Category Archives: Biblical Studies

Rulers of Aram-Damascus

I recently read Wayne Pitard’s fascinating book Ancient Damascus: A Historical Study of the Syrian City-State from Earliest Times until its Fall to the Assyrians in 732 B.C.E. (Eisenbrauns, 1987). It’s great to have such a handy guide to the history of this city. Of course, most of the history is that which is gleaned from texts (minimalists may need to reach for smelling salts at this point), including the Bible! In fact, quite shockingly, no excavations of ancient Damascus have ever taken place. Our information about the history of the city and its rulers and their role in history has all come from elsewhere, specifically precisely these three sources: 1.) the Bible, 2.) Assyrian texts, 3.) two Aramaic inscriptions. That’s it. And of the three, the Bible provides the most information on the rulers of Aram-Damascus, with the Assyrian texts mentioning only the last three, or perhaps four. One Aramaic inscription (the Zakkur Stele) is helpful for input on only a single incident, while the other is the Tel Dan Stele, which is so fragmentary, and whose reading is currently so controverted, that it is not precisely very helpful. The Tel Dan Stele had not been excavated when Pitard wrote, though he does cover the Zakkur Stele. It’s primarily through the intersection of the Hebrew and Assyrian materials that an outline can be established of the history of the rulers of Aram-Damascus, the kingdom known to the Assyrians as māt Ša-Imērišu, The Land of His Donkeys. (That name always gives me a smile. And no, no one knows exactly why it’s called that by the Assyrians, who weren’t exactly known for their sense of humor.)

In any case, I decided that it would be useful to work through some of the data myself, since I found some of Pitard’s solutions somewhat unconvincing. I’ve examined all the Biblical references and the Assyrian royal inscriptions dealing with the rulers of Aram-Damascus. These two bodies of material together can yield different numbers of rulers, depending upon one’s approach, unfortunately. For instance, 1-2 Kings in the Bible often refers to “Ben-Hadad” as King of Aram-Damascus. This dynastic titulary, familiar in other Aramaic kingdoms in the Neo-Assyrian period. For example the ruler of Bīt-Adini, or Beth-Eden as in Amos 1.5, would be known as mār Adini, Bar Eden, or Son of Adin. For more information on this phenomenon, see this earlier post and the posts linked in it. It appears that Ben-Hadad is also a dynastic name, though it is certainly an unusual one, as it is comprised of solely a divine name, implying that the ruler is the son of the storm-god Hadad. This however, I would suggest is a singular instance of hypocoristic dynastic titulary. That is, the name of the dynastic founder would have included the name Hadad as the divine element of his theophoric name. This is likely to be the case, as we’ll see below. The usage in the Books of Kings of this title Ben-Hadad has led to some confusion in various studies, as it is uncertain in a few places where one Ben-Hadad leaves off and another begins, so to speak. So, let’s examine the Hebrew information first.

Rezon, son of Eliada is described as the founder of the Aramaean kingship at Damascus in 1 Kings 11.23-25. He is said to have deserted his former king Hadadezer of Aram-Zobah, sometime in the reign of David, and to have taken over Damascus. He is said to be an enemy of Solomon throughout the reign of the latter, though no incidents are otherwise reported in 1 Kings. Rezon is very likely a hypocoristic form of the theophoric name Hadad-Razon, meaning “Hadad is Ruler.” This would explain why his successors were called “Son of Hadad,” connoting “Son of Hadad-Razon.” Otherwise, there is no instance among the Aramaean kingdoms of taking a divine name as patronymic in this kind of dynastic titulary.

Hezion I, son (?) of Rezon is only known from the patronymic given in 1 Kings 15.18. The name, however, appears again with the successor to Hazael in the eighth century, as Hadiānu in the Assyrian texts, which we’ll get to.

Tabrimmon, son of Hezion is also only known from the 1 Kings 15.18 patronymic. The name is a good Aramaic name, Hebraized, meaning “Ramman is Good,” Ramman, Thunderer, being an epithet of Hadad.

