The people who think none of the Mainstream Traditional locations for Biblical Sites are true and want to argue for some alt theory for every single one are kind of silly, I say that as someone who used to be pretty close to being like that.
However those who think Tradition is wrong on absolutely none of them also inevitably face problems.
Two current traditional locations that can’t both be true are The Temple being where The Dome of The Rock is and The Golden Gate’s current location. Because the Eastern Gate is obviously self evidently supposed to be lined up with The Temple.
I’ve seen exactly one attempt to deconstruct that notion, and that was someone arguing those who think the Eastern Gate has to be lined up with The Temple are confusing it with the Nicanor Gate which was a Gate in The Temple itself. But that’s besides the point, the point is all these Gates should be lined up, it doesn’t matter if no single verse of scripture explicitly says that, that is simply how Ancient cities were designed. There were times like on Yom Kippur when people would have to walk from outside the city entirely directly into The Temple, The High Priest into the Holy of Holies itself, and that path not being a straight line would have been very inconvenient.
And even to my modern eyes used to more complex modern city layouts it still feels wrong when I look at modern Jerusalem from the east and the big fancy gate on its Eastern Wall isn’t lined up with the Most Sacred Holy Place. If I saw a JRPG city laid out like this I’d call it bad design.
The Eastern Wall of Second Temple Jerusalem had already been completely destroyed in AD 70 as documented by Josephus in Wars of The Jews Book VII Chapter I where only the Western Wall was left.
If it’s The Golden Gate that is currently in the wrong place the change probably began with Hadrian’s rebuilding of Jerusalem as a Aelia Capitolina, any further construction done later by the Byzantines, Muslims or Ottomans were building on that blueprint. Hadrian’s major Temples on The Temple Mount aren’t believed to have been lined up with this Gate either, but it is lined up with The Church of The Holy Sepulcher where Hadrian had built a Temple to Aphrodite.
But what’s most important here is that Roman City and Temple design would not have been primarily based on facing West and entering from The East but rather if anything the opposite. If the current layout of The Temple Mount is still primarily based on how Hadrian redesigned it as I suspect then that fits as the main stairs to access it are approaching The Dome of The Rock from The West, the Ablution Gate and Cotton Merchants Gate.
But also if Hadrian’s Jupiter Temple Complex on The Temple Mount was following a similar pattern to the one he also had built at Baalbek (they are believed to have had the same architect) then based on how they lined up the main ceremonial entrance would have been from the North traveling southward. So the East Gate leading to a spot north of everything makes sense in that context.
I have not 100% made up my mind yet. But these reasons are causing me to reverse my past position that it’s The Temple location that needs to be changed.
Rabbi Yonatan Adler’s argument that the site of the Red Heifer sacrifice, which had to be directly East of The Temple at a spot where you could see directly into The Temple, was a location now in the courtyard of the modern Dominus Flevit Church, begins with the assumption that The Temple was where The Dome of The Rock currently is, but there were other details he was also looking for based on what The Mishna and Talmud say about where the Second Temple period Red Heifer sacrifices were made and he found them here. If he made the investigation based on a different Temple location I have my doubts the other details would have lined up nearly as well.
