Third Temple

• 1. Introduction

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  The Third Temple, known in Hebrew as Bēṯ hamMīqdāš hašŠlīšī, or the Third House of the Sanctum, is a building that does not exist. Even so, it shapes prayers, legal rulings and political tension in Jerusalem. It would follow two earlier temples. The First Temple was destroyed during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in about 587 BCE. The Second was destroyed during the Roman siege in 70 CE. In Judaism, and especially Orthodox Judaism, the hope for a third is sacred, and it would be the most sacred place of worship for Jews. The Hebrew Bible says that prophets called for its construction before the Messianic Age, or alongside it. Some Christian readings of the end of time also give it a major role. Why have so many people longed for it, feared it, or insisted it is not needed? What happened each time someone tried to start building? And why does one hilltop in Jerusalem sit at the center of so many competing claims?

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• 2. Roman Reversals

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  In the early 2nd century CE, Emperor Hadrian gave the Jews permission to rebuild the destroyed Second Temple, and then took it back. The permission probably aimed to calm a population that had just passed through the Diaspora Revolt and the Kitos War in Judaea.

  The revolt of Simon bar Kokhba followed. A minority of scholars once claimed that his forces captured Jerusalem in 132 and held it for about three years. That idea has little support among mainstream historians.

  Rome's response was brutal. Mass killings, widespread enslavement and the displacement of many Jews followed the revolt. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina, a pagan Roman city. Judea became Syria Palaestina. Jews were barred from entering the city, with one exception, the day of Tisha B'Av. Some surviving rabbis were allowed to keep their Talmudic academies running in Syria Palaestina, provided they paid the Fiscus Judaicus tax.

  With hope of regaining Jerusalem fading, religious leaders feared that the next chance to rebuild might be centuries away. They set down the practices and ceremonies of the Temple in the Mishna so that nothing would be forgotten.

  Rabbi Hilkiyah, one of the leading rabbis of his day, refused money from Emperor Julian. He argued that gentiles should have no part in rebuilding the Temple. Julian is traditionally called Julian the Apostate, because he rejected the Christian faith of his upbringing. Once on the throne, he tried to revive traditional religion by restoring holy places and practices across the empire. Allowing the Jews to begin a Third Temple was part of that policy.

  Later ancient sources describe how the project ended. Sozomen, writing around 400-450 CE in his Historia Ecclesiastica, and Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan historian and close friend of Julian, both told the story. Julian entrusted the work to Alypius of Antioch, and the governor of the province backed him. But every time workers tried to build on the existing substructure, fearful balls of fire burst out near the foundations. After repeated scorchings, the workmen could not approach, and the attempt was abandoned. An earthquake also destroyed what had been built.

  Modern explanations differ. Some point to the Galilee earthquake of 363 CE, and others to the Jews' own ambivalence about the project. Sabotage is possible, as is an accidental fire. Christian historians of the time saw divine intervention. Julian was killed in battle after reigning for less than three years. Christians then reasserted control of the empire, and the chance to rebuild closed.

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• 3. Conquerors and Mourners

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  In 610 CE, the Sassanid Empire drove the Byzantine Empire out of the Middle East. For the first time in centuries, Jews held Jerusalem. The new rulers soon ordered animal sacrifice restarted, something not seen since the time of Bar Kochba. The reprieve was short. Shortly before the Byzantines took the region back, the Persians handed control to the Christian population. The Christians tore down the partly built structure and made the site a garbage dump. That is how Caliph Omar found it when he took the city in the 630s.

  An Armenian chronicle by the 7th-century bishop Sebeos describes the Siege of Jerusalem in 637 CE. According to Sebeos, Jews and Arabs there were quarreling over their religious differences. Then a man he calls one of the "sons of Ishmael" named Muhammad preached to them. The sermon told both groups to unite under their father Abraham and enter the Holy Land. Sebeos adds that the Jews started rebuilding the temple, but the Arabs expelled them and turned the place into their own prayer site. The Jews then built another temple somewhere else.

  In 1267, during the Mongol raids into Syria, the scholar Nachmanides wrote his son a letter from Jerusalem. He found the city the most desolate place in a desolate land, with about 2,000 inhabitants. After the arrival of the Tartars, as he called the Mongols, Jews had fled or been killed. Only two brothers, both dyers, remained. A prayer group met on the Sabbath in their home, and Nachmanides and his companions found a ruined house with pillars and a beautiful dome and turned it into a synagogue. He wrote that men and women from Damascus, Aleppo and all parts of the country kept coming to Jerusalem "to see the Temple and weep over it." His letter closes with a prayer to see the city rebuilt and the Divine Presence restored.

  Seven centuries later, a very different kind of visitor would arrive on the same mount.

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• 4. The Prayer on the Mount

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  On the 15th of August 1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, Rabbi Shlomo Goren led fifty Jews onto the Temple Mount for a prayer service. Goren was then the former Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces and later became chief rabbi of the State of Israel. Muslim guards and Israeli police protested, and the group had to fight them off. Goren kept praying nearby for years, holding yearly High Holy Days services in the Makhkame building overlooking the mount. His brother-in-law She'ar Yashuv Cohen, a former Chief Rabbi of Haifa, repeated his call for a synagogue on the mount.

