“I know that the Lord has given you the land.”[1] The historical context for the above saying is from the Book of Joshua, where Rahab speaks to the two spies sent to Jericho to investigate the land just before the conquest in the 13th century BCE. When I read from Joshua today, I imagined what it would be like for Palestinians to say, “I know the LORD had given you the land of the Haram Al-Sharif.” This view was once held by the Supreme Moslem Council in A Brief Guide to AL-HARAM AL-SHARIF, dated 1924. It states,
Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple
is beyond dispute. This, too, is the
spot, according to the universal belief, on which “David built there an altar
unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.[2]
In recent years, some Palestinians
have denied any connection between the site and Solomon’s Temple. I found this out firsthand from conversations
with Palestinians when I visited Jerusalem, Israel in May 2017. However, in a recent report, a new book
entitled, The Noble Sanctuary Book, is
claiming the historical connection. The
work is by the Jordanian photographer Bashar Tabbah and the scholar Dr. Robert
Schick; the book is a photographic and historical exploration of Jerusalem’s
Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Al-Haram Al-Sharif.[3] According to Arnon Segel, “Despite the Arab
tendency to deny the Jewish past of the mountain, it is interesting that this
book actually mentions the existence of the two Jewish temples there.”[4]
[1] The Holy Bible: New
Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers,
1989), Jos 2:9.
[2] A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif
Jerusalem (Franciscan Printing Press: Jerusalem, 1925), 4. * #
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