Ben-Hadad, son of Tabrimmon is the king of Aram-Damascus introduced at 1 Kings 15.18, during the reign of Asa of Judah (912-871) and Baasha of Israel (911-888), probably toward the later end of that joint period. This Ben-Hadad is bribed by Asa to break a treaty with Baasha and attack him so that Asa can stop a building project of Baasha and steal his building materials. It works. This Ben-Hadad, if he is a separate king from the following one, as seems most likely, is the one king of Aram-Damascus for whom we do not know his personal name. If he is the same as the following, then this is not the case. I tend to think this king is likely a separate one than the following due to the interesting statement in 1 Kings 20.34 in the mouth of Ben-Hadad, an offer to restore towns that his father took from Ahab’s father (Omri or a more distant “father”?), and trading rights in Damascus itself. Ben-Hadad/Hadadezer below is clearly not the Ben-Hadad son of Tabrimmon, as he himself would obviously have been ruling before Omri. If, however, the “father” of Ahab is to be understood as a more distant predecessor, like Baasha of Israel who Ben-Hadad son of Tabrimmon attacks, then the very incident referred to by Ben-Hadad/Hadadezer could very well be this Asa and Baasha incident, as no interactions with Aram-Damascus are mentioned in the admittedly scarce reports on the reign of Omri. The scholarly consensus has moved over the past century from having a single Ben-Hadad throughout, to there being two, though it is apparently still discussed.

Ben-Hadad (Hadadezer) is a long-lived and very militarily active king of Aram-Damascus who has many run-ins both with Israel and Assyria over his long career. He is the Ben-Hadad who battles and finally kills Ahab of Israel in 1 Kings 20 and 22. Some, like Pitard, have taken both chapters to be misplaced from the reign of a later king of the dynasty of Jehu, when Israel was in a much weaker position relative to Aram-Damascus, but a close reading of particularly 1 Kings 20 shows a strong king of Israel bravely opposing outrageous claims. A weak ruler would certainly not win, either, which occurs in this chapter. And while it is set just two or three years before the Battle of Qarqar with Shalmaneser III, and three years before Ahab’s death on the field again against Ben-Hadad, this is not unbelievable, particularly in seeing the back and forth between Israel and Aram-Damascus that continues throughout the history of both kingdoms. This same Ben-Hadad, apparently during the reign of Jehoram of Israel (852-841) besieges Samaria, as described in one of the Elisha tales in 2 Kings 6.24-7.20. This same Ben-Hadad, when ill, sends one of his officers named Hazael to inquire of the prophet Elisha whether he’ll recover (2 Kings 8.7-15). By this time, in the late 840s BC, he’d be quite old, so the illness is of more concern. Elisha tells Hazael that he’ll be the next king of Aram-Damascus. Not wasting time, Hazael apparently smothers Ben-Hadad. This Ben-Hadad is clearly the king of Aram-Damascus known to the Assyrians as Adad-idri, Hebraized as Hadadezer. More details below.

Hazael manages to battle Jehoram of Israel (852-841) and Ahaziah of Judah (842-841) at Ramoth-gilead soon after taking the throne sometime between 844 and 841, based on the Assyrian information (below). Jehoram is wounded in the battle, so he and Ahaziah go to Jezreel, conveniently for the coup of Jehu (2 Kings 9-10). Hazael is also said to have taken all of the Israelite territories east of the Jordan (2 Kings 10.32). Early (?) in the reign of Jehoash of Judah (835-796), Hazael threatens to attack Jerusalem, but is bought off by emptying the treasuries (2 Kings 12.17-18). Hazael and his son and successor Ben-Hadad (whose personal name was Hezion/Hadiānu according to the Assyrian texts, see below) are said to have repeatedly triumphed over Israel (2 Kings 13.3), which isn’t surprising, given the apparent strength of Aram-Damascus at this time when it was even able to take on the Assyrian army and survive despite numerous losses. Hazael is said to have continued to win against Israel through the reign of Jehoahaz of Israel (822-806)(2 Kings 13.22). 2 Kings 13.24-25 seems to indicate that Hazael died early in the reign of Jehoash of Israel (805-791), with Ben-Hadad/Hezion succeeding him, and Jehoash taking back, in three separate battles, all or some of the various towns that Hazael had taken from Israel.

