03x06 - Rebuilding The Temple

[bunniefuu]

(singing)

- What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology has been found.

Oh, hi. How are you?

Oh, look at that!

I need a planter.

It's a shrine to a belly button.

Is a rock a salt?

Look at that!

No one gets into this place?

- No one.

Whoa! Don't take me too far.

Now that's Naked Archeology!

I'm standing on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Behind me, the Dome of the Rock.

A Holy place for the Muslims,

it's standing on the Temple Mount,

a platform where one stood the House of God;

the Temple of Solomon, and it stood there for years,

was destroyed, rebuilt and stood for another years.

One of the wonders of the world before the Romans destroyed

it some years ago.

It is said that will be rebuilt and usher in the end of days

and the new era of human history.

But how will it be rebuilt

when we don't know what it looked like?

After being delivered from sl*very in Egypt,

the Jewish people wandered in the wilderness

and prayed in a tent, the Tabernacle of Moses,

taking the Ark of the Covenant,

which contained the Commandments

with them wherever they went.

Finally, King Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem

on the holy ground of Mount Moriah;

believed to be the place

where God formed Adam from the dust.

The temple had to be huge to accommodate all of the pilgrims

who would come from far and wide,

bringing their animals to sacrifice,

to show their devotion to God.

It took thousands of laborers working for seven years

to complete the building of the temple in BCE,

and the Jewish people finally had a place

to gather and pray.

But the temple was also a place for everyone

who believed in one God.

As it is written,

"My temple will be a house of prayer for all nations."

But in BCE, the Babylonians destroyed it.

The second temple was built on the same site as the first

and centuries later, it was greatly expanded by Herod.

Then, in CE the Roman siege of Jerusalem began.

The temple was destroyed,

the city b*rned and a million people k*lled.

In all the time since, a third temple has never been built.

Now, a quiz.

What do these words mean? "If you build it, he will come."

Sure, it's a line from the movie Field of Dreams,

but some people believe that the temple must be rebuilt

so that the Messiah will come.

Some of them are building models of Solomon's temple.

What makes these real people as single minded

as the fictional man who built the baseball field,

and how can it be done

if nothing of the temple can be found?

I'm on my way to meet these model builders

to try and find out.

First, a typical Texas ranch.

This is Nolan Armstrong,

right over here from Georgia; and Joe Good from Texas.

He's agreeing, the horse is agreeing.

You'd never think that these guys over here.

they're rebuilding the temple. I'm not kidding.

Okay. So could you tell me, Joe, how did you get into this?

- It was something that I just knew I was called to do.

I was compelled to do it. It was like, I couldn't stop.

For a long time, we thought, well,

we'll build a model of the temple and that would be it.

And then we realized that the model

that we were going to build was in computer graphics.

- [Host] Joe and Nolan have been working together,

designing their computer model for years.

How close are you getting?

I mean, is this another years or what?

- It could be another years that we continue learning,

but I feel that we are very close.

- [Host] Why does it take so long to make a model

of Solomon's temple?

What are Joe and Nolan concerned about getting right?

In a word, everything,

Because this is holy architecture, designed to be the

connection between the earthly and the divine.

So every detail has to be right.

The temple was made up of ever increasing areas of sanctity,

and you had to purify the body before the soul,

through ritual bathing.

You know, cleanliness is next to godliness.

Everyone went to an immersion bath,

a mikvah before entering the outer court to pray.

And if you are offering a sacrifice,

you would then enter the inner court, the Azarah.

Beyond this was the holy place for the priests.

And beyond that,

the most sacred place of all, the Holy of Holies;

where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.

Only the high priest could enter and only once a year.

So where do Joe and Nolan start?

Like all good detectives,

they look through the evidence.

There are descriptions of the temple in the Bible.

There are passages in the Mishnah, in the Talmud.

And there is Josephus, who wrote in the first century CE and

who witnessed the burning of the second temple.

Comparing these ancient texts with archeology,

while designing their computer model, is a mammoth job!

But Joe and Nolan aren't the first model builders,

and they can gather valuable knowledge

from those who came before.

So we're off to Jerusalem.

To figure out what was there in the past,

we need access to the Temple Mount;

but today, access is not granted.

Luckily, over a hundred years ago,

this model was made of the current structures.

- [Joe] This was done by Conrad Schick.

He worked with the Palestine Exploration Fund.

