A Building Nobody Can Excavate

Almost nothing physical survives from Solomon's temple, and the reason is not that it was thoroughly destroyed. It is that the ground it stood on has been continuously built over and is now one of the most sensitive religious sites in the world, where excavation is not possible. What is known about the building therefore comes from the description in the books of Kings and Chronicles, written down long after, and from comparison with excavated temples elsewhere in the Levant that share the same three part plan of porch, main hall and inner room.

Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman have argued that a good deal of the biblical account of the period reflects the concerns of the seventh century and later, when the texts were being edited, rather than a straightforward memory of the tenth. Other scholars read the same evidence more conservatively. The atlas records the dispute rather than choosing a side, and notes what would settle parts of it, which is stratified excavation on the platform itself, an operation that is not going to happen. What is not in dispute is that a royal temple stood in Jerusalem, that it was destroyed by Babylonian forces, and that its loss reorganised a religion.