Ben-Hadad (Hezion II) son of Hazael began to reign probably in the very late ninth century or very early eighth, as indicated by 2 Kings 13.24-25. This Ben-Hadad is mentioned in Assyrian texts as Hadiānu, and ruling in Damascus in 773/2 BC. Jeroboam II of Israel (791-750) is said (2 Kings 14.25, 28) to have restored roughly the Davidic/Solomonic borders of Israel, including Damascus (!) in the north and Hamath, and Elath in the south (perhaps ceding it to Judah? 2 Kings 14.22). So, Aram-Damascus was, for at least a time during the reign of this Ben-Hadad, not so strong, despite the statement of 2 Kings 13.3. The Assyrian texts have this king in Damascus in 773/2 BC.

Rezin is the last king of Aram-Damascus. He is attested as ruling in 738 BC in the Assyrian texts, until 732. His accession date was likely quite a bit earlier than that, as otherwise Ben-Hadad/Hezion would’ve had a strikingly, if not impossibly, long reign. He begins to attack Judah during the reign of Jotham of Judah (750-730) and Pekah of Israel (736-731) (2 Kings 15.37), which are likely the same attacks described in 2 Kings 16.5, during the reign of Ahaz of Judah counting his coregency with Jotham (from 735, because his sole rule began in 731, when both Pekah and Rezin were already dead). Precisely because Rezin was threatening Judah, Ahaz of Judah sent to Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria (745-727) for help, and this led to the elimination of both Rezin and Aram-Damascus in 732 BC. Rezin had, admittedly, been quite a pest to the Assyrians, as well.

That is the Biblical data on Aram-Damascus, not exhaustive, but close to it. As my interest is in establishing the rulers themselves and their chronology, the above in combination with the information from the Assyrian texts, some of which I’ve already mentioned and incorporated above, is very informative. The two sources are both complementary and necessary for establishing the framework on which to hang the rest of the history of Aram-Damascus.

I’ll continue in the next installment with the information on the kings of Aram-Damascus from the Assyrian texts.

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Those Philistines!

Adding to Jim Davila’s post on the Philistines, among others, there’s another interesting tidbit to add.

The online Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology for Philistine refers us to the etymology for philister:

The use of the word in this sense is said to have originated at Jena in 1693, in a sermon from the text Philister über dir, Simson! ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’ (Judges 16:9, 12, 14, 20) preached by Pastor Götze at the funeral of one of the students who had been killed in a quarrel between townspeople and students, but it was apt. in fact already in use in Jena in 1687.

The definition for philister is “An unenlightened or uncultured person; = PHILISTINE n. 3; (spec. in German universities) a townsperson, a non-student.” The earliest usages included in both entries date to the 1820s, however, so Pastor Götze is not to receive credit for introducing the connotation of Philistine as boor to the English. The Hebrew Bible itself also cannot be held accountable for this usage, as there’s no trace of the derogatory reuse of פלשתי in reference to those who are not ethnic Philistines. It’s not too surprising that later familiarity with the Old Testament along with some extrabiblical supersessionist ideas about Israel’s ancient neighbors led to this connotation among Europeans who considered themselves several rungs further up the ladder than even the Israelites. Fun stuff!

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That Jesus Tomb Stuff

Tyler Williams over at Codex has begun keeping track of the best posts amongst the Biblioblogs in response to the latest media pseudo-scandal about a particular tomb near Jerusalem being that of Jesus’ family, friends, followers, dog-walker, and pool-cleaner, no doubt. See particularly this post which highlights a response from James Tabor, who is marginally (and/or should that be “scandalously”?) involved in the project. Keep watching there, as I’m sure he continue with the round-ups.