- [Host] This isn't the s, right?

- In the s. I understand that this model

was done in .

- And he's even got these little doorways and he's providing

in the doorways, you know,

access to these underground cisterns.

You're using the cisterns

to actually figure out the geometry, the architecture.

- That's right.

And we can't go into the cisterns today.

The Muslims will not allow it.

- This is invaluable.

We could not do what we do today, if it were not for this.

- [Host] One of the mysteries concerning the temple

is it's size, how many people could gather here at one time.

Joe and Nolan have looked at the conventional sources,

but they've taken a unique approach.

- There was a toilet that was right here, under the ground.

- That was an important discovery for you.

- Very important.

- Why?

- Because it gave us the ability to understand

the public entering in, and the process

that they went through in order

to enter into the inner court yards.

All of a sudden, things took on shape.

We were able to see them and the Nolan was able to put them

into computer and we can draw them.

- [Host] There's a clue in the text.

Pilgrims had to cleanse themselves

before entering the temple.

This model shows the toilets, mikvahs and cisterns

where the water was kept.

Seeing their size tells us how many pilgrims

could be accommodated.

The life of the temple can now be imagined.

- There is a grid of conduits located right here.

- I got it. Plumbing.

- [Joe] Plumbing.

- You're actually finding function.

You're finding out thousands and thousands of pilgrims,

- That's right.

- where did they go? What did they do?

- [Joe] That's it. That's exactly it.

- Underneath the model is even more evidence.

This is the actual topography?

- [Joe] That's right.

- This is amazing!

- Now here's where the toilets would have been located.

These were the two that we talked about above;

and the men would go to probably the larger,

because more men would be attending the Temple Mount.

And the smaller was probably for the women.

- And he didn't fool around, Schick.

Why would he do this for display?

Nobody would ever climb underneath the table.

- He did it for students of the future, in...

- [Host] He did it for Nolan and you!

Even though Joe and Nolan

aren't allowed to examine the Temple Mount,

now that we've seen what's underneath this model,

want to see what's under the area

where the temple once stood.

(singing)

- In the th century BCE, King Solomon

built the first temple where the Israelites could pray.

It drew millions of pilgrims,

was destroyed, rebuilt,

and Jesus wept as he foretold it would be destroyed again.

It was, and ever since, there have been prayers of hope

for it's rebuilding.

But some people are doing more than hoping.

They're studying texts,

comparing it to archeology and making models;

striving for complete accuracy,

because this is holy architecture.

I'm with Joe Good and Nolan Armstrong,

who have spent years examining all the evidence,

so as to create a computer model of Solomon's temple.

For Joe and Nolan to take measurements

and walk in the steps of the pilgrims,

we've come to Jerusalem to get as close possible

to where Solomon's temple actually stood.

You're rebuilding the temple.

How, how does it work with you guys?

- It works very well in that, that Joe's strengths

is in the text, and he and I work together on what he finds.

- I see. You know, if he thinks he's found something,

theoretically, you try to construct it.

It just doesn't fit.

- If you can't build it, it wasn't real.

- "If you build it, they will come."

- Exactly!

- Now, when you're standing here, you know, I mean,

there's the Western wall.

People are praying; you standing over here.

Do you see the wall that I see,

or do you see something else?

- I see a lot more.

I mean, I see this wall, but when I see it,

I see it as it was.

And then I see the walls that are beyond it,

going inside the various tunnels, the inner chambers.

- He sees invisible walls. I love it!

- But it's there!

- So let's go for it.

They're rebuilding the temple.

People forget that this temple functioned

for literally a thousand years;

we're not talking a hundred years.

- [Joe] It was the, the structure of the ancient world.

- So Nolan, when you're standing over here, what do you see?

- This is actually no longer an underground vault.

This, this is a building,

which is above the roadway below us;

a Roman reconstruction off the foundations that were

originally there.

- I see. They destroyed it and they rebuilt it.

- That's right.

- [Host] Joe and Nolan can examine stones,

patterns and building style as they reconstruct what was

here before.

You actually use these kinds of architecture

to recreate it in computer graphics.

- Absolutely.

We go ahead and we use this as basically a pattern,

with which to build from,

which also has the detail that gives us column heights,

column diameters, loads to the millimeter.

- Originally, we were building the model physically,

- Physically?

- Yes, we had, we had a model

that we were building in my office.

