I have spent much of the last month attending conferences. Fun, but tiring. But fun. Let me offer a few thoughts on one of them, “Marking the Sacred: The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem,” which took place at Providence College on June 5-7, 2017. The conference involved about thirty scholars who discussed the archaeology and significance of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives. Given the intensely political nature of this topic, it was refreshing to be able to engage in a sustained civil, critical, and productive discussion that crossed ideological, political, and religious fault-lines. Tremendous credit goes to the organizer, Professor Joan Branham, for creating such an environment. I was unable to attend the last day, but through the first two there were a few leitmotifs that struck me: 1. There was a temple on the Temple Mount. Now, this might be rather obvious but both modern political discourse and a recent kerfuffle over an inaccurate article in the New York Times a couple of years ago (for my own response to this, see here) led to review of the various kinds of evidence that demonstrate that a Jewish temple existed on this site. For example, Jodi […]
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