  The Israeli Defense Ministry sharply criticized Goren, calling his behavior inappropriate for a man of his rank. The Chief Rabbis of the time restated the accepted view that no Jews may enter the mount because of ritual impurity. Secular authorities welcomed that ruling, since it preserved the status quo with the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf. Goren disagreed with his colleagues. He insisted that Jews were not merely permitted but commanded to ascend and pray there, and from the 1960s onward he urged building a Third Temple.

  In the summer of 1983, Goren and other rabbis joined Rabbi Yehuda Getz, who worked for the Religious Affairs Ministry at the Western Wall. Getz had excavated a chamber beneath the mount, and they toured it. The tunnel was soon discovered, and a massive brawl broke out between young Jews and Arabs. Israeli police sealed the entrance with concrete. It can still be seen from the Western Wall Tunnel, which opened to the public in 1996.

  The Chief Rabbis Isser Yehuda Unterman and Yitzhak Nissim, with other leading rabbis, declared: "For generations we have warned against and refrained from entering any part of the Temple Mount." A recent study calls the ruling "unprecedented" and suggests government pressure may have prompted it. The same study also calls it "brilliant" for preventing friction between Muslims and Jews. Consensus in the Religious Zionist stream of Orthodox Judaism still forbids entering any part of the mount, and a declaration signed in January 2005 confirmed the 1967 decision. Even so, on the eve of Shavuot in 2014, 400 Jews ascended the mount, and some were photographed praying.

  Three organizations now state that their goal is to build the Third Temple there. They are the Temple Institute, the self-proclaimed Temple Mount Administration, and the Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement. Together they represent only a small minority of Orthodox Jews.

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• 5. Obstacles and Flashpoints

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  Two Islamic structures, each about 13 centuries old, stand on the Temple Mount: the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Harming them, restricting access, or building anything Jewish around, above, below or in place of them could provoke severe international conflict, because the Muslim world holds them sacred.

  Even the exact spot is disputed. The Dome of the Rock is regarded as occupying the former site of the Second Temple. Some scholars disagree. They place the Temple just north of the Dome, or about 200 m to its south near the Gihon spring, or between the Dome and the Al Aqsa Mosque.

  A unit of measurement raises a further problem. The Temple's dimensions are given in cubits, but scholars disagree over the length of one. The scholarly consensus is 1.84 ft, while the respected historian Asher Selig Kaufman proposed 1.43 ft. Without knowing the cubit, the altar could not be built. The Talmud also says the Second Temple was built only under the direct prophetic guidance of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Many Orthodox scholars conclude that without valid prophecy the Temple cannot be rebuilt, even if the mosques were gone, which is why most reject building before the Messiah arrives.

  Control of the site is split. Muslim clerics control the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, yet Israeli police administer security. Many rabbis read Jewish law as forbidding Jews to enter the Holy of Holies at all.

  CNN has traced how volatile the area is. In 1996, Israel opened an archeological tunnel just outside the compound. Riots followed, and 80 people, most of them Palestinians, were killed. A visit by Ariel Sharon in 2000 sparked a clash between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli troops firing tear gas and rubber bullets. It coincided with the start of the Second Intifada, which lasted until 2005. During the Sukkot festival in 2006, Knesset member Uri Ariel of the National Union visited the mount without incident, and police saw no provocation from protesters.

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• 6. Jewish Divisions

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  Three times a day, Orthodox Jews recite the Amidah, a prayer that asks for the Temple's restoration and the resumption of sacrifices. Each day they also read aloud the order of that day's sacrifices and the psalms the Levites once sang. Most rabbis after 70 CE concluded that Jewish law bars rebuilding before the age of messianic redemption, or that the law is too unclear and the messiah must come first. A minority follows Maimonides and holds that Jews should try to rebuild whenever they can.

  Maimonides himself seems to point in two directions. In The Guide for the Perplexed he wrote that God deliberately moved Jews from sacrifice toward prayer, a higher form of worship. Yet in his legal code, the Mishneh Torah, he says animal sacrifices will resume in the Third Temple and explains how. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is also read in conflicting ways. In Olat Raiyah, commenting on Malachi 3:4, he suggests only grain offerings will return. A related essay in Igrot HaRaiyah suggests otherwise.

  Conservative Judaism believes in a messiah and a rebuilt Temple but does not support restoring sacrifices. Its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards altered the prayer book accordingly. In the Mussaf Amidah, the phrase na'ase ve'nakriv, we will present and sacrifice, became asu ve'hikrivu, they presented and sacrificed. That wording treats sacrifice as a need of the Jewish past. The daily study portion on Temple sacrifices was replaced with Talmudic passages teaching that deeds of loving-kindness now atone for sin. In 2006, the Committee also adopted two responsa on niddah. One changed the term "family purity" to "family holiness", and the other kept the existing observances and rationale. Both were accepted as permissible Conservative views.

