‘Literary sources, however, are ample’
Steven Fine, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and director of its Center for Israel Studies, and a founding editor of the Jewish art and visual culture journal Images, agreed.
“It is an historical fact that the Jewish temples were built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Archaeological evidence for the Temple rebuilt after the return from the Babylonian captivity and continuing until 66 C.E. is not contested,” he told JNS.
There is scarce archaeological evidence of the First Temple, which is associated with King Solomon, since Herod rebuilt and expanded the Temple Mound in the year 20 or 19 BCE, “and also because Muslim authorities do not allow scientific excavation of the site,” said Fine.
“Literary sources, however, are ample,” he said. “No historian doubts the presence of an Israelite Temple on Mount Zion in biblical times.”
Based on the Koran and later Muslim tradition, it is true that to Muslims, the site known as the Noble Sanctuary is where the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, according to Fine. “The claim regarding Muhammed is a matter of faith.”
Washington’s paper of record has had prior difficulty with its reporting on the sacred site in Jerusalem.
“An earlier version of this article misidentified the Jewish temple built by King Solomon. Solomon built the First Temple, not the Second,” the Post stated in a May 23, 2013 correction. “The article also incorrectly referred to Herod as the builder of the Second Temple. Although the temple is sometimes called Herod’s Temple in honor of his expansion of it, the original construction occurred centuries earlier.”
In 2006, the Post appeared to suggest the opposite of its recent story. A discovery “strengthens Jewish ties to the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary. The site of ancient Jewish temples contains Islam’s al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock and is revered as the place where the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven,” it reported.
It also suggested that the Jewish Temples were a fact in 1986, 1989—in an article that notes that what was Judaism’s “holiest shrine” and that “in the centuries since then,” it has “become Islam’s third-holiest site, where Moslems believe Mohammed ascended to heaven”—2002 and 2013.
The 2013 article quotes an Arab Israeli parliamentarian who insisted “There is no such thing as the Temple Mount! … It does not exist. It is not there.”
A 2016 Post article, which states that “Jews call it the Temple Mount, believed to be where the first and second temples once stood,” again questions the history of the Temples.
Asked if the Post recently changed its policy to express skepticism towards the scholarly consensus that the two Jewish Temples are historical facts, a spokesperson for the paper did not immediately respond.