Herod’s Temple

Herod the Great — the Idumean client-king Rome had installed in 37 BC — began a wholesale rebuilding of the second Temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, about 20 BC. His motive was partly political (he was not from a priestly or Davidic line and needed legitimacy in Jewish eyes) and partly his own characteristic megalomania for building. He doubled the size of the Temple Mount by constructing colossal retaining walls — the Western Wall is the western face of his platform — and filled the new platform with porticoes (Solomon’s Portico, the Royal Stoa), a Court of the Gentiles paved in coloured stone, a Court of the Women, a Court of Israel, the Sanctuary itself faced with gold and white marble, and finally the Holy of Holies, which only the high priest entered on the Day of Atonement. The sanctuary proper was finished in eighteen months by 1,000 priests trained as masons; the larger complex was still under construction in Jesus’ day (John 2:20: "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple") and was only completed under Herod Agrippa II about AD 64 — six years before Titus burned it down on 9 Av AD 70.