Talk:Temple in Jerusalem

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Views of the Temple

Is thank tha laft edat to tha page (18:49, Mar 12, 2005 24.118.175.236 (→Rebuilding the Temple today)) needs looking at. The text is as follows:

That would be a very convenient point of view, almost as convenient as creating a Jewish state in Siberia. However, it appears that the Al-Aqsa Mosque started being treated as the third holiest site in Islam only after Israel was created and even more so after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. It also appears that Arabs create claims and things parallel to everythig described in the Jewish Holly Books, including a people and mosque on the Temple Mount. This all was well summarized by Arafat when he said that "there is no single stone in Jerusalem connected to the Jewish history".

The Jewish point of view is that it is not up to people or the state to rebuild the Temple, but up to the Mochiach (Messiah) when he comes.

Beside a handful of typos, it's lacks encyclopaedia style, which leads me to suspect the veracity and the NPOV of the information added in the edit. The Ephialtist 20:20, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

It definately strikes me as very NPOV, and rather strongly biased. I vote for immediate and and complete removal. --oknazevad 22:27, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, someone removed it now, cool. The Ephialtist 12:19, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Existence of Temple

This is not my area of expertise, but I think it is true that there is no evidence except for the Bible account that the first temple actually existed. If I'm not mistaken, that point should be made in the article. -- zero 13:53, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That is true. Some mainstream non-fundamentalist historians believe that the Bible contains historically accurate information, especially after the era of the Biblical patriarchs. I don't think anyone in the mainstream disputes the existence of Herod's Temple on the Temple Mount (sometimes called the third temple), which was an expansion of the Second Temple on Temple Mount; it doesn't seem that much of a strech to accept the Bible's claim that there was a first Temple. If we were talking about some other building described in the Bible, in which we had no archaeological or textual evidence, then perhaps the default position could be that the structure didn't exist. But in this case, we have archaeological evidence and textual evidence that the 3rd and 2nd Temple existed, so it seem rational to assume the existence of a 1st Temple, unless the argument is that the 2nd Temple really was the 1st. Still, I have no problem with noting the lack of direct archaeological evidence for the 1st Temple. Elsewhere I have put out a query on this issue; I am curious to see what sort of replies we will get. RK 16:37, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

• A Historical Method for Using Biblical Sources (Non-fundamentalist)

RK, maybe you should expand "messianic era" in your discussion of the future rebuilding of the Temple for the benefit of readers not familiar with basic Judaism. -- zero 02:03, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hhere is my understanding of the consensus of the archaeological and historical community. Textual evidence outside the Bible, and its agreement with textual evidence inside the Bible, and additional archaeological evidence, all come to the same conclusion: Herod's Temple certainly existed; and the Second Temple, which Herod's Temple was an expansion of, certainly existed. The existence of the First Temple has no direct physical proof, but since the Second Temple certainly existed (and always was known as the Second Temple) historians have little or no doubt that the First Temple existed. The following point is important: Muslim Arabs in control of the Temple Mount forbid archaeologists from doing any work in this area. Thus, the lack of direct archaeological evidence for the First Temple is not due to a lack of trying, but because this Muslim group forbids any such evidence to be studied in the first place. Consider these points:

From: Ken Down

Subject: Re: Evidence for First Temple in Jerusalem?

Newsgroups: sci.archaeology

Date: 2003-08-23 23:15:54 PST

There is no archaeological evidence for any of the temples, partly because the destruction was so thorough, partly because the site has been built on. There is, of course, the temple platform, which has the famous "straight joint" on the east, where you have Herodian masonry to the south and Israelite(?) masonry to the north. There is also evidence of monumental masonry tumbled down into the Tyropoean Valley in 70 AD (we have excavated some of it), but there is nothing particularly "temple" about it. It could have come from anything - a palace, a fortress, a particularly fine villa.

Of course, I have no doubt that it did come from the temple and its associated buildings, but I could not prove that. The literary evidence is another thing and there is enough of it to make the existance of a temple pre-70 AD certain. However the only evidence for a First Temple is the record in the Hebrew Scriptures and the physical evidence of the Israelite(?) masonry of the temple platform.

From: AnonMoos (anonmoos@io.com)

Subject: Re: Evidence for First Temple in Jerusalem?

Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish.moderated

Date: 2003-08-22 06:44:11 PST

There ain't gonna be too much on-site archaeological evidence for the first temple, because that site has been rebuilt several times, and some of the later builders dug down to bedrock to lay their foundations. Whatever evidence there is is still probably buried under the "Haram" platform, but the temple mount "waqf" has been conducting intentional malicious vandalism operations for a number of decades to try to ensure that no such evidence is found. However, there is an (unprovenanced) ivory mace head which is thought to be associated with first temple ritual. More generally, it's known that all the city-states and small kingdoms of the region had central temples, so there's no particular reason to suspect Judah of being radically different (when the Bible and the comparative evidence of the period agree with each other).

Maimonides views on sacrifices

I have corrected a common misconception of Maimonides vision of the third temple. Although there are modern opinions that there will be no animal sacrifices in the third temple, opinions dating before the 19th century all seem to concur that they will happen, including the oft misunderstood Maimonides/Rambam...

"However there are some modern opinions, that sacrifices would not take place in a rebuilt Temple. Sometimes these opinions are mistakenly based on the scholar Maimonides's book "A Guide for The Perplexed", where he states "that God deliberately has moved Jews away from sacrifices towards prayer, as prayer is a higher form of worship". However, this must be understood as purely a philosophical idea, in light of the fact that he not only clearly states in his book "The Mishna Torah" that animal sacrifices will take place in the third temple, but also goes into great detail explaining how they will be carried out."

Egyptian temple

The picture of the temple at the beginning of the article seems a lot like an Egyptian temple. Was this because of Egyptian influence on the Isrealites?

Restoring removed sections

“Physical layout”, “Temple services”, “Role in contemporary Jewish services”, and “In media” were stable sections before removal by a now topic-banned editor. Consensus should be achieved before blanket deletion. Tagging for ‘citation needed’ may be appropriate in some sections. Allthemilescombined1 (talk) 23:15, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

@Allthemilescombined1: Rather than start the same discussion again here, you should make your case over at Talk:Solomon's Temple where precisely the same issue is being discussed. The state of this article is if anything worse (Wikipedia does not interpret Talmud, etc etc). Regarding your edit summary, there are several errors. First, this article is only partly covered by ARBPIA; that's why the notice at the top of the page says "parts of this article". Only a tiny part of the material you reverted back in is related to the Israel-Arab conflict, and that only by a logical stretch. Second, although Iskandar323 is topic-banned from ARBPIA, it was me and not him that you reverted and besides that all or nearly all of this material is not in ARBPIA. Third, "consensus should be achieved on talk page before being removed" does not match any policy. Actually policy says that disputed material should be kept out until consensus is achieved. Zero^talk 04:51, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I've been in the same discussion at Talk:Solomon's Temple and concur that Wikipedia should not be sourcing so much material to primary source religious books. While academic secondary sources on the Talmud are not as abundant as they are for the Bible, a Wikipedia Library search for "location of the second temple" brings up nearly 150,000 papers to sort through. With that level of abundance it's very unlikely we need to interpret primary sources and we should instead, be doing the more difficult but appropriate work of identifying and weighing the secondary literature. As our policy states that disputed material should be removed until consensus is reached I'd suggest that the editor who restored substantial primary sourced material should kindly self-revert and we can look at some better sources. Simonm223 (talk) 18:46, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Here's an example to get the ball rolling: The Water Pools and the Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Late Second Temple Period. By: Gurevich, David, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 00310328, Jun2017, Vol. 149, Issue 2 - this article interprets the presence of an unusually high number of open-water pools in Jerusalem as evidence of Jerusalem as a pilgrimage site during the Second Temple period. This source does not appear to be used presently in this article and, while it may not be as explicitly convenient for describing the temple site as direct interpretation of the Talmud, it is a reliable source for talking about a feature of Jerusalem (water pools) that had a specific religious function and describes the layout and construction of several within the Temple Mount area itself. Simonm223 (talk) 18:53, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I'd like to get input from an admin on this matter, noting once again that it stems from blanket removal of sections by a now topic-banned editor. Maybe @ScottishFinnishRadish could chime in? Allthemilescombined1 (talk) 23:21, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Administrators do not rule on content, and an editor having been topic banned does not provide a reason, in and of itself, to revert their edits. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:30, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