In addition, see this excellent post by Jim Davila at Palaeojudaica, which includes input from his colleague at St Andrews, Richard Bauckham, who provides some fascinating information on the distribution of various Greek forms of “Mary,” particularly the surprising (to me) information that the Greek form μαριαμνη, “Mariamne,” is unique in Biblically-related literature to the Acts of Philip. I think I was thrown off on that score by the old Whiston-translated edition of Josephus’ works, which I internalized long ago. Whiston regularly uses “Mariamne,” where modern editions have μαριαμμη throughout. I wonder if that’s a peculiarity of the admittedly peculiar Whiston, or a peculiarity of the edition(s) he utilized? In any case, Bauckham’s careful statistical information on name distribution in among first-century Jews in his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is a good read on the subject. His work is a lesson in how to do this kind of name research.

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Bauckham’s …Eyewitnesses

Having been reading Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses over the last few weeks when I could squeeze in the time, I have to say that I have found myself non-plussed. As I mentioned in response to several readers’ inquiries, I found E. Earle Ellis’ work on the subject of “traditioning” and his scenario for the production of the Gospels, as found in The Making of the New Testament Documents and in the shorter History and Interpretation in New Testament Perspective to be not only more convincing, indeed compelling, but in particular better in interaction with various other trends of scholarship. I have found Bauckham’s work to be very interesting, to be sure, but the digressions and the overall diffuseness of argumentation without specific referents for opposing viewpoints (perhaps something to be expected from an Eerdmans book, admittedly more popular than scholarly press?), the relatively scanty annotation, and the numerous distracting lists to lead me away from taking it as more than a thought excercise, a published notebook of sorts. In comparison, the treatment of tradition in NT formation by Ellis is well-argued, well-discussed, and well-annotated, particularly with reference to German Biblical scholarship, which is typically where the most serious opposition to traditionary approaches to New Testament (and Old Testament, etc) formation has come from. I suppose that Bauckham’s work is gaining the better press as it is coming from a press that has been able to distribute more copies at a lower price than both of Ellis’ above-mentioned works, which are published by Brill, so they are, of course, both out of print in hardback, were extremely expensive when in print, with only The Making of the New Testament Documents now in paperback, though even that appears to have run out of print now as well. That’s a shame, that such excellent work on this subject hasn’t received the attention that it deserves. Traditionary input is not even so much a matter of faith as it is common sense. Who else would even have cared about Jesus or the very first Christians? The Romans? The Judean authorities? The Galilean Gentiles? Hardly. Those who witnessed bore witness to it.

These accounts were passed on from that point, sometimes becoming garbled and adulterated. But there have always been groups of people receiving and faithfully passing on what was passed down from earlier generations, leading all through the years from those first disciples down to the present, otherwise all those books would have been lost long ago. In the same way, there have been those through the years who have taken that message and run with it in another direction. Depending upon the place and time, sometimes the former were in the majority, sometimes the latter, sometimes the traditional and “orthodox,” sometimes the innovating and “heretical.” None of this is in question except in perhaps the outer limits of extremely skeptical scholarship, I had thought. On second thought, perhaps not.

The reason that Bauckham and others are finding it necessary to belabor the point of traditionary input in the formation of the New Testament perhaps lies not only in the extreme reaches of skeptical scholarship, but also lies in the extreme anti-traditionary aspects of certain trends in modern popular religion. I’ve heard with my own ears and read with my own eyes various derogatory references to “tradition” in various thoughtless low-browed works. Of course, the same will reference “ancient Christian tradition” and even quote some Church Fathers when it suits their purposes, in a species of unreflective proof-texting run rampant.

Nonetheless, Bauckham is an interesting read, but not one that has managed to hold my attention at the moment, unfortunately. It has now joined McDonald’s The Biblical Canon (see my short review) on a particular shelf for me to return to when I actually don’t have something better to read. But that’s just me! I enjoy reading other reviews, and expect to see a number of them appearing on various blogs, as it appears that numerous Biblical studies bloggers are currently reading the book. It’ll be a good thing to compare notes, in the end.

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The Lord is my Shepherd

Here is a collection of some translations of Psalm 23/22 including a couple that are not widely available. In the Hebrew-based count of Psalms it is number 23, but Psalm 22 in the LXX-based count of Psalms.

King James Version
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters:
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me;
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest by head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord fore ever.

