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SECT. IV. The state of the Temple under the Romans.
SO sad were the beginnings of the Temple under the Roman Power, that an Omen might have been taken from them, what would become of it, ere this Nation had done with it. Pompey coming up to Jerusalem had the Gates shut against him, so that he presently begirt it with a Siege: a 1.1 But the taking of the City cost him not much labour (saith Dion Cassius) for he was let in by the party of Hyrcanus: But the Temple which Aristobulus party had possessed, cost him some work. It was seated on a high pitch, and fenced with a Wall of its own. And if the defendants had guarded it all days alike, it had not been taken: but they intermitting to stand upon their defence on Saturdays (being their Sabbath) on which days they do no work, the Romans had opportunity on that day to batter the Wall. And when they had discovered this custom of the besieged, they did no great matter all the week long, till Saturday came again, and then they set upon them again; and so at the last the Jews not resist∣ing were suprized and subdued. Great slaughter was made upon the Romans entrance, to the number of twelve thousand Jews, as b 1.2 Josephus reckoneth; and yet even whilest the Conqueror was killing as fast as he could, the Priests at the Altar went on in the Ser∣vice as insensibly and fearlesly, by the same Authors relation, as if there had been no such danger and destruction at all, till the sword came to their own sides: Pompey being thus victor, he and divers other with him, went into the Temple, even into the most Holy place, and saw all its glory and riches, and yet was sparing of offering any violence to it, but caused the place to be purged and the Service to be set a foot again.
But what Pompey had spared, Crassus ere long seized upon, plundering the Temple of exceeding much wealth, as he went on his expedition into Parthia. c 1.3 That Parthian War was undertaken by him, as Dion tells us, more upon his covetousness than upon any other warrantable or honourable ground, and he sped accordingly, coming to a miserable end answerable to such principles and beginnings.
In the beginning of the reign of Herod (which was not very long after) the City and Temple was again besieged and taken by him and Sosius, and the Temple in danger again to be rifled, but prevented by Herod as much as he could: and now Antigonus the son of Aristobulus the last of Asmonean Rulers is cut off by Antony.
Herod in the eighteenth year of his Reign, beginneth to repair the Temple, taking it down to the very foundations, and raising it again in larger dimensions than it had been of before, and in that form and structure that hath been observed and surveyed in the foregoing discourse.
About some nine or ten years after the finishing of it, the Lord came to his own Tem∣ple, even the Messenger of the Covenant whom they desired, Mal. III. 1. being present∣ed there by his Mother at forty days old, and owned by Simeon and Anna, Luke II. Twelve years after that, he is at the Temple again, set among the Doctors of one of the Sanhe∣drins, either in one of their Consistories or in their Midrash, and sheweth his Divine Wisdom to admiration: It is needless to speak of the occurrences that befel in the Temple, about Christ and his Apostles, as his being on a Pinnacle of it in his temptations, his whip∣ping out buyers and sellers at his first and last Passover, his constant frequenting the place whensoever he was at Jerusalem, and his foretelling the destruction of it as he sat upon Mount Olivet in the face of it, a little before his death: The Apostles resorting thither to the Publick Service, and to take opportunity of Preaching in the concourse there, their healing a Creeple there, and converting thousands: Pauls apprehension there upon misprison of his defiling it by bringing in of Gentiles, and other particulars which are at large related by the Evangelists, that it is but unnecessary labour to insist upon them, since any Reader may fetch them thence.
As for the passages there, that are not mentioned in the Scripture, but by Josephus and others, as Pilates imbezelling the holy Treasures of the Temple upon an aquaeduct, Petro∣nius his going about to bring in Caligula's Image thither, a Tumult caused there by the base irreverence of a Roman Souldier, Arrippa's Sacrifices there, and Anathemata, Vitellius his favour to it and the people, a base affront and abuse put upon the place by the Samari∣tanes, the horrid confusions there in the time of the seditious, the slaughter of one Za∣charias in it, and at the last the firing of it by the Romans, and the utter ruine of it and the City, they would require a larger Discourse, than one Chapter or Paragraph will af∣ford: It may be they will come to be prosecuted to the full in another Treatise, and therefore I shall but only name them here.