Temple in Jerusalem

• 1. Introduction

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  The Temple in Jerusalem stood at the center of a world that measured time, prayer, and belonging by its existence. Known in Hebrew as Beit HaMiqdash, "The Holy House," it was not merely a building. It was the axis around which Israelite and later Jewish religious life turned. Two temples occupied the same hilltop in Jerusalem's Old City. Both were destroyed. And yet the memory of the Temple has never stopped shaping worship, mourning, law, and politics across three faiths and more than two millennia.

  What exactly was built there, and when? Who destroyed it, and why? What survives today, in stone, in prayer, in controversy? And why does a site that has not housed a Jewish temple since 70 CE still generate fierce debate about who owns the holiest ground in the world?

• 2. The First Temple

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  King Solomon completed the First Temple in 957 BCE, according to the Hebrew Bible. It replaced the portable Tabernacle that Moses had constructed in the Sinai, as well as the local sanctuaries and hilltop altars that had served Israelite communities before a single central place of worship was established.

  The structure was organized around concentric spaces of increasing holiness. At its heart sat the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber known in Hebrew as Kodesh HaKodashim. Around it lay the larger sanctuary called the hekhal, then a vestibule, then courtyards fanning outward. The Great Outer Court was where ordinary worshippers gathered. The Inner Court belonged to the priests.

  The Temple's existence was turbulent almost from the start. Shishak, identified with Shoshenq I, pharaoh of the 22nd Dynasty of Egypt, sacked the Temple a few decades after its completion. Partial repairs were attempted, but it was not until 835 BCE that Jehoash, King of Judah, invested significantly in reconstruction during the second year of his reign. That work was later undone when Sennacherib, ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, stripped the Temple around 700 BCE.

  The First Temple's end came during the Neo-Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. It was a total destruction, one that would shape Jewish identity for centuries.

• 3. Rise and Fall of the Second Temple

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  Cyrus the Great called for a new temple in 538 BCE, the year after his Achaemenid Empire conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire. According to calculations made by some scholars in the 19th century, construction began in April 536 BCE and the structure was dedicated on the 21st of February 515 BCE, twenty-one years after the groundbreaking. That date is derived by coordinating a passage in Ezra with the sixth year of the reign of Darius the Great. Modern researchers dispute the accuracy of these dates, pointing to contradictions between different books of the Bible.

  The new temple was dedicated by the Jewish governor Zerubbabel. Over the following decades, four separate edicts authorizing its construction were issued by three Achaemenid emperors: Cyrus in 536 BCE, Darius I in 519 BCE, and Artaxerxes I in both 457 BCE and 444 BCE.

  In 332 BCE, a demolition was narrowly avoided when the Jews refused to acknowledge the deification of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Alexander was placated at the last minute through diplomacy. But a more damaging crisis came under Seleucid rule. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, after taking the Seleucid throne, forced Hellenization. His officials erected a statue of Zeus inside the Temple and sacrificed pigs there, acts that ignited a civil war. Traditionalist rebels led by Mattathias fought both Seleucid forces and Hellenized Judean administrators. After the rebels prevailed, Mattathias's son Judas Maccabeus rededicated the temple in 164 BCE, a moment that gave rise to the celebration of Hanukkah.

  Under Roman influence, the Temple suffered further indignities. Pompey entered the Holy of Holies in 63 BCE, desecrating it, though he left the structure itself standing. In 54 BCE, Marcus Licinius Crassus looted the Temple treasury. Around 20 BCE, Herod the Great undertook a sweeping renovation and expansion, producing what became known as Herod's Temple.

  The Roman Empire destroyed it in 70 CE during the Siege of Jerusalem. When Simon bar Kokhba and Rabbi Akiva attempted to rebuild the Temple during the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-135 CE, bar Kokhba's revolt failed. The Romans banned Jews from Jerusalem, except on the fast day of Tisha B'Av. One final attempt at rebuilding came in 363 CE when the pagan emperor Julian ordered Alypius of Antioch to reconstruct the Temple, part of Julian's broader campaign against Christianity. Early historians like Sozomen attributed the failure to the 363 Galilee earthquake, though Julian's death and the subsequent Christian reign of Jovian may have been equally decisive.

