Archaeologists are currently excavating one of the most incredible Biblical discoveries ever made. The “Pilgrimage Road” was discovered underneath the modern buildings and streets of Jerusalem and it’s believed to have been the main road up from the pool of Siloam to the Second Temple. Glenn speaks with the City of David Foundation’s Director of International Affairs, Ze’ev Orenstein, who explains why he’s “100%” certain that the historical Jesus of Nazareth walked along this “Biblical superhighway” – not as a matter of faith, but a matter of fact. “It is the most significant half-mile on the planet,” he says. But yet, there are forces working to erase this Jewish history from the records …
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Ze'ev Orenstein is with us, from the City of David Organization. He's the Director of International Affairs. And he's -- we're going to talk a little bit about the archaeology of what's going on in the City of David. How are you?
ZE'EV: Great to be with you.
GLENN: Yeah. Good to have you here.
So how far out of the city wall is the City of David, from -- most people don't. They've never been there. They don't realize how small all of Israel is. Let alone Jerusalem. So can you give us some scale first, of what we're talking about?
ZE'EV: So Israel itself is about the size of the okay state of New Jersey. It's -- we have about 10 million people living in Israel. Jerusalem is the largest city. Probably about a million people living in Jerusalem.
So Jerusalem, by US standards is -- is probably, not the biggest city.
GLENN: No.
ZE'EV: And yet, for billions of people. Not millions. When they wake up in the morning. They looked at Jerusalem as a source of meaning, faith, hope, identity, inspiration.
GLENN: Yeah. I can tell you, I've said this a million times. And I don't know if people can even begin to understand this.
Mu wife and I went to the first time. We went to the Temple Mount.
And you could almost feel. You could almost feel it.
And then we were all the way up at the border of Syria, past the sea of Galilee.
And I looked at my wife. And I said, it's like, it's pulsing. Can you feel the Temple Mount even here?
There's a reason. It's honestly like the polar. The pole goes right through the Temple Mount. And the world actually revolves around that. It's wild to feel it.
ZE'EV: 100 percent. Now, if you ask the average Jewish person, Christian person, close your eyes, and imagine biblical Jerusalem.
Tell me what you see. And you'll get answers like, I see the Western Wall. I see maybe the Stations of the Cross. Maybe the Church of Holy Sepulchre. The Garden Tomb. I see the old city of Jerusalem.
And all wonderful and good places, except none of them, at least when we're talking about the original Hebrew Bible, none of those places are in the Bible.
When you think of the places where the kings of the Bible ruled and the prophets of the Bible preached, you're talking about the City of David. The City of David is today located just outside the walls of the old city.
Now, most people think the walls of the old city, those iconic walls, they must be thousands of years old. They're only about 500 years old. Now, only.
GLENN: Wait. Wait.
The ancient walls around Jerusalem? 500 years?
ZE'EV: That's right.
Built by Sewemon (phonetic), during the Ottoman Period.
Right? Now, most people -- mostly 2,000, 3,000 years old.
Now, the walls of the Temple Mount. The western wall itself, the Southern Wall. The Southern steps. All of that is 2,000 years old, going back to the time of Jesus. But the wall around the old city of Jerusalem is only 500 hundred years old.
Now, if you're sitting here in America.
Wow, 500 years is a long time ago. Jerusalem, which is 4,000 years old, 500 years ago is like last week. We don't get overly excited by anything 500 years old. So what happened?
We lost Jerusalem. Everyone thought it was the old city, until about 150 years ago. 1867, Queen Victoria of England, she wants to discover the treasures of the Bible.
Like the Ark of the Covenant. She sends a man by the name of Captain Charles Warren to the holy land to find those treasures. He comes to Jerusalem.
He wants to excavate the Temple Mount, where the Temple of Solomon stood. The Biblical Mount Moriah, except in 1867, the Ottomans, the Muslims are there.
They say, Charles, we assure you are a great guy.
But you're not digging up the Temple Mount. To this day, due to religious sensitivities, political sensitivities, the Temple Mount has -- had almost no archaeologically activity.
GLENN: Wait. Wait. Let me clarify this. They have Muslims, if I'm not mistaken, have been digging.
ZE'EV: That's not in archaeology.
GLENN: They've been digging it and putting -- putting it into dump trucks.
ZE'EV: They've been destroying it. But in terms of archaeology, with the goal of uncovering the heritage and history of Jerusalem. Uncovering the Biblical heritage of Jerusalem.
