Appropriately Impressed!

They were impressed! Mark's gospel quotes the comment Jesus overhead in the opening of today's lesson: "Look Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" The contemporary Roman/Jewish historian Josephus writes that the temple "appeared from a distance like a snow-clad mountain, for all that was not overlaid with gold was of purest white." This temple built by Herod was as massive and awesome up close as it was at a distance.

Though called the Second Temple to this day, it was more honestly the third temple to be built upon this site. Solomon had built the first, constructing a flat platform, encompassing with retaining walls the outcropping of rock that had been Arunah's threshing floor, the location Solomon's father, David, had purchased as the site of …