Excavations Near Temple Mount Reveal Splendors of Herodian Jerusalem - The BAS Library
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Excavations Near Temple Mount Reveal Splendors of Herodian Jerusalem

By Benjamin Mazar

Of Jerusalem’s beauty during the Herodian period, the Talmuda tells us: “Whoever has not seen Jerusalem in its splendor has never seen a lovely city.1 Lest this seem a parochial judgment, we have the confirming view of the famous Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, who referred to Jerusalem as “by far the most renowned city of the Orient, and not of Judea only.2 Josephus Flavius, the first century Jewish historian, knew and described the Jerusalem of his day in detail. The “Royal Stoa” which Herod constructed on this southern part of the Temple Mount overlooking the 047Temple courtyard, […]

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Footnotes

1.

Talmud: (from the Hebrew, to “study”) A written compendium of oral law completed by about the fifth century and comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara, a commentary on the Mishnah. The Talmud exists in two versions: the Jerusalem and the Babylonian.

2.

Mishnah: (from the Hebrew, to “repeat”) The body of Jewish oral law: specifically, the collection of oral laws compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the second century.

3.

Huldah is the only Jerusalemite prophetess mentioned in the Bible during the period of the monarchy (See 2 Kings 22:14–20). King Josiah consulted her when he sent to “inquire of the Lord” concerning the Book of the Law (which most scholars consider to be the book of Deuteronomy) that was found during his restoration of the Temple in about 621 B.C.

4.

Tosephta: (from the Aramaic, to “add”) a work which is parallel and supplemental to the Mishnah. The text of the Tosephta often provides variant readings to the Mishnah.

Endnotes

1.

Babylonian Talmud, Succah 51b.

2.

Natural History, V, XV, 70.

3.

Antiquities of the Jews. XV, 412.

4.

Mishnah Sanhedrin, 11, 2.