How big was the Temple Mount?

Question

Accepted Answer

Herod's Temple Mount, the platform that still stands in the Old City of Jerusalem as the Haram al-Sharif, covers about 14–15 ha, a slightly skewed four-sided enclosure whose retaining walls measure about 488 m on the west, 470 m on the east, 315 m on the north and 280 m on the south. That is about a sixth of the walled Old City. Before Herod the Temple court was much smaller: the Mishnah gives it as 500 by 500 cubits, a square of about 260 m a side, some 7 ha, and Herod roughly doubled it from about 20 BC. The map point stands on the summit of the hill, Mount Moriah. The size astonished visitors. As Jesus left the Temple “one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!”; others spoke of the Temple, “how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts”. Jesus “walked in the temple in Solomon's porch”, the colonnade along the eastern side, and after Pentecost the crowds “ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's”. The tempter set him on “a pinnacle of the temple”, often placed at the south-eastern corner, where the platform stood high above the Kidron valley. Along the south side ran Herod's Royal Stoa, and the outer court open to gentiles took up most of the area; the sanctuary itself, rebuilt on the plan of Solomon's house of “threescore cubits” by twenty, stood near the middle. Josephus, who knew the Temple before AD 70, gives the hill four stadia round, a stadion to each side, which roughly matches the Mishnah's square. Leen Ritmeyer traced that square of 500 royal cubits, 861 ft, within the present platform, from a step of pre-Herodian masonry in the north-west and a bend in the eastern wall, while others place it differently. Ezekiel's vision gives the sanctuary a wall of “five hundred reeds long, and five hundred broad”, an ideal square many times greater. The platform was never excavated; its extent is known from the surviving walls, the Western Wall among them, and the tunnels and finds along them. Where on it the Temple stood is discussed in its own question.