- Oh no, you wouldn't want to smash that

every once in a while.

- Well, that's what we had to do

because every time that we learned something new,

we had to change what we had before.

And that's where we switched to the computer.

- To you, surely it's more than historical research?

- It has has nothing to do with history.

It has to do with the future.

- [Host] Although the temple was destroyed,

there are buildings that were affected by the fire

and are still standing today.

We're heading to one now.

Numbers and figures are one thing;

but standing here, within a four story building

that stood at the time of the temple,

we can begin to feel it's grandeur.

These are stones that can speak to us.

- Let me show you something, Simcha.

Take your hand and go up here; right up here.

You see the ... smell this, smell it.

- Oh, look at this. Can you see that?

This is actual ash.

- [Joe] That's right.

- [Nolan] Soot.

- [Joe] And you can still smell it.

- This is a year old fire.

- That's right. You just stepped back in time.

- It's actually very sad.

It's preserving the moment of destruction of the holiest

building on Earth.

- Now, from this point, when you read Josephus,

you read about the burning of this building,

you read about the destruction of Jerusalem;

it'll always be different, because you've smelled the ash.

Me, I can hear the sounds of the city years ago, and...

- Destruction.

- The destruction, yup.

- [Nolan] But the good part-

- Can you hear the sound of the rebuilding?

- Oh, yes. We can.

- That's, that's the part now.

- [Host] In the Bible, Ezekiel says,

"Describe the temple to the house of Israel

and let them measure the pattern,

write it down in their sight,

so that they may keep all its ordinances."

Joe and Nolan are trying to do just that.

But halfway around the world, in Suffolk, England,

there's another incredible model.

We're off to see it.

- Here we are.

- Oh my God!

(singing)

- I'm going on a trip around the world,

meeting model builders dedicated to rebuilding

the Temple of Solomon.

The Naked Archeologist will go anywhere for a story.

years ago, the second temple was destroyed.

Some believe if it's rebuilt, the Messiah will come.

So it's imperative to get the details of the model right.

- It says in Ezekiel to build a model,

and that's what we're doing here,

in the virtual reality model.

- Modern technology, ancient archeology,

- Ancient text.

- And biblical prophecy, and you're putting it all together.

- That's right.

- [Host] As Joe and Nolan compare evidence

to put finishing touches on their computer model,

they're not the only ones obsessed with getting it right.

So I'm off to England to meet Alec Gerard.

At the age of most people have retired,

you wouldn't believe what he's doing.

- Here we are.

- Oh my God! Look at this thing.

I was expecting a little model on a table.

- Yeah, most people do!

- [Host] This is breathtaking.

Oh! You got little people!

- Yes, they're all, they're all doing something.

- Thousands of them! You bake them in the oven?

- [Alec] Yeah, and then I painted them.

- How long have you been working on this?

- years.

- years?

- To begin with, I worked in the church;

but I felt I was getting nowhere at all, so I did this.

People come from everywhere to see it.

With this, I don't have to tell them; I show them.

You can show people a lot better then you can tell them.

- And do you go to Jerusalem and try to like...?

- No, I've never been.

- You've never been to Jerusalem?

- Nope.

- [Host] But people from Jerusalem have been here.

Scholars from all over the world

come to Alec's garage in Suffolk to study this model.

This looks like a Western wall.

- Yes, that's the Western wall.

- Ground level, today, is up here somewhere.

- [Alec] Yes, about there. Yes.

- I was just standing here, you know, some, a few days ago.

- Yeah.

- Don't you want to go to Jerusalem?

- No, I don't want to go.

- Why not?

- I'll go, I'll go with the New Jerusalem.

- You'll go to New Jerusalem. (laughs) I see.

Oh, look at this! Oh my God!

You look at here, and you can see all the way down into the,

into the temple area.

- Wow!

These are pilgrims, right?

- Yeah. This would be the entrance for the general public.

And they would go in that gate and come out and that gate.

- [Host] Those steps, they still exist, don't they?

- [Alec] Yes, they're still there;

and they're all irregular shapes and distances.

and that's done deliberately.

So they can't rush up to the House of God.

- I want to introduce you guys to each other.

- Hello.

- How do you do?

- And what do you think of this?

- It's the most awesome model I've ever seen of the temple.

- [Host] Isn't it?

- The work that you put into this, it's unbelievable.

It's really dramatic.

- You mentioned there could have been , people here.

