists on the literal sense of chiliarchos ‘a leader of a thousand men – more than a cohort. That means there were more soldiers under his command back in the Antonia’ (2005, 188). There seems to be little doubt that John intended to assert that a Roman detachment took part in the arrest of Jesus because it is distinguished from ‘the servants of the Jews’ (cf. 18:3). But is this historically correct?10 Given the hostile relationship of Pilate with the Jewish authorities, it is extremely improbable that he would lend them troops. Moreover, if his reason for

bringing troops up from Caesarea was to be able to intervene if trouble developed, why would he weaken his forces by lending them to anyone, and particularly to those whom he mistrusted? Thus, if Roman troops were present at Gethsemane, they would have been in charge, and Jesus would have been brought to Pilate, not to the high priest. Such difficulties suggest that the version of the arrest of Jesus in the Synoptics should be preferred (Matt26:47; Mark 14:43; Luke 22:47). Professional soldiers were not required to arrest a single individual with a tiny following.

Finally, one’s confidence in Dr Buchanan’s historical and archaeological judgement is completely undermined by a series of errors of fact which, if left uncorrected, might generate confusion.

• The fortresses at Arad and Herodion (2005, 182) did not have internal water supplies. Water had to be drawn from pools at a distance and poured in through prepared channels.

• ‘There were no aqueducts bringing water to Jerusalem before the time of Pilate’ (2005, 182). In fact there were two. The Hasmoneans built the lower aqueduct from Solomon’s Pools, and Herod the Great the first version of the upper aqueduct.11

• ‘The illustration on p. 185 shows the Tyropoeon Valley after the Hasmoneans had filled it’ (2005, 183). In fact, it is the Kidron Valley.

• ‘When the Jebusites controlled the area, the southern point of the City of David was the tallest hill on the ridge’ (2005, 183). In fact it is the lowest.

• ‘During his reign, Simon, the Hasmonean (BIA 142–36), removed David’s citadel completely, as well as the hill underneath down to bedrock, placing the rocks and soil in the Tyropoeon Valley’ (2005, 184). Clearly the reference is to Syrian Akra, but its identification with the citadel of David (2003, 37) is completely gratuitous. Moreover, the reports of the destruction of the Akra are confused, and Dr Buchanan chooses the most unlikely option.12 Nothing is said about filling up the Tyropoeon.

8 The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot, 66.9 Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age

of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135) (rev. and ed. by G. Vermes and F. Millar; Edinburgh: Clark, 1973), 1.362.

10 For a useful discussion see R. E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah. From Gethsemane to the Grave (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1.250–51.

11 D. Amit, J. Patrich and Y. Hirschfeld (eds.), The Aqueducts of Israel (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2002), 237, 248, 256.

12 See Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 1.192.




• ‘In Hasmonean times that Baris included one tower called Strato’s Tower’ (2005, 188). The Baris was the predecessor of the Antonia fortress at the northwest corner of the Jerusalem temple, but the reference to Josephus given by Dr Buchanan says, ‘Herod also built another fortress for the whole nation. It was of old called Strato’s Tower, but was by him named Caesarea [Maritima]’ (Antiquities of the Jews 15.293).

• ‘Martin has given illustrations of other fortresses that the Romans built, such as the nearby fortress at Masada’ (2005, 188). Josephus, on the contrary, states that Masada was first fortified by Alexander Jannaeus, and

then by Herod the Great ( Jewish War 7.285 and 300).

In conclusion, the temple built by Solomon was not on the Ophel Ridge above the Gihon Spring, but as has always been thought in the area covered by the magnificent esplanade of Herod the Great which is now venerated as the Haram esh-Sharif ‘the Noble Sanctuary’. The Antonia fortress was on the spur of rock outside the northwest corner of the temple, where its four-metre thick southern wall has been brought to light.13

13 Michael D. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem: An Archi-tectural Study (London: World of Islam Festival Trust, 1987), 204, 312, 315, 341, 373.

CHRISTIAN THINKINGPaul D. Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire: Reference, Reason and Christian Thinking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. £45.00 (hbk). pp. 232. ISBN 0–521–82241–6).

Paul Janz is well-read in both theology and philosophy and writes with the confidence of someone who has mastered the relevant literature (frequently going back behind inadequate English translations). He has an original thesis to offer on the integrity of reason and of theological transcendence, utilizing the anti-realism (idealism)/realism debate as a spring-board to explore the notion of rational integrity as a resource for theology. Janz begins by analysing the difficulties of anti-rationalist positions and their rejection of the intellectual virtue of ‘attentiveness’, understood in terms of an end-oriented, referential disposition. Having surveyed the positions of Putnam and Nagel, finding inadequacies in both, he seeks illumination in MacKinnon’s attempt to frame such debates as a problem of learning and his account of different approaches to authority or ‘finality’.

A bridging chapter unpacks Bonhoeffer’s Act and Being before the argument moves to a pivotal analysis of Kant as a reformer (rather than destroyer) of metaphysics, restoring the integrity of reason and defining a metaphysics of appearances that enquires about the conditions for the possibility of actual empirical appearances. But the Kantian understanding of transcendence ‘as an orienting or regulative device for the understanding’ falls short of that needed by orthodox theology. Janz returns to MacKinnon to uncover his distinction between the total explanation of a ‘finality of resolution’, and the irresolvable, mind-stopping ‘finality of non-resolution’ expressed in the truly tragic.

The engine that drives the book’s conclusion is the search for a referent for theology ‘that is both fully tangible (empirical) yet that does not admit of resolution into any broader system of explanation’. This is located in the notion of penultimacy as creaturely human being. Building on both Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard, Janz brings together epistemology and Christology, presenting Christ as ‘the final challenge to and the “end” of human rationality’, overturning its basic presupposition of self-sufficiency. Creaturely human being can only be itself, and rest in itself, when it is reconciled to the power that establishes it. This transformation from autonomous self-understanding, as an ‘ontological reorientation’ towards Christ, is the true location of the supernatural in (and only in) the natural. It is the search for God ‘centred around the one true question of transcendence “Who are you?”’

Because of its topic, this is a difficult book. It is, however, most lucidly argued throughout, frequently persuasive in its analysis of other writers, and profound and innovative in its conclusions.

JEFF ASTLEY, Durham



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Temple and the Antonia (J. Murphy-O'Connor)