Word: romane
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...high--a wall not of the Temple itself but of a gargantuan platform atop which it perched. To his right would have been Jerusalem's Upper City, its Gold Coast, where the families of the priests who tended the sacrificial altars lived according to Jewish law but in Roman splendor. Asked to imagine the boy's main impression, Roni Reich, director of Temple Mount excavations for the Israeli Antiquities Authority, says...
...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 of the Sabbath...
...time, the platform (Jews call it the Temple Mount) had up to seven entrances. Most experts believe the remains of an expansive, carved-stone stairway on the south side of the mount, perpendicular to the Roman street, were once the main entry for common pilgrims. At the foot of the stairs are the ruins of a series of baths, for ritual purification, and small shops, some of which still have hitches for animals...
Temple worship revolved around sacrifice: a lamb for Passover, a bull for Yom Kippur, two 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...
...many company towns, however, the city in Jesus' time had a cosmopolitan feel. Its material needs drew caravans from Samaria, Syria, Egypt, Nabatea, Arabia and Persia. Two-thirds of its population were Jews (roughly the same percentage as today), practicing a religion that counted millions of adherents in the Roman Empire and a large group of "God fearers," Gentiles who observed some key precepts without full conversion. At the same time, the city was in its 15th generation of Greco-Roman influence (since the conquests of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.). Parents gave their children Greek names; intellectuals were...