Continue reading “The Lord is my Shepherd”

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McDonald’s Biblical Canon

Consider this an explanation of the reason that I’ve yanked a 500+ page book out of my “Currently Reading” slot on the blog, after having read not even 100 pages. The book is Lee Martin McDonald’s The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Hendrickson, 2007). I’m just not enjoying this book. In fact I’m finding it hard to read. I blame the editor. Its argumentation is diffuse and meandering. The writing is peppered with infelicities of expression, quizzical solecisms, and astounding propositions.

An example of a quizzical solecism: “These stelae, from around 600 B.C.E. to roughly 300 B.C.E., are quite uniform in style, progressing from one-dimensional to two-dimensional and finally three-dimensional stelae” [pp 39-40]. Now, I suppose he means the artistic depictions on the stelae go from painted (?) to bas relief (?) to sculpture in round (?), but that’s not what he says. A one- or two-dimensional stele is a physical impossibility.

As an example of an astounding proposition:

Along with the Prophets, a body of literature, some of which was written well before 200 B.C.E. and some perhaps even later (e.g., Daniel), circulated widely among the Jews. These writings circulated in Palestine and were later translated from Hebrew into Greek

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Like the sands of their own deserts

The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness. The robbers shall enter into it, &c. [Jeremiah 12.12; 7.22]
The land of Israel has not only been given into the hands of strangers for a prey, and unto the wicked of the earth for a spoil, as foreign nations have successively subjugated and despoiled it; but it has also been the prey of bordering marauders, to whose assaults it has for ages been exposed. “These precautions, on the part of travellers, are above all necessary in the countries exposed to the Arabs, such as Palestine and the whole frontier of the desert.” [Volney’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 417.] “The Arabs are plunderers of the cultivated lands, and robbers on the highroads. —On the slightest alarm the Arabs cut down their (the peasants’) harvests, seize their flocks, &c. The peasants with good cause call them thieves. The Arab makes his incursions against hostile tribes, or seeks plunder in the country or on the highways. He became a robber from greediness, and such is in fact his present character. A plunderer rather than a warrior, the Arab attacks only to despoil.” [Ibid. chap. xxiii.] Such is the systematic spoliation and robbery to which the inhabitants of Palestine have been subjected for ages. Mr Stanley’s testimony may here be added: “In Greece and Italy and Spain, it is the mountainous tract which is beset with banditti—the level country which is safe. In Palestine, on the contrary, the mountain tracts are comparitively secure, though infested by villages of hereditary ruffians here and there; but the plains, with hardly an exception, are more or less dangerous . . . . The Bedouin tribes are the corsairs of the wilderness. Far up in the plains of Philistia and Sharon come the Arabs of the Tîh; deep into the centre of Palestine, into the plain of Esdraelon, especially when the harvest has left the fields clear for pasturage, come the Arabs of the Haurân and of Gilead. But now, like the sands of their own deserts which engulph the monuments of Egypt, no longer defended by a watchful and living population, they have broken in upon the country far and near; and in the total absence of solitary dwelling-places—in the gathering together of all the settled inhabitants into villages, and in the walls which, as at Jerusalem, enclose the cities round, with locked gates and guarded towers—we see the effect of the constant terror which they inspire.” [Stanley, pp. 135, 136.]

Rev Alexander Keith. Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived From the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy: Particularly As Illustrated by the History of the Jews and by the Discoveries of Recent Travellers. Thirty-Ninth Edition. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1872. Pages 189-190. Emphasis his.

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Biblical Archaeology

Over the past few decades, for a number of reasons “Biblical Archaeology” has fallen out of favor in the academy. One of those reasons, very much a charicature of the best of the field, was the perception that its practitioners were out to “prove the Bible.” Undoubtedly there were secondary and tertiary applications of the findings of Biblical Archaeology, usually tied to confessional interests, which abused the data, indeed claiming them to have proved the Bible correct in various ways.