- Yeah.

- I mean, they've got to go to loo.

Where, where are your loos?

Whoa! Oh, wow!

Is that the latrines?

- Yeah. That would be washing and--

- It looks like washing.

- There was a passage way underneath, from this building,

where the priest would--

- That sounds like what you told me.

- Yes, but ours is different.

- How is yours different?

- We believe that it was underneath this building.

- You think this thing was underneath the here?

You know, it's amazing, you know, Georgia, Texas, England,

in two seconds, you were talking about technicalities

of the latrines of the Jerusalem temple.

But, what you're trying to understand is the function,

- That's right.

- Of the temple.

- [Nolan] Yup, that's right.

- That's right. Yeah.

- Of the House of God.

- Yes.

- [Host] All this detail

makes me want to be the size of one of Alec's figures,

so I can feel what it was like to be in the temple.

That's what Joe and Nolan have been trying to discover.

And you know what? They figured it out.

(singing)

- From Texas to Jerusalem, to England,

I'm on a trip around the world because I want to see

the amazing models people are building

of the Temple of Solomon.

Joe, Nolan and Alec are model builders who've spent decades

studying the ancient texts and archeology

to and learn exactly what the temple looked like,

and how it functioned.

We're in London,

heading for the Palestine Exploration Fund's library.

The PEF has been around since .

As Joe and Nolan continue to research,

they can look at hand drawn maps of the Temple Mount,

which were made years ago.

We've also come to meet renowned author, David Jacobson,

because he's written the definitive book

on what's under the Temple Mount;

and he has a surprise for us.

- He's doing quite a bit from memory, Josephus.

- [Host] Jacobson doubts Josephus's account

of the dimensions of the second temple.

- Because he has the whole perimeter, I think is six,

- Six acres.

six acres, which is far too small.

So I then checked up Josephus's his account of distances

in other, in other contexts.

He's wrong everywhere he goes.

- [Host] According to Jacobson,

the dimensions of the temple given by Josephus

are smaller than they should be.

The more we learn about the temple,

the bigger it gets, which makes sense.

After all,

there would have been million pilgrims there

during the holidays.

Armed with this new information,

Joe and Nolan go back to the drawing board

and recalibrate their model.

Inside Nolan's laptop. a whole world is about to take shape.

Wow! That's so beautiful.

You literally can get around it.

Wow, this is very exciting.

I mean, he made the temple come alive,

the holy Temple of Jerusalem,

Joe and Nolan's computer model

is now the most accurate model on Earth of Solomon's Temple.

- And you ascend from here to another level of sanctity,

a higher level of restriction.

- I guess I would meditate, prepare myself, purify myself.

- Absolutely!

- [Host] If he had an animal to sacrifice,

the pilgrim would now enter through this gate to the Azarah.

- You're talking about a gateway,

which is feet wide by feet tall.

- That's huge.

- This is larger than an average house.

- [Host] So what do I see when I'm in that courtyard?

- The altar, you could drive a semi,

tractor-trailer truck on top of it.

- Unload your cows.

- (laughs) Yes.

- And bulls.

So they're butchering animals in there.

- Oh yes. Absolutely.

- [Host] People singing, chanting?

- Smoke ascending from the alter.

- Wow, it's a busy place.

- It's chaos if nobody knows what they're doing.

- [Host] And how many steps lead up from this courtyard,

the Azarah, the temple itself, so to speak?

- They're steps,

- steps.

- And they're, they're designed--

- So a step program?

- (laughs) It would be appropriate.

- [Host] Now you're in the sanctuary,

but you're not in the Holy of Holies?

- Absolutely not. You can't even see it.

The curtain, it represented all of creation.

- Wow.

- And so what is behind all of creation?

- God.

- God.

- You're on the Holy place.

And then, just beyond the Holy place is the Holy of Holies.

- Just beyond those two veils.

- It would be, like, overwhelming.

- It had to be.

- Do you have a representation of what it looked like

when you snuck past those double curtains?

- [Nolan] Curtains? No, I don't.

- Ah, you haven't built a Holy of Holies.

- I'm not up to that.

- [Host] So while creating

the most accurate model ever built of the Holy temple,

Joe and Nolan are aware that some things

are best left in mystery.

Perhaps their model will one day serves as the blueprint

for the future, the House of God;

who's rebuilding is prophesied in the Bible.

(singing)