⁵ While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, he said, ⁶ “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”

The architectural entity known as the Jerusalem Temple was a complex institution. It played a central religious and cultic role in Israelite life, as well as functioning on a political level. It was a symbol of the national state of which Jerusalem was the capital during the pre-exilic period, then of the semiautonomous community of Judeans after the exile, and finally of the Jews who continued to live in Jerusalem and the surrounding territory, with sporadic periods of autonomy, in the centuries before its final destruction. Continue reading →