When the Romans came and destroyed the city and the temple in 70 AD, they, according to Jesus Prophecy, tore up the walls even down to the foundations. Nothing was left.
Jesus prophesied that in the future the Temple of Jerusalem would be destroyed and that its destruction would be so complete that not one stone would be left standing on top of another. His prophecy was fulfilled about forty years later when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and tore down the Temple.
The destruction was so complete that even the foundations of the Temple were dug up. These facts are recorded in the writings of Flavius Josephus, an historian and eye witness of the time who wrote about the destruction. This forecast was also recorded in the book of Matthew.
How is it then, that there are still foundation stones today that undergird the walls that surround the Temple Mount? The answer is that what is called the Temple Mount is not the Temple Mount.
The Next Step
The next step in exhuming the evolution which has led to the prevailing bias of the Temple Mount occurred during the time of the Maccabees. This was about one hundred eighty BC. It was at that time that Simon the Hasmonean (Simon was a Maccabee who had become the Jewish king and priest over Israel) took action by consent of the people.
His anger resulted from what the evil Syrian King Antiocchus had accomplished when he desecrated the Jewish temple and had also seized the citadel of David atop Mt Zion. The citadel looked down on the temple area, and was a strategic military vantage position.
Simon decided to not only tear down and rebuild the desecrated and unusable temple because it had become un-sanctified, but also decided to cut down Mt Zion.
He never wanted to allow an enemy to once again gain the tactical advantage of the high ground of Mt Zion. This is recorded in the book of Maccabees. So Simon excavated Mt. Zion. The chore took three years. Jerusalem of old was getting a kind of face alteration and would begin to become significantly changed.
Simon took the dirt from the excavated mountain and used it to build up and level out what would later come to be known as the Temple Mount. Prior to that time the area was a massive thirty five acre rocky formation with crags, uneven ridges and indentations. The dirt from the excavated Mt Zion was used to smooth out the highs and lows of the rocky terrain. They made it into a level plateau.
What remains of the massive rock formation mentioned by Flavius Josephus is still peeking through the plateau and is the rock underneath the Dome of the Rock.
Then Simon proceeded to build a fort up there called the Baris to protect the temple from invaders who would approach and attack the city and temple from the north. Jerusalem was defended and secured, but later Herod, the great builder, would enhance and greatly enlarge the fort and call it after his friend Mark Anthony. It became known as the Antonia fortress.
But what had this to do with the location of the proper temple mount? As Mt Zion had been removed there was no longer the landmark and high place to look down on the real location of the temple, attention continued to ever so slowly drift and shift to the north.
Enter Herod the Great
Herod, like so many who come to power, was a megalomaniac. When he married into the Jewish Hasmonean kingly line it was to gain political bragging rights and credibility with the Jews. He ended up murdering his Hasmonean wife, but to some great extent he was fearful of the God of the Jews.
Here is how he acquired religion, and how it affected the Temple Mount.
When king David was gathering the elements for the first temple he accumulated a tremendous fortune in gold and silver. So much so that he ended up storing a massive amount of the wealth he then would have buried in his tomb.
When the evil Syrian King Antiocchus plundered the temple many centuries later and desecrated it, Simon the Hasmoneans eventually paid him off to never come back again. He paid him with a significant amount of silver from king David's tomb.
Herod had learned of the payoff and sought to find King David's tomb. He was obviously tempted to find the gold and silver. When the tomb was located two of his men were sent to secure the massive treasure. They drilled into the wall, and placed their torches into the breach of the wall of the tomb to see what they could see. Immediately a powerful flame of fire shot out and killed the two men. Primitive minds did not know that over a period of time limestone puts out a gas. The flame ignited the gas causing the men to be instantly killed.
Herod felt it was a serious warning by the Jewish God. As a result, in great dread he determined not to offend the Jewish God YAHWEH, and sought to appease the “angry God of Israel.” In an act of tremendous penance Herod greatly added onto the temple and then attached the temple to his enlarged Antonia fortress. The temple henceforth would become known as Herod’s temple.
The whole temple complex began to take on a different configuration than the Solomon and Zerubbabel temples. The face of Jerusalem was continuing to change.