The Model City of Jerusalem

I think it was at the Hebrew University that they currently have a model of Jerusalem. It is somewhat of a mixture of times. It not only has the temple from the time before AD70 when the Roman general (later emperor) Titus destroyed it. But it also has a hippodrome (for horse races) and theater from the time after the Bar Kochba revolt (AD 135) when the Roman emperor Hadrian expelled Jews from the city and renamed it Aelia Capitolina.

Let’s start with the approach to the temple mount that Jesus would have taken from the south. The picture is thus looking north:

The gates that show are called the Huldah gates after the prophetess who authenticated the Book of the Law for King Josiah. The little building in front is the tomb of Huldah. The part of the city in the foreground is where the oldest part of the city was, the city of David that had been the city of the Jebusites before David, Jebus. David purchased the temple mount from Amuna after the plague, and Solomon built the first temple on that site.

Here are the steps as they appear today. The wall you see in the following picture of course is mostly from the time of Saladin in the 1500’s, although if you look carefully by the part coming forward you can see just a smidge of the lintel from one of the Huldah gates at the time of Jesus:

The wailing wall, so called was not actually part of the original temple (apparently) but was part of the retaining wall that helped hold the earth of the mount in place:

Here’s a representation of what the temple might have looked like at the time of Jesus. In the background, just behind it on the northwest side of the temple mount, is the Fortress Antonia where Pilate would have stayed to watch festivals closely.

Here’s a picture of this general area today:

On the other side of the city, looking from the west, we have the palace built by Herod the Great. You can see the temple behind it.

Here it is today at the Jaffa Gate:

The Romans expanded to the north and west of this location about a century after Christ. At the time of Jesus, the wall went on somewhat straight. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, now inside the city walls, was definitely outside the city walls at the time of Jesus. The following picture isn’t great, but if you look for the rough patch outside the wall to the right, you see where Golgotha was (I think).

And now the bulk of the model city from above: