Retired Hebrew University physics professor Asher Kaufman shows two different orientations for the First and Second Temples, although there is no historical proof that this was so.

His orientation of the Second Temple is based on the assumption that the Temple was trapezoidal in shape. As evidence, he relies on a glass fragment of the Byzantine period that shows a painting of the Temple with surrounding walls. These walls are drawn in perspective, a normal artistic procedure, and the resulting tapering shape cannot therefore be used as archaeological evidence that the Temple was trapezoidal. He then tries to match this idea up with some very small bedrock cuts and the directions of water cisterns to prove his point.

His orientation of the First Temple is derived from another small bedrock cut to the north of the platform of the Dome of the Rock (see “Where the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem Stood,” BAR 09:02). It is true that these bedrock cuts were probably part of the foundation trenches of a building, but they are insufficient in themselves to prove that they were part of the Temple. (I believe that they may have had something to do with the foundations of the Towers of Hananeel and Mea, which were later replaced by the Baris Fortress.) He also claims that his “Find 14” was a “crypt supporting the northeastern angle of the Court of Priests and part of the Outer Court” (p. 56). Warren, who discovered this vault in Cistern 29, wrote, “The vault itself seems clearly to be Arab work not earlier than the 13th century” (with Claude R. Conder, The Survey of Western Palestine, Jerusalem [London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1884], p. 224). To incorporate a medieval structure into the First Temple is archaeologically impossible, to say the least.