Here is how G. Ernest Wright, one of the most eminent of the proponents of Biblical Archaeology defined the field in the beginning of his book on the subject:

Biblical archaeology is a special “armchair” variety of general archaeology. The biblical archaeologist may or may not be an excavator himself, but he studies the discoveries of the excavations in order to glean from them every fact that throws a direct, indirect or even diffused light upon the Bible. He must be intelligently concerned with stratigraphy and typology, upon which the methodology of modern archaeology rests and of which more will be said later in this chapter. Yet his chief concern is not with methods or pots or weapons in themselves alone. His central and absorbing interest is the understanding and exposition of the Scriptures.
Biblical Archaeology (Westminster Press, 1962), 17.

Interestingly, Wright describes Biblical Archaeology as a tool of exegesis, yet one rooted in realia rather than literary theory. Nowadays, some modern Biblical critics regard the Biblical texts as wholly fictional, tendentious, and lacking in all connection to realia, so to draw on archaeology for illuminating realia as Wright describes above is, in such perspectives, ludicrous. Such a severe disjunction is, however, generally considered extreme and unwarranted. The Bible is a document originating in the ancient Near East, in a particular territory, and describes various people, places, and events in that territory and others. And while various items of realia, the remains of cities, and so on do indeed support numerous elements of the Biblical narratives, to take those direct and indirect corroborations and illuminations and state that the entire Bible is thereby “proved” in its entirety by them, is likewise unwarranted. Wright also deals with this abuse:

In this perspective the biblical scholar no longer bothers to ask whether archaeology “proves” the Bible. In the sense that the biblical languages, the life and customs of its peoples, its history, and its conceptions are illuminated in innumerable ways by the archaeological discoveries, he knows that such a question is certainly to be answered in the affirmative. No longer does this literature project from the chaos of prehistory “as though it were a monstrous fossil, with no contemporary evidence to demonstrate its authenticity.” Yet the scholar also knows that the primary purpose of biblical archaeology is not to “prove” but to discover. The vast majority of the “finds” neither prove nor disprove; they fill in the background and give the setting for the story. It is unfortunate that this desire to “prove” the Bible has vitiated so many works which are available to the average reader. The evidence has been misused, and the inferences drawn from it are so often misleading, mistaken, or half true. Our ultimate aim must not be “proof,” but truth. We must study the history of the Chosen People in exactly the same way as we do that of any other people, running the risk of destroying the uniqueness of that history. Unless we are willing to run that risk, truth can never be ours.
Biblical Archaeology, 27.

That’s a very enlightening passage, which puts into relief much modern vituperation against Biblical Archaeology, complaints about “Albrightian” approaches, and so on. Wright was well aware, as was Albright, that the data were being misused by some unscrupulous authors in order to “prove the Bible.” To lump Albright, Wright, et alia, and this misuse of Biblical Archaeology together with such misuse is either misinformed or dishonest. Biblical Archaeology itself, properly understood as defined in the first quote above from Wright, is a perfectly legitimate practice. It is, in all actuality, simply archaeology.

On the other hand, since the term “Biblical Archaeology” has become entirely associated with that misuse, from the late twentieth century critical scholarship has been moving away from use of the term. Especially illustrative of this is that the journal The Biblical Archaeologist, published by the organization American Schools of Oriental Research, experienced a name change in 1998 to Near Eastern Archaeology. Largely this was due to the fact that the journal generally comprised articles that had nothing to do with biblical subjects, but the former name’s connotation indeed played a role, as discussions upon the proposition of the name change revealed.

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Temple, Church, Dome

Just last week, Eastern Orthodox Christians commemorated the entrance of Mary (the Theotokos, “God-birther,” the mother of Jesus) into the Jerusalem Temple. If you’re not familiar with this somewhat surprising story, as many western Christians aren’t, then you may read the tale in the Protevangelium of James, which, while it is certainly an apocryphal text and no part of the canon of Scripture, nonetheless it is recognized to contain many of the same traditions held by Orthodox Christians concerning Mary, which traditions are expressed in hymnography and hagiography. One of these is that Joachim and Anna, Mary’s parents, dedicated her to the Jerusalem Temple as a young girl, where she lived in the Holy of Holies (!) and was fed by an angel. Later, she left the Temple and was entrusted to Joseph. The rest of the story will be familiar.

What is important about this set of stories is its impact particularly among Eastern Christians, particularly early ones (note that the Protevangelium of James dates to roughly the middle of the second century, showing these stories took root very early), and most especially those wealthier among them who were responsible for building churches in the Holy Land. It was believed by early Christians that the child Mary literally lived in the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple, however unlikely or impossible this was, and however much we may rather prefer to find this allegorically describing her life of faith, purity, and devotion. This led someone, at some point prior to the late fifth century, to construct a Church of Mary Theotokos on the site of the ancient Jewish Temple, the plan of which is, I suggest, preseved by the current Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Several lines of evidence support this:
1.) The foundation of an identical Church of Mary Theotokos precisely atop the ruined Samaritan Temple on Mt Gerizim was built by Emperor Zeno in 484 AD. The choice of a Church of Mary Theotokos there would otherwise be odd, as no traditions relate her life to Gerizim or the Samaritan Temple. Yet, if Zeno were simply treating one set of Temple ruins like another, it would make sense to have the two matching ruins covered with two matching shrines. Thus, the church in Jerusalem will likely have been built earlier than his reign (474-491 AD), though named at the very least if not indeed constructed after the Council of Chalcedon, during which “Theotokos” was argued upon and accepted as the proper Christian title for Mary, indicating Jesus was God and not merely Christ/Messiah. So it was probably built (or at least begun) during the very active construction in the time when the former Empress Eudocia was resident in Jerusalem, roughly 441-460 AD. This founding in the later fifth century would explain why it is not mentioned by Egeria and Jerome.
2.) Justinian’s huge and famous “Nea” church was actually named the New Church of Mary Theotokos, requiring there to be an older church of Mary the Theotokos somewhere in the city, while none is specifically mentioned in the records. The most obvious location would be the Temple Mount, with a Church of Mary Theotokos there to commemorate her living there.
3.) All the known various elements of Mary’s life were commemorated by churches, even a stop for a break between Jerusalem and Ain Karem, the recently rediscovered Kathisma church, also octagonal in plan (as was the original eastern end of the Nativity Basilica in Bethlehem built in the fourth century over the traditional site of the birth cave of Jesus, and the fifth-century structure built over the house of Peter in Capernaum). It is highly unlikely that the otherwise precisely located and unused area of the ruined Jerusalem Temple, based upon the tradition of her childhood there, were not similarly commemorated.
4.) Recent and ongoing sifting of the fill from the Temple Mount has brought to light much evidence of an early Byzantine Christian presence on the platform, in contrast to the former belief that the site was abandoned and used as a dump, which tale was mere propaganda found solely in Islamic sources regarding the building of the Dome of the Rock. (While it is true that every church except the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem was destroyed by the Persians in 614, and thus many churches were still in ruins at the point of the Arab invasion in 638, it does not follow that such ruins were of long standing.) The presence of this memorial Church of Mary Theotokos, undoubtedly one of the pilgrim sites in Jerusalem, would account for these materials.
5.) Further evidence is the choice of Quranic verses for the interior of the Dome of the Rock, denying Jesus being the Son of God, which were chosen not randomly, but in reaction to the former dedication of this church to Mary the Theotokos, which was essentially an important statement about the Son Mary bore being God, and not just a man.

In conclusion, it is, I think, beyond doubt that a Church of Mary Theotokos was constructed in about the middle of the fifth century on the Temple Mount over the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple in order to commemorate the Eastern Christian tradition of Mary having grown up in the Temple itself. It may even have been at that point that the stairway and cave beneath the central rock (the former floor of the Holy of Holies) was cut, in order to provide a “luminous cave” as found in various other of the commemorated Holy Land sites (Annunciation in Nazareth, Nativity in Bethlehem, Eleona on Mt Olivet, Anastasis in Jerusalem, etc), though this may even have been done in Crusader times. The plan of the presently standing Dome of the Rock preserves the plan of this ancient church (and perhaps even some of the structural elements as examination of the beams of the Dome of the Rock indicate they are older than they should be) which would have been destroyed by the Persians, along with most other churches in the Holy Land, only a few decades before the Dome itself was constructed. This makes the Dome of the Rock that much more interesting, I think, in addition to being the most beautiful building in Jerusalem.

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