Not true.
Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonia_Fortress
OTHER THEORIES
Some researchers and academics, including Marilyn Sams (M.A. in American Literature, Brigham Young University) and Dr.
Robert Cornuke (Ph.D. in Bible and Theology, Louisiana Baptist University), have expanded on research by Dr.
Ernest L. Martin (1932–2002, meteorologist, college professor, amateur archeologist), who offered evidence that the compound on what is commonly called the Temple Mount did not house the Jerusalem Temple, but is instead the remnants of a more massive Antonia Fortress, and that the rock inside the
Dome of the Rock is not the
Foundation Stone, but was inside the
Praetorium of
Pontius Pilate where Jesus was judged.
[12]
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, however, argued that this theory "cannot be sustained", as it cannot be reconciled with Josephus' description, and it "does not account for the archaeological remains in the western section of the north wall".
[13] Josephus and archaeology don't leave much space for doubt in regard to the fact that the Temple Mount was indeed the site of the Herodian Temple, nor for the location of the Antonia near its north-western corner.
[13]
Both Josephus and archaeology concur that the Roman military camp after the 70 CE destruction was centered on the
three towers next to
Herod's royal palace on the Western Hill, and not on the Temple Mount, whose protective walls had been thrown down by the Romans, with the resulting debris visible until today along the
Western Wall near
Robinson's Arch.
[13] Roman military camps had rounded corners and four gates, one in each wall – the Herodian compound had angular corners and nine gates.
[13] Permanent camps were much larger, 50 acres on average; the Haram esplanade only contains 36 acres.
[13] There is no Roman camp explanation for the Hebrew inscription marking the
Trumpeting Place.
[13] The Temple compound was surrounded by porticos (roofed
colonnades following the inner walls of the compound), while military camps never were.
[13] Augustus trusted Herod and would not have built a controlling fortress towering over his capital and Temple, but no emperor would have gone so far as to entrust a legion to a client king.
[13]
Remains of a 4-metre thick wall and Herodian-style
ashlars are still observable inside the
Mamluk buildings in the north-west corner of the Haram and the adjacent area along its northern wall.
[13] Together they suggest the dimensions of the Antonia: 112 by 40 metres on the outside, signifying a 3300 square metre floor area, absolutely enough for a small garrison, but certainly not for the entire legion suggested by Martin.
[13]
Antonia did stand on a rocky outcrop, as written by Josephus, but here, as elsewhere in his writings, he did exaggerate its elevation above the surrounding ground.
[13] This still meant that the fortress dominated the Temple courts and porticos, the latter by over ten metres, matching Josephus' words: "the tower of Antonia lay at the angle where the two porticos, the western and the northern, of the first court of the Temple met" (
JW 5:238), and "[a]t the point where the Antonia impinged on the porticos of the temple there were stairs leading down to both of them by which the guards descended" (JW 5:243; cf.
Acts 21:40).
[13] The position and dimensions of those porticos can still be in part discerned, thanks to three surviving roof beam sockets carved out of the living rock of the rocky outcrop which once held the Antonia, north-west of the esplanade.
[13] Josephus' statement that all the porticos surrounding the Temple complex measured six stadia "including the Antonia" (JW 5:192) is off by a large margin (six stadia represent about 1.11 km, whereas the sides of the Haram esplanade today measure together about 1.55 km), but it clearly suggests that the fortress was contiguous with the Temple complex with no need for a "double causeway" to connect the two by spanning a distance of one
stade (c. 150 m), as claimed by Martin.
[13]
