Jaguar Prince

The Wailing Wall is better called the Western Wall (Hebrew: ha-kotel ha-ma'aravi), part of the cyclopean wall that surrounded the holy of holies in the time of Jesus. It stands today as the holiest shrine of Judaism, a mournful witness to ancient grandeur, and its association with the cardinal direction of the setting sun is thus uncannily appropriate. But there is still hope in Jewish hearts: after all, is it not a divine sign that the part of the wall that remained is the one that protected the sanctum sanctorum?

What most people fail to see is that its sad song is not the grim counterpart of the triumphal hymn of Christianity, the religion that made its founder the new temple of mankind. As a matter of fact, had people been more attentive and less eager to believe, the Western Wall with its massive and irrefutable presence should have ruined Christianity as surely as the Roman armies which destroyed the Temple without being able to raze it completely to the ground, and it should have done so more effectively that the persecutions of Domitian, Diocletian or Julian the (blessed) Apostate.

I say that the Western Wall should be the Wailling Wall of Jesus and his followers because it is the surest true witness to Jesus' failure as a prophet. The rabbi from Galilea may have had stupendous powers of healing and exorcizing, but as far as being clairvoyant, I think that an objective assessment of his performance must conclude to his being something of a third-class amateur.

Indeed, in all the synoptic Gospels we hear him say most emphatically (and using the Greek construction ou me) that not a single stone of the Temple would remain intact when the wrath of God would come. But see, there are enough stones left on the site to show that Jesus was sorely deluded.

Or was he?

I tend to believe that the delusion belongs rather to the people who wrote the Gospels, people who were eager to conceal the real message and the real deeds of Jesus. They used this saying to demonstrate that Jesus knew everything and had naturally predicted the most cataclysmic event of the first century for Jewry: the destruction of the temple in AD 70. More importantly, by inserting this prophecy in the apocalyptic discourses of Jesus, they made sure that their readers would forget or re-interpret in a favorable sense the repeated, even relentless accusations from the lips of Jewish critics that Jesus himself had threatened to destroy the Temple.

This charge was brought against him at his trial (and never denied by him) and passers by unmercifully reminded him of his absurd threats when he was hanging on the cross. In the Gospel of John, an extraordinary transformation takes place with Jesus enigmatically encouraging his hearers to destroy the Temple themselves (in order to see it wonderfully rebuilt in three days), which echoes Josephus' later claims that the rebellious Jews themselves, not benevolent Titus, burnt the Temple.

Briefly, the Jews have themselves and only themselves to blame for their misfortunes. A familiar tune...

But what did Jesus really say? How could it be that the Jews continually accused him of wanting to detroy the Temple without any motive? Hadn't Jesus initiated the demolition process by whipping the merchants and money-changers?

I think the clearest hint remains the ominous prophecy alluded to at the beginning of this article. Considering the huge dimensions of the Herodian Temple and its Gizeh-like masonry, a thorough destruction not leaving one single stone intact could not be the work of human hands, even if driven by boundless antisemitic hate or messianic despair.

What I mean is that, in making this prediction, Jesus was clearly referring to a divine intervention to punish the corruption of the priestly class of his day: it was God himself who, at his begging, would blow off the impious shrine, disintegrate it, thus cleaning it from all Gentile and other impurity.

Then, again at Jesus' request, the angels would build a new temple, the sanctuary of the Kingdom of God.

Needless to say, none of this happened. Jesus whipped the money-changers, but God refused to follow suit by erasing the rest. But after Jesus was crucified and buried, a new story arose as the East began to shine with new rosy light on what was to be called Easter Sunday: God had destroyed the temple of Jesus' body and had rebuilt it most wonderfully.

Long live Christ and Christianity!

Jag :devil3:

Diogenes the Cynic

There's a loophole.

The Wailing Wall was not actually part of the Temple complex but part of a retaining wall around the Temple Mount.

Jaguar Prince

Fair enough.

Rabbi Acha (a fourth-century scholar) said that "the Shekhinah never leaves the Western Wall". This shows that for Jews, the Western Wall is indeed part of the Temple complex.

Besides, there are indications that, after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, there remained parts of the ancient wall, particularly in the western area of the Temple. Since Jews were prohibited to enter Jerusalem after the Second Jewish War, the customary place for mourning the Temple was the Mount of Olives, which overlooks the Temple Mount from the east. A description of this rite is given by the fourth-century Church Father Jerome, who observed Jews on the Mount of Olives on the Ninth of Av, the day of mourning for the Temple, wailing and lamenting while they looked down on its ruins.The western wall that earlier Jews gathered at was around the Gihon Spring. It was there that a new temple construction was started in the time of Constantine (313-325 A.D.), and a second time in the days of Julian the Apostate (362 A.D.). The remnant of the wall for the holy of holies was where all Jews gathered and considered the Western Wall.

Therefore Jesus' prediction was plainly wrong.

See also the following article, which claims that the Western wall has nothing to do with the Herodian Temple:

http://www.biblemysteries.com/lectur...ailingwall.htm