That hasn't taken place. The opposite. What the Islamic -- the religious trust on the Temple Mount, what they've done is the opposite of archaeology, with the goal of not uncovering and celebrating the heritage of Jerusalem, but actually destroying it.
GLENN: And there's actual archaeologists that sit through all this stuff.
ZE'EV: To this day, you have archeologists and volunteers were able to go through and sift through the hundreds and hundreds of truckloads of earth, that were removed from the Temple Mount by the Islamic religious trust, in the late 1990s. Dumped in garbage dumps. And when you're sifting through this earth. You will find next to 2000-year-old coins, potato chip wrappers. Coke cans. Why?
Because it's all jumbled together now.
GLENN: Oh, my God.
ZE'EV: They have no --
GLENN: They do. I mean, we have no idea what --
ZE'EV: So the pretense was they wanted to build an emergency exit on the Temple Mount.
There's a very large subterranean mosque known as the Marwani Mosque beneath the Temple Mount, beneath the area known as Solomon's stables. One of the most beautiful parts of --
GLENN: Underneath that?
ZE'EV: Underneath that. The southern end of the Temple Mount. They hallowed it out. And they built this subterranean mosque. Then they said, well, now we have this mosque there.
We need to build an emergency exit. And they used the legitimacy of building an emergency exit, to build in bulldozers and dump trucks, and massive machinery.
One of the most famous Israeli archeologists, he said, if you use a toothbrush on the Temple Mount, that's probably heavy machinery. They used bulldozers and dump trucks.
And they took tons and tons and tons of earth. And through it in the garbage.
And they said, why?
The answer is very simple.
What they're trying to hide is that the Jewish people. By extension, Christians have been in Jerusalem for thousands of years.
If they can destroy that history. Destroy that hernial.
Well, then they can go along with those claims. That Israel is colonizing power, that has no history, no heritage in the land of Israel or in Jerusalem. They are seeking to rewrite history.
To erase the Judeo-Christian heritage from Jerusalem. In fact, the United Nations passed a resolution a couple years ago, saying the Temple Mount and Western Wall, are exclusively Islamic holy places.
GLENN: What?
ZE'EV: And they go on to say and condemn all the archaeological excavations in Jerusalem. Now you might say, how on earth can anyone say such a thing?
That Jews and Christians have no heritage in Jerusalem, condemn the archaeology, why would they say that?
But the answer is very simple. If the story that you want to tell about Jerusalem is an exclusively Islamic story, then you will hate a place like the city of David, one of the most archeologically excavated sites in the world, because every single day, we're unearthing antiquities, fancy word for old stuff.
That show not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact, that Jerusalem's Biblical heritage is true. That the connection that Jews and Christians have with Jerusalem, the foundations of the United States of America. That the Judeo Christian heritage. That it's built upon. Comes from Jerusalem. That it's real. And that is a nightmare to them.
GLENN: So last time you were on, I think we talked about the pool of Bethesda. Ask this is where Jesus healed the man who had been waiting for a miracle at the pool.
ZE'EV: Right. The pool of Siloam. The southern end of the city of David. Which up until 2004, was totally covered up.
GLENN: Do we even know that that was kind of where it was.
ZE'EV: We know 100 percent that's where it was.
GLENN: No. No. No. Then. When we started the archeological dig that we didn't know.
ZE'EV: No. They say hindsight is 2020. Obviously now, we say, of course, we knew that's where it was.
Back then, 2004, it's all covered up. There's a road above it. There's a sewage pipe below.
And only because of a busted sewage pipe, we have a teaching in our faith, that says God has many miracles.
The reason we found one of the most significant Bible heritage sites in all of Jerusalem. The pool of Siloam, with deep significance to Christians and Jews alike, was because of a busted sewage pipe. And that of course leads to another discovery.
Because the pool of Siloam, was the place where before going back up to the Temple, on Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, Pilgrimage Festivals. You have to cleanse yourself. Wash, cleanse, bathe. In the Christian Scriptures, the story of the healing of the blind man, also, pool of Siloam.
And so the archaeologists said, well, if we know where the pool is, at the Southern end at the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began. How did the millions of pilgrims get from the pool all the way to the temple on the Temple Mount?
They widened their excavation, and they ended up discovering what's known as the Pilgrimage Road, the road that our ancestors, yours and mine. Jews and Christians alike, would have walked on, 2,000 years ago when they went on pilgrimage up to the temple, on the Temple Mount.
