LECTURE THREE
Model of the Second Temple © Todd BolenTHE SECOND TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM
The first Jerusalem Temple, the grandiose structure built by Solomon on the
plans drawn up by his father David, survived from the early tenth century BCE to
its destruction by the Babylonians at the beginning of the sixth. It has disap-
peared with scarcely a trace and we are solely dependent on the Bible for the
look, shape, and size of it.
When the Jews returned from their Babylonian Exile in the last decades of that
same sixth century, they rebuilt their ruined place of sacrificial worship on Mount
Moriah. Their resources were limited, and even with help from the Shah of Iran,
the so-called “Second Temple” was a far more modest structure than its prede-
cessors. We know even less about this building than Solomon’s since in 20
BCE, Herod (r. 37 BCE-4 BCE), Israel’s greatest builder since Solomon himself,
and one whose architectural projects were by no means limited to his own king-
dom, began to build a new edifice over and around it, without interrupting the rit-
uals there. This Herodian “Third Temple”—the “Second” completely disappeared
under it—is rarely acknowledged as such since the Jewish tradition is not over-
fond of its impious builder, but it may well have out-Solomoned Solomon.
Herod’s temple complex was the largest sacred space in the ancient world, and
its buildings, the temple and its
colonnades one of the wonders
of its day. It collapsed into a
smoking ruin in the debacle of
70 CE, though its platform still
stands enormous and immov-
ably in place.
The Christians left the ruins
where they lay, but in 635 CE
the Muslims cleared the plat-
form and built there the Aqsa
mosque on its southern side
and later, in 690 CE, the Dome
of the Rock near its center.
Dome of the Rock © Todd Bolen