The Western Wall
A thousand years B.C., King David got it in his heart that he wanted to build a Temple for the Lord. The prophet Nathan carried the word from God to David that not he but one of his descendants would build that house for the Lord. And, indeed, one generation later, David's son Solomon erected a fabulous Temple in Jerusalem.
Solomon's Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., but a smaller, less glorious Temple was rebuilt on the same spot by the post-exilic Jews in the late 6th-century B.C. And, several hundred years later, Herod the Great expanded on that Temple complex in Jerusalem. The Temple of the New Testament, therefore, is sometimes referred to by historian and archaeologists as "Herod's Temple." That was the Temple that Jesus knew. That was the Temple area where Paul was arrested. As noted on the Masada page, the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70 as part of putting down a Jewish revolt. The Jews have had no Temple in Jerusalem since that time. And for more than 1300 years now, the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim mosque, has stood on the site. What had been the western wall of the precincts of Herod's Temple survived the Roman assault and the centuries since. That lone remnant of the Jerusalem Temple, therefore, has become the holiest site in the world for Jews. A visit to the Western Wall (sometimes also called the Wailing Wall) reveals it primarily as a place of solemn prayer. |