Such practical considerations and historic statements fully agree with Jewish tradition. No Jerusalem Jew doubts that the Temple stood over the Ṣakhrah “rock,” which they identify with that “Stone [or, Rock] of Foundation” which, even in Herod’s time, was visible in the Holy of Holies. The Mishnah was composed in our second century, and records the statements of rabbis who had witnessed the great destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., and who had seen the ruins of the Temple as the Romans left them. In the Mishnah we read[113] the description of the awful Day of Atonement, when--once a year--the high-priest, in fear and trembling, entered the Holy of Holies, where there was no longer any Ark. “When the Ark was removed, a stone was there, since the days of the first prophets” (that is, of David), “and it was called the ‘foundation’: it was three fingers above the ground, and on it he put the censer.” [Sidenote: THE PIERCED STONE] The Ṣakhrah is a very remarkable rock cut in steps on the west, as though to form the base of a wall, and having a cave beneath on the east, with a shaft through its roof to the surface. It is also said to have another excavation below the floor of the cave,[114] and this cave was very probably a granary originally connected with the threshing-floor, and resembling an ancient example near Nazareth.[115] To identify the rock with the Altar of the Temple is to upset the whole section of the building, and the altar was of stones, and not of rock. In the fourth century we find the Jews wailing at this “Pierced Stone,” as the site of their Holy House.[116] The Moslems have adopted their tradition, and speak of the Ṣakhrah as the foundation of the world, a rock of Paradise suspended over the abyss where souls dwell till the judgment. The Christians of the Middle Ages equally regarded the Dome of the Rock as the “Temple of the Lord.” The site is one of the very few as to which there is a general agreement and an unchanging tradition.