History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

We have descriptions of Herod’s Temple in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews and his Jewish Wars,68 and in the Talmudic tractates Middot, Tamid and Yoma. These are supplemented by recent archaeology. To achieve the grandiose effects he desired, Herod doubled the area of the Temple Mount by building huge supporting walls and filling in the gaps with rubble. Around the vast forecourt thus created he erected porticos, and linked it all to the upper city by bridges. The sanctuary, at one end of the platform, was much higher and wider than Solomon’s (100 as opposed to 60 cubits), but since Herod was not of a priestly family and could not therefore enter even the inner court, he spent little on the interior, and the Holy of Holies, though lined in gold, was bare. Instead, cash was spent profusely on the exterior, gates, fittings and decorations being covered in gold and silver plate. Josephus says the stone was ‘exceptionally white’, and the glitter of the stone and the gleam of the gold–reflected many miles away in the bright sun–was what made the Temple so striking to travellers seeing it from afar for the first time. The prodigious platform, 35 acres in area and a mile in circumference, was more than twice the height as seen today from the bottom of the valley, for the lower courses of the great stone blocks are covered in the rubbish of centuries. Josephus says that some of these blocks were ‘45 cubits in length, 10 in height and 6 in breadth’, finished by imported craftsmen ...