Second Temple

• 1. Introduction

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  The Second Temple of Jerusalem stood for nearly six centuries before the Romans burned it in 70 CE. That loss transformed Judaism permanently. Before it fell, the Temple drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year from communities stretching from Babylonia to Alexandria to Rome. How did a modest building, authorized by a Persian decree, become the spiritual center for an entire civilization? Who fought for it, who rebuilt it entirely from scratch, and what happened to everything it held when it was gone?

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• 2. Return from Exile

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  Cyrus the Great became king of the Achaemenid Empire in 559 BCE. Within two decades, his conquests had transformed the fate of the Jewish people. In 539 BCE, Persia absorbed the Neo-Babylonian Empire, gaining control over the population that Nebuchadnezzar II had exiled from Judah. Cyrus responded with what the Hebrew Bible calls the Edict of Cyrus. It authorized displaced peoples across his new territories to return to their homelands and rebuild their temples.

  The group that made the return journey to Jerusalem numbered 42,360 people. They had traveled for some four months from the banks of the Euphrates. Their governor, Zerubbabel, set a personal example by contributing 1,000 golden darics from his own funds to the rebuilding effort. People poured their own gifts into the sacred treasury alongside his. In the second month of the second year, which was 535 BCE, the foundations of the new Temple were laid amid public rejoicing.

  The Samaritans asked to join the construction and were refused. According to Ezra 4:5, they then sent messengers to Ecbatana and Susa to "frustrate their purpose," and work halted. It remained suspended for years. The death of Cyrus, a brief usurpation, and then the accession of Darius intervened before construction resumed. Two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, pressed the community to finish what it had started. The Temple was consecrated in the spring of 516 BCE, more than twenty years after the exiles had returned.

  The new Temple was sixty cubits in both width and height, built with stone and lumber. Its Holy of Holies was separated by curtains rather than the solid wall that had stood in Solomon's Temple. The building also included the Menorah, the Table of Showbread, and the golden altar of incense. Yet several articles that had defined the first Temple were simply absent. The Ark of the Covenant, the Urim and Thummim, and the sacred fire were gone, presumed lost when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Haggai's book records a prediction that the Second Temple's glory would surpass that of Solomon's. The man who would make that possible would not arrive for nearly five more centuries.

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• 3. Crisis and Rededication

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  Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king of Syria, ordered a Zeus altar erected inside the Temple in 167 BCE. He also compelled Jews, according to Josephus, to leave their infants uncircumcised and to sacrifice pigs on the altar. Those who resisted most openly were put to death.

  These measures provoked the Maccabean Revolt, led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers from the priestly Hasmonean family. After several years of guerrilla warfare, the Maccabees drove the Seleucid forces from Jerusalem. In 164 BCE, they recaptured the Temple Mount, cleared away the pagan altar, and rededicated the Temple. The festival of Hanukkah, which begins on the 25th of Kislev, commemorates this rededication. The earliest written accounts of the holiday appear in the Books of the Maccabees. Both books associate the holiday with the 25th of Kislev. They differ only on whether that date marks the completion of the cleansing or the resumption of sacrifices.

  Salome Alexandra, queen of the Hasmonean Kingdom, appointed her elder son Hyrcanus II as High Priest of Judaea. Her younger son Aristobulus II refused to accept this arrangement and seized the throne as soon as she died. Antipater, the governor of Idumaea, urged Hyrcanus not to surrender his claim. Hyrcanus fled to Aretas III, king of the Nabateans, and returned with an army to besiege Jerusalem. Both princes eventually appealed to the Roman general Pompey, who was already in Syria fighting the Armenians in the Third Mithridatic War. When Aristobulus's followers closed the city to Roman forces, Pompey besieged and took Jerusalem in 63 BCE. The priests inside the Temple continued their religious duties throughout the siege. Pompey entered the Holy of Holies himself. He left the treasury untouched and ordered the priests to repurify the sanctuary and resume normal service. Pompey's restraint toward the Temple set a precedent. The king who would eventually transform the structure beyond recognition was Herod of Judaea.