• 4. What the Temple Actually Looked Like

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  The philosopher and rabbi Maimonides, in Mishne Torah 9, section 1:5, laid out the minimum requirements for a temple: a sanctuary, an inner sanctum, a hall called the Heichal, and an enclosing wall representing a courtyard. Everything within that wall was called the Court. The whole compound together was called the Temple.

  The Herodian Temple, the most elaborate structure that occupied the site, was organized in nested courts. The outermost was the Court of the Gentiles, accessible to all. Moving inward came the Court of the Women, then the Court of the Israelites, reserved for ritually pure Jewish men, and then the Court of the Priests. At the center sat the Temple building itself, containing the vestibule, the sanctuary, and finally the Holy of Holies.

  The historian Josephus, writing in The Jewish War, described a stone partition in the second court bearing inscriptions in Greek and Roman letters warning that no foreigner should pass beyond it under penalty of death. He records that visitors ascended to this court by fourteen steps from the first.

  The main courtyard had thirteen gates. The south side held four, including the Water Gate through which the Water Libation entered on Sukkot. The north side also had four, among them the Gate of Jeconiah, named for the king who left through it for the last time when the Babylonians dethroned him. The east held the Gate of Nicanor, flanked by two smaller doorways.

  The Hall of Hewn Stones, known in Hebrew as Lishkat haGazit, served as the meeting place of the Sanhedrin during the Second Temple period. The Talmud records that it was built into the north wall, half inside the sanctuary and half outside, with doors opening both inward and outward. It resembled a basilica in appearance, with one entrance facing east and another facing west.

  The sanctuary contained the seven-branched candlestick, the table of showbread, and the Incense Altar. The sanctuary and the Holy of Holies were separated by a wall in the First Temple and by two curtains in the Second. Queen Helena of Adiabene is recorded in the Talmud as donating a golden candlestick placed over the Temple door, whose reflected morning light served as a public signal for when it was time to recite the Shema prayer.

• 5. Prayer, Sacrifice, and Daily Ritual

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  Levites recited Psalms at precise moments during daily worship. The morning and afternoon offerings were the fixed points of each day. The Psalm of the Day changed with each day of the week. The Hallel was sung during major Jewish holidays. Psalm 100, designated the "Psalm for the Thanksgiving Offering," accompanied its specific sacrifice.

  The daily service included a prayer component that became the direct ancestor of the Jewish morning service still recited today. The Mishna records the Temple superintendent calling on the assembled priests to bless one benediction, after which they read the Ten Commandments and the Shema. Three benedictions followed, addressed to the congregation. On the Sabbath, the departing weekly guard received one additional blessing asking that love, peace, and friendship dwell among them.

  Seder Kodashim, the fifth order of the Mishnah, compiled between 200 and 220 CE, codified the religious laws connected to all of this: the types of sacrifices, the rules for bringing them, the laws governing misappropriation of sacred property. Tractate Middot describes the physical structure of the Second Temple. Tractate Tamid covers the daily sacrifice service in detail. In the Babylonian Talmud, Gemara exists for all chapters of Kodashim, with partial Gemara for some chapters of Tamid, and none for Middot or Kinnim. The Jerusalem Talmud contains no Gemara on any tractate of Kodashim.

  The Talmud in Yoma 9b preserves a traditional explanation for why both Temples fell. The First Temple was destroyed because idol worship, licentiousness, and murder were rampant. The Second Temple, which the Talmud says existed in a society engaged in Torah study, commandments, and acts of kindness, was destroyed because of gratuitous hatred among people.

• 6. Mourning a Lost Building

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  The Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av marks the destruction of the Temple and draws three minor fasts into its orbit: the Tenth of Tevet, the 17th of Tammuz, and the Third of Tishrei, each mourning events connected to the Temple's fall. During the three weeks before Tisha B'Av, weddings and haircuts are forbidden. Many Jews abstain from meat during the first eight days of the month of Av.

  Jewish wedding ceremonies carry the memory of Jerusalem into moments of joy. The groom breaks a glass at the conclusion of the ceremony, an act accompanied by verses from Psalm 137: "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither; let my tongue cleave to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour." In the Middle Ages, depictions of the Temple began to appear in illuminated manuscripts, marriage contracts called ketubbot, and even on wedding rings.

  Mourning customs extend into daily life. One traditional practice calls for leaving a small section of a house wall unplastered, a permanent physical reminder of the Temple's absence. After reciting the Amidah and during the counting of the Omer, a petition is added: "May it be that the Temple be rebuilt soon in our days."