The text removed by the editor who was recently topic banned from adjacent topics is perfectly alright to stay as long as the sources cited are clearly preambled by attribution such as "According to the biblical book of [whatever], blah blah blah". Same for other religious texts. If anyone has material which disputes these sources, which are WP:RS about themselves (!), such other RS are more than welcome. We should stick to the stable version until such improvements are made. XavierItzm (talk) 01:30, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

No. You are still insisting on what is effectively WP:OR by using a religious text as a primary source here. Reliable secondary sources exist. Quite a lot of them. Effectively the question here is between doing the section right and cutting corners for convenience. Simonm223 (talk) 16:02, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If you go to Wikipedia Library and search for "talmudic description of the temple mount" there's a lot of current secondary sources that likely fit. I'll post the titles of a few once I have a chance to review. It's not like I'm shirking part of the hard work of proper sourcing here folks - but we shouldn't be using improper sources out of convenience. Simonm223 (talk) 16:09, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Here's one. I'm not over-fond of the tone but it's certainly a reliable source regardless.

Did Jews Abandon the Temple Mount? By: Loewenberg, F. M., Middle East Quarterly, 10739467, Summer2013, Vol. 20, Issue 3

I'll review some others later as I'm short on time at the moment. Simonm223 (talk) 16:15, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

MEQ is actually considered unreliable per historic discussions at WP:RSN. Despite the name, it's not a peer-reviewed work, but is published by an American think tank that is itself an unreliable source. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:02, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Without reliable, independent, secondary sources, WP:V is simply not fulfilled, and no amount of appealing to the stability of the content or the venerability of the texts is going to change that. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:15, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

That's a great source, Simonm. I'll be citing it on this section! XavierItzm (talk) 19:36, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Here's another great source —a paper by Michael Homan: The Tabernacle and the Temple in Ancient Israel, located at DOI 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2006.00006.x and distributed by Wiley-Blackwell. I've started referencing it in the article. XavierItzm (talk) 22:09, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Typos

In the Second Temple section, there are two typos. Here is the excerpt, with the typos highlighted in bold: assumed the Seleucid thrown he immediately attempted to enforce universal Hellenization once again. During this time, several incidents considered offensive under traditional Jewish practice occurred in the temple, to include erecting a statute of Zeus and the sacrifice of pigs. This should be 'throne' and 'statue'. I can not edit it, so somebody who can, please fix this. --ISometimesEatBananas (talk) 23:04, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Title needs to be in italics in the lead.

If you are going to say that it "Refers" to the temple, then you are not talking about the temple, but about the phrase Temple in Jerusalem. It's mention, not use, and needs to be in italics. 86.31.178.164 (talk) 14:23, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Question regarding paragraph 4

The fourth paragraph has a sentence in it that seems biased. It begins "The site, known to Muslims as the "Al-Aqsa Mosque compound" or Haram al-Sharif..." In normal English convention quotation marks are only used when, as I did, you're quoting something, or if you're using scare quotes and implying something shouldn't be taken at face value. If they're being used to indicate it's one of the many names it's had, it should really follow Haram al-Sharif or have some indication of what's being referenced. Also, it's missing the link to Al-Aqsa. Just some food for thought as I'm both a novice at wikipedia edits, and have potato brain right now. Livegeekdie (talk) 23:49, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Edit request 20 March 2026

Description of suggested change:

Under the subsection 'Islam' in the section 'In other religions', the line "To Muslims, Al-Aqsa Mosque is not built on top of the temple, rather, it is the Third Temple, and they are the true believers who worship in it, whereas Jews and Christians are disbelievers who do not believe in God's final prophets Jesus and Muhammad." creates the false impression that Christians don't believe in Jesus, which is obviously absurd, so it should be rewritten for better clarity and accuracy.

Diff: Warning Unnamed parameter |1= set to default value. Please change it. Failure to use {{Text diff}} to specify your requested text changes, if not adequately described above, may lead to your request being denied.
~2026-31932-3 (talk) 18:15, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

 Done Removed "Jesus" from the sentence as it is the lack of belief in Muhammad that is the essential thing here. Day Creature (talk) 00:52, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Better yet, I'll delete that sentence since the first source is a student paper and the second source is an anonymous blog. Zero^talk 10:35, 21 March 2026 (UTC)