Post-Destruction Accounts Regarding the Site of the Temple
Beyond the historical data we have investigated from the Temple periods, there are many historical accounts from the post-Temple period that indicate that the Moriah Platform was not the site of the Temple. Earlier we looked at Christian, Jewish, and Roman historical accounts that the Temple and its walls were completely destroyed to the point of being dug up to their foundations.
Early records from the period after the Temple’s destruction indicate that during the Roman period, the site of the Temple was a field or farm. Eusebius also says that the place of the Temple had become a farm sown with seed and plowed by bulls.
Eusebius of Caesarea – Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263 – c. 339[1]) (often called Eusebius Pamphili, "Eusebius [the friend] of Pamphilus") became the bishop of Caesarea Palaestina, the capital of Iudaea province, c 314.[1] He is often referred to as the Father of Church History because of his work in recording the history of the early Christian church, especially Chronicle and Ecclesiastical History[1].
Utter desolation has possessed the land. Their once famous Mount Sion instead of being as it once was, the center of study and education based on the divine prophecies, which the children of the Hebrews of old, their godly prophets, priests and national teachers loved to interpret, is a Roman farm like the rest of the country. Yea, with my own eyes I have seen the bulls plowing there, and the sacred site sown with seed. And Jerusalem itself is become but a storehouse of its fruit of old days now destroyed, or better, as the Hebrew has it, a stonequary. So Aquila says: ‘Therefore for your sake the land of Sion shall be ploughed, and Jerusalem shall be a quarry of stone,’ for being inhabited of men of foreign race it is even now like a quarry. All the inhabitants of the city choose stores from its ruins as they will [without restraint] for private as well as public buildings. And it is sad for the eyes to see stones from the Temple itself, and from its ancient sanctuary and holy place, used for the buildings of idol temples, and of theatres for the populace. These things are open for the eyes to see.” – Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel, Book VIII, Chapter 3, Section 406
Mount Sion was burned and left utterly desolate, and the Mount of the House of God became as a grove of wood. If our own observation has any value, we have seen in our own time Sion once so famous ploughed with yokes of oxen by the Romans and utterly devastated, and Jerusalem as the oracle says, deserted like a lodge. – Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel, Book VI, Chapter 7, Section 265
A story provided by Micha Joseph Bin Gorion in his collection of Classical Jewish Folktales, Mimekor Yisrael confirms Eusebius’ accounts.
The place where our glorious Temple was built had long been a field [a farm] owned by two brothers…That was the place that the Lord desired, the spot where Two Brothers had thought and done the good deed. This is why it was blessed by the men of the earth, and the children of Israel chose it for building a House for the Lord. – Micha Joseph Bin Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael, Classical Jewish Folktales, (Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 272-273.
And recall there are Roman coins as early as the second century showing the area of Jerusalem being plowed as Eusebius said.
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