John2 wrote:In the meantime, I'm still leaning towards the methane being produced by the people who were hiding under the Temple in 70 CE.
in our Vietnam war, we had "tunnel rats" who would jump into the Viet Cong tunnel entrances, after setting off a few fragmentary grenades, with flashlight and pistol in hand, with the sole purpose of killing anyone they found there and discovering where the tunnels led. They'd find whole military camps under the ground, including hospitals, movie theaters and mess halls. Now they'd blow them up, but I think they'd take the bodies out first if only for the purpose of body counts they loved to do.
Considering how much gold, silver, spices and costly robes were stored underground in the passages, I'd have thought that the Romans would send in their version of "tunnel rats" to ferret out loot. Since it's hard to cart away loot when it stinks to high heaven in the passages, I'd think they would have also had the dead bodies they found in them carried away for disposal. I mean, burning down the temple building is one thing, but that, and the demolition of any remaining walls and major structures, would probably not have disturbed the underground passages, although they would be dark and mystifying to the Roman soldiers.
When Simon Bar Giora decided it was better to surrender himself, just in case God was waiting for the absolute last moment to come down to help out with the revolution, he "rose up" from one of the passages under the site where the temple had stood, apparently in plain sight. I keep thinking of some sort of dumb-waiter or stage-elevator that was still operable. Up from the ground rises a gentleman dressed in purple, very dramatic entrance.
Since I do not think anyone continued to flush water down the drains after the destruction, although I understand that at lower levels there was some water flowing into it from the pool of Siloam etc, my guess would be that whatever gore was still in there was decomposing away. The drain from the septic pools apparently emptied into the Kidron valley under the temple foundation walls, where it was used to water and fertilize the vegetable gardens and groves of trees there.
But that is also exactly where the Romans would be tossing blocks of stone they tore down from the remains of the temple, so my guess would be that it had blocked the drain exit. The septic system eventually filled up and became a cesspool. Mmmmm. Those Roman soldiers in the camp who made use of the pool of Siloam would have stopped up the drain that had fed the temple sewer as soon as it backed up that far with sludge and started to pollute the water. Of course, in time, the Romans, Byzantines and Muslims would have re-built parts of it, reusing those very blocks that had stopped up the drain, and presumably with some sort of water and sewer system added or restored, but the stories of the 19th century explorers tells us that these systems had been neglected for a very long time.
DCH