For First Time Ever, Archaeological Evidence Proves Jewish Temple Stood on Temple Mount [PHOTOS]An incredible new discovery at the Temple Mount has produced the first-ever physical and archaeological evidence that the Jewish Second Temple stood on the Mount 2,000 years ago, upsetting Arab claims, increasingly endorsed by the international community, that the Temples never existed.
Archaeologists from the Temple Mount Sifting Project, salvaging artifacts from Muslim destruction at the Temple complex, have completed the restoration of ornate floor tiles which experts believe likely decorated the courtyard of the Second Jewish Temple. The project provides visible and incontrovertible proof, backed up by ancient texts and historical context, of a Jewish Temple on the Mount.
In total, archaeological teams have uncovered approximately 600 colored stone floor tile segments, with more than 100 of them positively dated to the Herodian Second Temple period (37-4 BCE).
The importance of the discovery is undeniable.
“This represents the first time that archeologists have been able to successfully restore an element from the Herodian Second Temple complex,” said Zachi Dvira, co-founder and director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project.
The Sifting Project began in the Tzurim Valley National Park in 2004 in an attempt to salvage whatever archaeological artifacts it could from destruction caused by illegal construction projects on the Temple Mount led by the Jordanian Waqf that controls the Mount.
This destruction of irreplaceable archaeological artifacts is considered to be part of a larger trend of Temple denial. Denying Jewish connection to the Temple Mount began at the 2000 Camp David Summit, when the Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat insisted that “the Temple” existed near Shechem (Nablus), and not on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
This claim has been taken up in the international narrative as UNESCO passed an initiative claiming the Temple Mount as an exclusively Muslim holy site. This claim went mainstream last October when the New York Times published an article questioning whether the two Jewish Temples ever existed at all.
Breaking Israel News asked Dr. Gabriel Barkay, co-founder and director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, if this first-of-its-kind restoration was absolute proof refuting Temple denial.
“You are asking me if I have proof that water is wet,” he responded emphatically. “I don’t need to prove anything. I found facts.”
Dr. Barkay compared denial of the Jewish Temples to denying the Holocaust. “I myself am a Holocaust survivor, and I couldn’t care less about people who deny what I know to be true. For the Holocaust, we have the camps, we have the films and photographs, and we have the survivors,” he told Breaking Israel News.
“For the Temple, we have the Mishnah (Oral Law), the New Testament, we have the writings of Flavius Josephus (a 1st Century Romano-Jewish historian). We have mountains of archaeological evidence. I don’t want to relate to what is nothing less than a political misuse of history.
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http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/75233/first-time-ever-undeniable-evidence-jewish-temple-discovered-photos/#s11Bf5jaElLkgKfh.99