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• 4. Herod's Masterpiece

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  Josephus records that Herod the Great regarded the Temple of Jerusalem as his masterpiece. He began the renovation around 20 or 19 BCE, replacing the original structure with something on an entirely different scale. The Temple sanctuary itself was completed in roughly a year and a half. The porticoes and outer walls required eight more years. Ten thousand laborers were employed on the project. A separate corps of one thousand priests was trained specifically for the sanctuary's sacred zones. Their presence ensured that construction would not violate religious law.

  Mount Moriah had a plateau at its northern end and steeply declined toward the south. Herod's plan was to turn the entire mountain into a giant square platform. Engineers dug a trench around the mountain and laid huge stone blocks into it. Some weighed well over 100 tons. The largest measured 44.6 by 11 by 16.5 feet and weighed 567-628 tons. The Temple Mount expanded from 7 hectares to 14.4 hectares, doubling in area to become the largest religious sanctuary of the ancient world.

  Both Josephus and the Babylonian Talmud preserve accounts of miraculous signs during the construction. According to Josephus, rain fell only at night throughout the entire building period, allowing work to proceed without interruption each day. The Talmud preserves the same tradition in near-identical language and calls it evidence that the workers were doing "God's work." The care Herod took was also practical. Daily sacrificial offerings continued without interruption. Modesty partitions were erected to shield sacred rituals from the laborers' view.

  The finished complex included the Royal Stoa, a massive basilica Josephus called "more worthy of mention than any other structure under the sun." Its central hall was lined with 162 columns arranged in four rows. A golden vine adorned the gates of the Temple, and its fame reached as far as Rome; Tacitus mentioned it specifically. Herod considered plating the Temple walls in gold. The Sages of the Talmud advised against it. The alternating rows of marble in contrasting colors already had, in their words, "the appearance of waves of the sea." The Babylonian Talmud later captured the verdict in tractate Bava Batra. "He who has not seen the Temple of Herod," it states, "has never seen a beautiful building."

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• 5. The Festival City

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  Jews from distant parts of the Roman Empire arrived at the port of Jaffa by boat. From there, they joined caravans for the three-day journey to Jerusalem. At Passover, the city swelled to 300,000-400,000 visitors. They came for three specific occasions: Passover in the spring, Shavuot fifty days later, and Sukkot in the autumn. Each festival drew travelers from Judea, Galilee, Transjordan, and the Diaspora, who stayed anywhere from a few days to several weeks.

  The Mishnah records in close detail how these arrivals were welcomed. Pilgrims bringing first fruits for Shavuot walked into Jerusalem to the sound of flutes. When they drew near the city, messengers went ahead to adorn the offerings. The governors, chiefs, and treasurers came out to greet the procession, ranking their welcome according to the status of the arrivals. Artisans lined the streets and called out: "Our brothers, men of such and such a place, we welcome you in peace." When the procession reached the Temple Mount, even King Agrippa took the basket of first fruits. He placed it on his shoulder and carried it in.

  Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher, described the atmosphere in terms any traveler would recognize. He wrote that pilgrims came from "countless cities," traveling by land and sea from every direction. For them, the Temple was "a general haven and safe refuge from the bustle and great turmoil of life." Josephus gave the social gathering a political framing. He wrote that the pilgrimage was intended to prevent Jewish communities from becoming "completely strangers to each other." Shared practice and shared sight would maintain bonds across vast distances.

  On the 14th of Nisan, the eve of Passover, participants brought a lamb or kid to the Temple for sacrifice. Josephus records that groups of 10-20 people shared each animal. The slaughter took place between the ninth and eleventh hours, roughly 3-5 in the afternoon, in organized batches. Priests collected the blood and poured it at the base of the altar. Sukkot, beginning on the 15th of Tishrei and lasting seven days, was considered the supreme festival of the year. Ancient sources sometimes referred to it simply as "the Festival." Each night during Sukkot, the Temple courtyards filled with music, dancing, and bonfires. The Levites chanted the Songs of Ascent from the steps of the Nicanor Gate. Water for the daily libation ritual was drawn from the Pool of Siloam.

  The Court of the Gentiles, the outermost courtyard, served partly as a marketplace. Roman currency was exchanged there for Tyrian money, the form accepted for religious use. Vendors sold souvenirs, food, and sacrificial animals. A stone warning inscription in Greek was discovered in 1871, measuring 60 by 90 centimeters. It marked the boundary beyond which non-Jews were forbidden to pass. Menander Rhetor was a 3rd-century orator from Laodicea. He wrote that the festival gatherings of "the Hebrews living in Syria Palaestina" produced the largest crowds of any festival he knew. He was writing more than two centuries after 70 CE.