  Reform Judaism rejects a rebuilt central Temple and its sacrifices. It sees the sacrificial era as a more primitive stage of ritual from which Judaism has moved on. It also objects that special roles for Kohanim and Levites amount to a caste system. In 19th-century Germany, early Reformers renamed the synagogue a "temple", declared Berlin the new Jerusalem, and tried to show their German nationalism. Reform anti-Zionism faded significantly after the Holocaust and the founding of the modern state of Israel.

  Theodor Herzl pictured something else in his novel Altneuland. His imagined Jerusalem contains a reconstructed Temple standing beside an intact Dome of the Rock.

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• 7. Christian Readings

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  Paul of Tarsus asked the church in Corinth whether they knew that their body was a temple of the Holy Spirit, in 1 Corinthians 6:19. The New Testament writers understood the New Covenant as the Holy Spirit dwelling in believers, so every Christian, and the gathering of them, forms the temple. The scholar N. T. Wright argues that, when Paul used this image within twenty-five years of the Crucifixion, with the real temple still standing, it showed a striking change in his thinking. In Wright's reading, the Temple had been superseded by the church, and so were Jerusalem and the land. Ben F. Meyer argues that Jesus applied the imagery of Zion and the temple to his own disciples, while also expecting the temple's destruction, as in Mark 13:2.

  The dominant view among Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christians is that temple sacrifices foreshadowed Jesus' death. The Epistle to the Hebrews calls them imperfect, since they must be repeated, and describes the old covenant as growing obsolete. It compares Christ to a high priest who finished his work and sat down. Matthew 27:50-51 says the veil before the Holy of Holies was torn at the crucifixion. Revelation 21:22 describes the New Jerusalem as having no temple, because God and the Lamb are its temple. Jesus told a Samaritan that a time was coming when people would worship neither on that mountain nor in Jerusalem. Of the Herodian temple he said that not one stone would be left on another. Irenaeus and Hippolytus were early church writers who nonetheless foresaw a rebuilding, as a preparation for the reign of the Antichrist.

  Some Protestants, especially dispensationalists, expect a future temple. They draw on Ezekiel's long description of a Millennial temple. Some say the sacrifices there would be a memorial of the Cross, and others say they would serve as a ritual lesson in confession and forgiveness. Some read Daniel 12:11 as saying that the end of the age comes soon after sacrifices stop in the rebuilt temple. Dispensational Evangelicals hold that prophecies in Matthew 24-25 and 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 were not fully fulfilled in 70 CE. Theologians such as Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye teach that the temple will be rebuilt after the Antichrist secures a peace treaty between Israel and its neighbors. He is then said to use the temple to proclaim himself God and Messiah.

  Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians see the Eucharist as far superior to the temple sacrifices. They regard Christ as the New Temple and model church buildings on Solomon's Temple, with the Tabernacle holding the Eucharist as the new Holy of Holies. For that reason, they attach no significance to rebuilding in Jerusalem. The Orthodox also cite Daniel 9:27 on the cessation of sacrifice. They add that, according to Jesus, St. Paul and the Holy Fathers, the temple will be rebuilt only in the times of the Antichrist.

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• 8. Other Faiths, Other Temples

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  Latter Day Saints believe the Jews will build the Third Temple before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. After he returns, Jews will accept him as the Messiah, and the temple will become the Jerusalem LDS Temple. Two main temples are then to serve as central governing places. The Jerusalem Temple will govern the Eastern Hemisphere. The New Jerusalem Temple in Independence, Missouri, will govern the Western Hemisphere. Each will have a throne for Christ's millennial reign.

  In Independence, the Community of Christ, the second largest Latter Day Saint denomination, has run a temple open to the public since 1994. Another denomination, the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), owns the Temple Lot, which it holds to be the actual spot where the temple will stand.

  Most Muslims see the movement for a Third Jewish Temple as an affront to Islam. The majority regard the area as the third holiest site in Islam. They call for recognition of exclusive Muslim rights and demand full transfer to Muslim sovereignty. Some Muslims deny that the former Jewish Temples had any connection to the mount.

  Denis Michael Rohan was an Australian Christian who set fire to a 12th-century pulpit in the Al-Aqsa mosque. He hoped to trigger the second coming of Christ. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation was founded in reaction to that fire, and protecting Al-Aqsa remains central to its mandate.

  Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, wrote the Súriy-i-Haykal, the Tablet of the Temple. Baháʼís hold that this writing fulfilled the prophecy of the Third Temple. It combines a tablet with five messages to world leaders. Soon after finishing it, Bahá'u'lláh had it written in the shape of a pentacle, symbolizing the human temple. He added a closing line asking which is preferable, "this, or a temple which is built of clay?" Shoghi Effendi, head of the faith in the first half of the 20th century, linked the verse to Zechariah's promise of a rebuilt Temple in the End Times. He read it as fulfilled by the return of the Manifestation of God, Bahá'u'lláh, as a human temple. In the tablet, Bahá'u'lláh speaks as the Temple and calls the Manifestation of God a "Living Temple". He addresses the organs and limbs of the human body, telling each to turn toward God rather than the earthly world.

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