  Local communities developed their own practices. In Jewish communities of Tripoli and Djerba, the chronicler Mordechai HaCohen, who lived from 1856 to 1929, recorded that a bride would throw a hen's egg kept in her bosom against the wall of her new home as a sign of mourning. In late medieval Europe, Jewish brides wore large decorative rings symbolizing the Temple, while grooms placed ashes on their heads.

• 7. A Holy Site for Three Faiths

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  By the 7th century CE, the Temple Mount had fallen into disrepair under Byzantine rule. After the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem during the Rashidun Caliphate, Umar cleared the site of debris and erected a mihrab and a simple mosque. This first structure was known as Masjid al-Umar. During the Umayyad Caliphate, the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ordered a renovation, constructing the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. The mosque has stood on the mount since 691 CE and has been renovated during the Abbasid, Fatimid, Mamluk, and Ottoman eras.

  In Islamic tradition, the site is considered the third-holiest place in Islam. A hadith compiled by imams Muhammad al-Bukhari, Muslim, and Abu Dawud specifies that three mosques alone warrant special journeys: the Sacred Masjid of Mecca, the Prophet's Masjid in Medina, and Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem. A hadith compiled by Al-Tabarani, Bayhaqi, and Suyuti records Muhammad stating that a prayer at al-Aqsa carries a reward five hundred times greater than prayer elsewhere.

  The site is also the destination of Muhammad's Night Journey and the place of his ascent heavenwards in the Mi'raj. For the first sixteen months after Muhammad and his companions arrived in Medina, they prayed facing Jerusalem, before the direction of prayer shifted to the Kaaba in Mecca, following verses revealed in Sura 2:144.

  In Christianity, Jesus predicted the destruction of the Second Temple in Matthew 24:2. The Temple as the body of Christ became a rich and layered theme in medieval Christian thought, where the temple could represent the heavenly body of Christ, the ecclesial body of the Church, or the Eucharistic body on the altar.

  Imam Abdul Hadi Palazzi, leader of the Italian Muslim Assembly, has cited the Quran to affirm Judaism's connection to the Temple Mount, arguing that the most authoritative Islamic sources affirm the Temples and that Jerusalem holds for Jews the same role that Mecca holds for Muslims.

• 8. Location, Evidence, and What Remains

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  Archaeological excavations have not uncovered remnants of the First Temple, though the evidence confirms that Jerusalem was a significant center of religious activity during that period. For the Second Temple, the archaeological and literary record is substantially stronger, even though no single stone has been definitively identified as part of the Temple structure itself.

  Two concrete physical finds survive from the Herodian expansion of the Temple Mount. The Temple Warning inscriptions forbid pagans from entering the Temple, a prohibition Josephus also described in the 1st century CE. These inscriptions stood on the wall surrounding the Temple. The Trumpeting Place inscription was found at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount and is believed to mark where priests announced the beginning of Shabbat and other Jewish holidays.

  Where exactly the Temple stood remains contested. Three main theories exist: that it stood where the Dome of the Rock now stands; that it stood to the north, as Professor Asher Kaufman argued; or that it stood to the east, as Professor Joseph Patrich of the Hebrew University proposed. Patrich's position draws on underground cistern mapping conducted by Charles William Wilson, who lived from 1836 to 1905.

  The Talmud shows that the location of the Holy of Holies was already debated less than 150 years after the Second Temple's destruction. Chapter 54 of the Tractate Berakhot holds that the Holy of Holies aligned with the Golden Gate, which would place the Temple slightly north of the Dome of the Rock, matching Kaufman's theory. Chapter 54 of Tractate Yoma and chapter 26 of Tractate Sanhedrin instead assert that the Holy of Holies stood directly on the Foundation Stone, supporting the traditional view that the Dome of the Rock marks the Temple's location.

  The Temple Mount, along with the entire Old City of Jerusalem, was captured from Jordan by Israel in 1967 during the Six-Day War. Jordan had occupied East Jerusalem since Israel's declaration of independence on the 14th of May 1948. Israel unified East Jerusalem with the rest of Jerusalem in 1980 under the Jerusalem Law, though United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 declared that law a violation of international law. Administrative control of the Temple Mount today rests with the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, based in Jordan, a jurisdictional arrangement that sits at the center of one of the most contested pieces of ground on earth.