Earlier traditions The compound is not considered to be the authentic resting place of King David. David was actually buried within the
City of David together with "his forefathers". This practice repeated itself during the
First Temple period – according to the
Books of Kings, most of the
Judean kings of the
House of David were buried "with their fathers" in the City of David. It is also said that
Jehoiada the priest was buried among the kings. The
Book of Chronicles adds a secondary distinction, stating that some of the kings, such as
Ahaziah According to the first century Jewish-Roman historian
Josephus,
Herod the Great tried to loot the Tomb of David, but discovered that someone else had already done so before him. The genuine David's Tomb is unlikely to contain any furnishings of value. According to the
Tosefta, "the graves of the House of David[...] were in Jerusalem and no one had ever touched them."
"Zion": three consecutive locations Jebusite fortress According to the
Book of Samuel, Mount Zion was the site of the
Jebusite fortress called the "stronghold of Zion" that was conquered by
King David, becoming his
palace and the
City of David. It is mentioned in the
Book of Isaiah (60:14), the
Book of Psalms, and the first book of the
Maccabees (c. 2nd century BCE).
Western hill Towards the end of the First Temple period, the city expanded westward. Just before the Roman conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the
Second Temple,
Josephus described Mount Zion as a hill across the city's central valley to the west.
Early synagogue: pro and con The 4th-century accounts of the Bordeaux Pilgrim, Optatus of Milevus, and Epiphanius of Salamis all record that seven synagogues had once stood on Mount Zion. By 333 CE (a date defined by some as the end of the Roman period and beginning of the Byzantine period), only one of them remained, but no association with David's tomb is mentioned. One fringe theory claims that at the end of the Roman period, a synagogue called Hagiya Zion was built at the entrance of the structure known as David's Tomb, probably based on the belief that David brought the
Ark of the Covenant here from
Beit Shemesh and
Kiryat Ye'arim before the construction of the Temple.
Jacob Pinkerfeld, the archaeologist who has worked on part of the site, has also suggested that "David's Tomb" was actually a 2nd-century, late-Roman synagogue. The presence of a niche in the original foundation walls, thought by a few to be evidence of a Torah niche, has been refuted by many scholars as being too large and too high (8' x 8') to have served this purpose.
Source of the tradition David's Tomb According to Professor Doron Bar,Although the sources for the tradition of David's Tomb on Mount Zion are not clear, it appears that it only began to take root during the subsequent, early Muslim period. Apparently, the Christians inherited this belief from the Muslims, and only at a relatively late juncture in the city's history were the Jews finally convinced as well. Others disagree. The facility was under the control of Greek Christians at this time. It was, indeed, shortly before the Crusades at the earliest that the location of David's Tomb can be traced to Mount Zion. But the first literary reference to the tomb being on Mount Zion can be found in the tenth-century
Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine). Ora Limor attributes the localizing of the tomb on Mount Zion to the tenth-century transition from the liturgical celebration of the "founding fathers" of Jerusalem, King David, the founder of the dynasty and capital city, and
James, brother of Jesus, the founder of the "mother of all churches" on Mount Sion, to the belief that their tombs were actually located at the site where the liturgy was held–a case of "consolidation", from "abstract foundation myth... into the physical tradition of the tomb." Limor quotes Muslim traveller
Mas'udi, who in 943 wrote about Muslim traditions that placed the tomb of David in the
Aleppo region of
Syria and in eastern
Lebanon. Having initially revered David's tomb in Bethlehem, Muslims began to venerate it on Mount Zion instead but no earlier than the 10th century following the Christian (and possibly Jewish) lead. In the twelfth century, Jewish pilgrim
Benjamin of Tudela recounted a somewhat fanciful tale of workmen accidentally discovering the tomb of David on Mount Zion, in which he used details from
Josephus Flavius's narrative about the attempt by
Herod the Great to rob the tomb.
Upper Room and first church Epiphanius' 4th-century account in his
Weights and Measures is one of the first to associate the location with the original meeting place of the Christian faith, writing that there stood "the church of God, which was small, where the disciples, when they had returned after the Savior had ascended from the Mount of Olives, went to the upper room". ==Exploration==