Emperor Hadrian’s palaces missing

“Stratigraphy confirms that Hadrian did not visit a destroyed Jerusalem, but one that had long since been restored”. Gunnar Heinsohn This article can be a companion piece to articles of mine (Damien Mackey) such as: Henry VIII’s palaces missing (3) Henry VIII's palaces missing Professor Gunnar Heinsohn wrote: Jerusalems_First_Millennium_AD_1000_year.pdf …. Jerusalem is obsessed with Hadrianic temples that are said to have been demolished to make way for other structures. On the Cardo Maximus this act is said to have been carried out in favor of Christianity, while on the Temple Mount it was done in favor of Islam. However, under the Jesus Compound on the Cardo, the foundations of an imperial temple of Venus have not been found. On Temple Mount, a Jupiter sanctuary is said to have been built over the ruins of the Herodian temple. The Umayyads supposedly demolished it to build the Dome of the Rock over it. Traces of this temple of Hadrian are missing as well. Nevertheless, the latest research on Roman Jerusalem claims, without hard evidence, the existence of such a structure: “A Temple to Jupiter on top of the temenos, as implied by Cassius Dio, cannot, in my opinion, be ruled out” (Weksler-Bdolah 2014, 58). Cassius Dio (ca. 165-235 AD) lived nearly a century after Hadrian. He provides the only source: “At Jerusalem he [Hadrian] founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter” (Historia Romana, LXIX, 12:1). However, the original of this source is lost. The passage is a paraphrase by John Xiphilinus (late 11th c. AD), a Byzantine historian and the nephew of Patriarch John VIII of Constantinople. He may have tailored this paraphrase to present an imperial blasphemy as a convincing cause of war. He painted the customary act of establishing pagan shrines in a new Roman colonia “in the harsh colors of a religious confrontation by using a ‘loaded’ verb and referring to the temple by a name familiar to both Jewish and Christian readers” (Eliav 1997, 142). Of course, this must remain speculation. Perhaps the term Capitolina in the new city name also led to associations with Jupiter. In Rome stood the most important of all Jupiter temples in the entire empire, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, on Mons Capitolinus (Capitoline Hill). There was also a contemporary of Hadrian, Appian of Alexandria (95-165 AD), with statements about Jerusalem. He did not know anything about Hadrian rebuilding a destroyed city and even putting a temple of Jupiter on its most holy site. Yet, he reminded his readers of Jerusalem’s destruction in the time of Vespasian and Titus to then add that “Hadrian did the same in our time” (Stern 1980; no. 143). This makes good sense if Hadrian’s war against the Bar Kokhba rebels (132-136 AD) resulted in damages to the city. Stratigraphy confirms that Hadrian did not visit a destroyed Jerusalem, but one that had long since been restored. There are also no better candidates than Arab Nabataeans with their Umayyad culture for repairing the city after AD 70. And unlike the Jupiter Temple of John Xiphilinus, the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount is indisputable. …. [End of quote] There are so many problems to be sorted out here. Let us take just a few of these. While the real Hadrian, who was the Seleucid tyrant, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, at the time of the Maccabees: Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian (3) Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian did not come to a destroyed Jerusalem as he would have, had he really lived in c. 130 AD, he certainly invaded and despoiled that City near to the Nativity of Jesus Christ. What is wrongly called the Temple Mount is actually where the invading Gentile forces took up their residence. Cassius Dio, a non contemporary of Hadrian’s, is a most unreliable historian – for this period, at least. Appian, had he known of what Vespasian and Titus had done to Jerusalem, could not possibly, therefore, have been a contemporary of the much earlier Hadrian. Hadrian’s war belonged to the Maccabean era, decades before 70 AD. To find traces of Hadrian’s architecture in Jerusalem, one would need to revisit the Seleucid era, and the buildings of Hadrian’s right-hand man, Herod the Great, who was the same potentate as the great builder, Marcus Agrippa: Herod, the emperor’s signet right-hand man (3) Herod, the emperor's signet right-hand man