About This Project
My name is Rev. Natalie Hill, and I am a doctoral student in Theology and Education at Boston College. The work displayed on this website is part of my capstone project for a Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities at Boston College. 
With assistance from the Boston College Digital Scholarship Group, I reconstructed the Herodian Temple and Temple Mount using 3D digital technology. First, based on a floor plan and measurements from primary sources, I built the model using Autodesk Fusion 360. Then, I exported the model into Autodesk 3ds Max to add texture/materials and lighting, using virtual cameras to set up views to render into the images you find on this site.
My goals for the project are both personal (improving my skill with 3D modeling) and academic (exploring potential applications of 3D digital models for religious/theological education). In the process, I use a series of models to illustrate and analyze three different scholars’ hypotheses for the Temple’s precise location on the Herodian Temple Mount. The three proposed locations for the Temple on the Temple Mount also highlight how the same primary sources can lead scholars to dramatically different conclusions.
When I started to gather data for this project, the specifications seemed to be remarkably consistent across sources, particularly in light of the fact that the structures in question were destroyed almost two millennia ago. However, once I began to rebuild these structures in 3D, I discovered many more inconsistencies than I expected, requiring me to evaluate what combination of “facts” and descriptions were most consistent with one another.
I also discovered that scale can be hard to assess by looking at an architectural model. For example, this model recreates an ancient Temple complex that covered 37 acres – the equivalent of 28 football fields. While I could include a scale legend on images, it might be more in keeping with my goals for the model to add people, animals, or familiar objects as benchmarks through which viewers can estimate scale.
This project focuses on the surface level of the Temple Mount, including the structures built upon it. Moving forward, I hope to build the substructure of the mount in order to add entrances and exits, move the model onto a platform that allows viewers to interact with it in 3D, and ultimately create scenes of events that occurred within the Temple complex.