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• 6. Siege and Burning

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  In the early 40s CE, the Emperor Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be installed in the Second Temple. The Jewish population of Judaea and Galilee responded with mass protests and a sit-in that physically blocked Roman soldiers from transporting the statue. Philo of Alexandria traveled to Rome as part of a delegation appealing directly to the emperor. Agrippa I, a Herodian prince and personal confidant of Caligula, also attempted to dissuade him. Caligula's assassination in 41 CE resolved the crisis. In 66 CE, the Jewish population of Judaea launched a full rebellion against the Roman Empire.

  Four years into that war, on Tisha B'Av, Roman legions under Titus took Jerusalem and destroyed much of the city, including the Temple. Ancient sources place the date as either the 4th of August or the 30th of August, 70 CE. Josephus had been a participant in the war before defecting to the Roman side. He argues that Titus wanted the Temple preserved, and that a soldier set fire to it without orders. Later sources, some traced to Tacitus, hold that Titus authorized the destruction himself. Modern scholars generally favor the latter interpretation, though the question remains open.

  The Tower of Phasael, now commonly but incorrectly called the Tower of David, was among the structures Titus chose to spare. Josephus records that Titus kept such towers standing as memorials to the city's former strength. The Midrash Rabba records that Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai appealed to Emperor Vespasian. He asked that Vespasian spare the westernmost gates of Jerusalem, those leading toward Lydda. Arab auxiliaries fighting alongside the Romans, under their general Fanjar, spared the westernmost wall from destruction.

  The Arch of Titus, built in Rome to commemorate the victory, depicts soldiers carrying the Temple's menorah in triumph. The sects most dependent on the physical sanctuary collapsed in its absence. The Sadducees and the Temple priesthood dwindled rapidly in importance. Rabbinic Judaism, which required neither a Temple nor a priesthood for its central practices, emerged as the mainstream form of Jewish life. Rabbi Eliezer ben Jose, writing around 170 CE, claimed he had seen a golden diadem and the Temple curtain in Rome, possibly in the imperial treasury.

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• 7. The Scattered Treasures

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  Golden vessels from the Temple were put on public display in Rome's Temple of Peace, completed by Vespasian in 75 CE. The Torah scroll and the purple Temple curtains were treated differently: not exhibited publicly, but deposited and guarded in Vespasian's private residence. An inscription on the Colosseum suggests that Vespasian built it using war spoils, possibly including those taken from the Temple.

  The Vandal king Geiseric looted Rome in 455 CE and carried the Temple treasures to Carthage. This account comes from the 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius. In 533 CE, the Byzantine general Belisarius recovered the treasures and paraded them in a triumph through Constantinople. A Jewish observer there warned that the objects belonged only in their original sacred location. Alarmed, Emperor Justinian ordered their transfer to Christian churches in Jerusalem. Whether they arrived is uncertain. Some later medieval sources claim they never left Rome. Others suggest they were lost in the Persian sack of Jerusalem in 614 CE. The ultimate fate of the Temple treasures remains unknown.

  Emperor Hadrian established a new Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina at the site of Jerusalem. After the Bar Kokhba revolt ended in 135 CE, many Jewish communities were massacred and Jews were banned from entering the city. A Roman temple was built on the former site of Herod's Temple.

  Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction, became a major Jewish fast day. A three-week period of mourning precedes it: weddings and haircuts are forbidden during those weeks. During the first eight days of the month of Av, many Jews abstain from meat. At Jewish wedding ceremonies, the groom breaks a glass in remembrance of Jerusalem's destruction. In late medieval Europe, brides sometimes wore a large decorative ring symbolizing the Temple; grooms placed ashes on their heads to mark the loss. The hope for a future Third Temple has remained a constant in Jewish prayer and eschatology. A liturgical poem known as Avodah is recited on Yom Kippur. It retells the High Priest's Temple service on the Day of Atonement as a form of living memory. A carved stone known as the Magdala stone is thought to have been made before 70 CE. It may be the only image of the Temple created while the building was still standing.

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