GLENN: So the road would go right directly from that pool. Right to --
ZE'EV: That's right. The temple. I call it the Biblical superhighway.
Anywhere you wanted to go in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, that road would take you there.
And I've been asked many, many times. What are the chances Jesus walked on that road?
GLENN: Got to be 100 percent.
ZE'EV: Yeah. I say, conservatively speaking you're talking about 100 percent. So how do you know? Well, the answer is really very simple. If you believe there was a historic Jesus 2,000 years ago, in Jerusalem. Well, he was Jewish.
He went with all the Jews, down to cleanse at the pool of Siloam, at the southern end of the City of David. He would have then walked up from the pool, along the Pilgrimage Road, along the half mile journey, up to the Temple, on the Temple Mount.
The pool of Siloam, that we're excavating as we speak, in the city of David today, is 100 percent the same pool of Siloam from 2,000 years ago, and the time of Jesus. The Pilgrimage Road, that archaeologists from the Israel antiquities authority are excavating as we speak today. 100 percent the same Pilgrimage Road.
Same Temple Mount. Same city of David. Not simply a matter of faith, but a matter of fact. It's real. You can see it. You can touch it.
You can walk on it. It's the most significant half mile on the planet.
There's no half mile, that means more people anywhere in the world, than the city of David.
GLENN: So when it -- it comes to the temple, does it come to Solomon's Stairs?
And it's got to be below. I mean, you excavated. How deep down did you have to dig to find the road?
ZE'EV: So the pilgrimage road itself runs up the length of the city of David. It comes out on the southwest corner of the Temple Mount.
So now what happens, it then splits off. When it gets to the southwestern corner, there's one branch that goes off to the east, which comes out by the Southern Steps. Again, another site with deep significance for Jews and Christians alike.
And then the other part, when it gets to the southwest corner. Keeps going north along the Western Wall. And that became the main thoroughfare. In fact, when a person stands at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, you can see the remnants of a massive staircase, that would have taken the pilgrims up into the temple.
It's still there. You can seat remnants of that staircase. So this was the main thoroughfare. Where everyone is gathering. Now, today, the pilgrimage road, or the vast majority of it, is about 60 feet underground.
Now, if this was the United States. What would happen?
You know, if I go to Gettysburg today.
How many people are buried on the battlefield. How many people live today on the battlefield of Gettysburg?
Nobody. Right?
One of the most significant American heritage sites. So in Jerusalem, you would say, well, city of David, not just for millions.
But billions of people around the world.
What should we do? Two words. Eminent to main. Except, in this part of Jerusalem. We don't do that. And so the challenge is, how do you on the one hand, respect the modern day city of David and the people who live there today?
And at the same time, uncover all the heritage with significance to billions of people, around the world, and give access to all those who want to see it themselves. And the answer is, with a lot of sensitivity.
That's why the city of David is only 11 acres in size. We only excavated one-third of the site to date. Over the last 115 years.
GLENN: Wait. Wait. Wait. So it's mainly with buildings and roads and everything above it?
ZE'EV: Above it. So you're literally trying to have the best of both worlds. Respect the modern. Uncover the ancient.
And that's why so much of the work has to be done with the utmost sensitivity. And the highest of standards. Because you can't afford any mistakes. You can't afford occasion --
GLENN: You're not getting Elon Musk with his Boring machine.
And everything has to be. You're talking about small tools.
Lots of engineering to support everything that's up above.
But I have the privilege of hosting members of the Navy SEALs. Along the pilgrimage road.
And they were based out of Coronado on the west coast. And they said, well, how does this all get covered up?
And they said, well, you know, it's really simple.
You have one time period. Someone comes and conquers it. They build on top of it.
Another one conquers them, builds on top of that. Throw some earthquakes in there. You kind of get all these layers. Just to bring it closer to home. You guys are out there in California. I said, if you dug down beneath your homes, you would probably find, that once upon a time, there was some Native Americans living there.
If you kept digging, you might find that once upon a time, there were some Republicans living there.
GLENN: I doubt that. I doubt that. It's Seattle. Seattle has a Seattle underground. And they just built on top of it.
ZE'EV: Yeah. So in ancient times, they built into the sky. Today, we have to take into account. There is a modern day neighborhood. But neighborhood is preserved. But we are uncovering that heritage.