Word: herodes
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...Jerusalem, says Meyers, that Herod "undertook to make one of the major wonders of the ancient world." He rebuilt the existing meandering streets on a paved grid and created a moat-ringed palace featuring--in a moisture-starved region--picturesque water gardens. He added an amphitheater and a hippodrome. But the jewel in the crown, the spiritual, economic and social center of Judea and an icon to Jews throughout the region, was the Temple. It was his bid to rival Solomon, biblical builder of the Jews' first great house of worship, which had been razed by the Babylonians some...
Physical remains of Herod's masterpiece are scarce. But they tend to support descriptions in the four surviving written sources from approximately the same period: the Gospels and the biblical book of Acts; the part of the Jewish Talmud called the Mishnah; and the histories of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish priest and commander turned Roman military aide who lived in the years A.D. 30 to A.D. 100. For instance, a stone found later near the Temple's likely site was inscribed with the words TO THE PLACE OF TRUMPETING, which corroborate Josephus' description of the signal for the beginning...
Tradition forbade the Temple's enlargement beyond Solomon's original dimensions. So Herod expressed his egomania by adding a 35-acre platform--"the greatest ever heard of," writes Josephus--on which the Temple could sit. The Western Wall where Jews pray today is a small slice of the platform's 16-ft.-thick western side. Some of the stones are 30 ft. long and weigh up to 50 tons. ("Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" exclaims a disciple in the Gospel of Mark.) As Herod built out over the adjacent valleys, the outline of the mountain...
...doves--"the poor woman's sacrifice"--to celebrate a child's birth. Before buying an animal, visitors changed their Roman denarii (the dollar of the day) for shekels, or Temple coins, that had no portraits on them and so did not violate the Jewish prohibition of graven images. Herod appears to have allowed the money changers onto the Temple platform, which may have spurred Jesus' scourging of them in "my father's house." Joshua Schwartz, a professor of historical geography at Israel's Bar Ilan University, styles the stairway as a Judean version of London's Hyde Park Corner. There...
This Greco-Roman "modernism" was conflicted, however. A building full of soldiers loomed over the Temple courtyards like a watchtower over a prison. As Jesus and the other pilgrims performed the most sacred rites of their faith, they would never be beyond surveillance. After Herod's initial rise, the Roman yoke was relatively light, consisting mostly of tribute. But the Jews had been independent for a century before the imperial conquest, and many hoped to return to that state. In recognition of this, above the Temple's northwestern corner stood the city's great Roman garrison, the Antonia, named after...