Saturday, July 02, 2005

THE AFTERLIFE OF THE TEMPLE: Here's an interview with Simon Goldhill, author of The Temple of Jerusalem (Wonders of the World; Harvard University Press, 2005):
Construction Site

A history of the Second Temple unearths an archaeology of fantasy and longing.


INTERVIEW BY Franklin Toker

Built by Herod 20 years before the Common Era, the Second Temple�a magnificent recreation of an earlier structure built by King Solomon and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E.�stood in Jerusalem for less than a century. Despite its short life, the legacy of Herod's effort has lasted millennia, bolstered by the discovery of archaeological relics and by continuing discussions of its grandeur that date back to Josephus's histories, written in the first century C.E.. In The Temple of Jerusalem, Simon Goldhill, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge University, and author of Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality, examines the Temple's endurance as an object of religious and political fascination. He discusses this architectural marvel and his book, part of Harvard University Press's Wonders of the World series, with Franklin Toker.

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There are also some cool pictures of artistic representations of the Temple throughout the ages.

I hope the last paragraph of the interview is wrong.

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