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Return to Zion and the Second Temple Period
  • The Temple: Herod's Crowning Glory - The Megalim Institute
    The Temple: Herod's Crowning Glory - The Megalim Institute
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  • Restoration of Herod's Temple, form the Holyland Model in the Israel Museum. Photo by Yehuda, via Wikimedia Commons
    Restoration of Herod's Temple, form the Holyland Model in the Israel Museum. Photo by Yehuda, via Wikimedia Commons
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Return to Zion and the Second Temple Period

Herod Rebuilds the Temple Mount and the Temple

It was at this time, in the eighteenth year of his reign…that Herod undertook an extraordinary work (namely) the reconstructing of the temple of God…enlarging its precincts and raising it to an imposing height.


Josephus, Antiquities 15:380

The time of Herod was a time of glory for Jerusalem: The city was built of stone, a palace was constructed by today’s Jaffa Gate, and a large fortress called the Antonia was also built to control the Temple Mount from the north. The greatest of Herod’s building projects was the expansion of the Temple Mount – which became the largest sacred compound in the Roman Empire – and the rebuilding of the Temple on a magnificent scale. The Roman scholar Pliny said that the city left behind by Herod was “by far the most famous city, not only of Judaea, but of the East.”