Josh Barzon on X (Author, Bible Translation Nerd)
Did you know that nearly 300 years after the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, a Roman emperor actually tried to rebuild it?
The project began.
But then something strange happened.
Earthquakes shook the site, fire balls erupted from the foundations, and workers were unable to continue.
This is the strange story of Emperor Julian and the last serious Roman attempt to rebuild the Temple.
In A.D. 363, Emperor Julian, later known as “Julian the Apostate,” authorized the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem at enormous expense. Julian had rejected Christianity and was attempting to revive the old religions of the Roman Empire.
He was so opposed to Christianity that he attempted to rebuild the temple as a direct attack on Jesus’s prophecy that the temple would never be rebuilt.
The project also carried obvious significance for Christianity. Jesus had predicted the Temple’s destruction, declaring that “there will not be left here one stone upon another” (Matthew 24:2).
Julian placed the project under Alypius of Antioch, and work began around the ancient foundations.
Then something strange happened.
The contemporary Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus records that “terrifying balls of flame” repeatedly burst from near the foundations, burning workers and making the site inaccessible. This account is particularly interesting because Ammianus was not a Christian. He was a pagan Roman historian writing about events in his own lifetime.
Christian writers provide additional details.
Gregory of Nazianzus described the earth heaving beneath the workers, followed by fire, while other writers similarly mention earthquakes and violent disturbances. We also know independently that a major earthquake struck the region in A.D. 363.
Whatever precisely happened, the reconstruction was abandoned. Julian died shortly afterward while campaigning against Persia, and the Temple was never rebuilt.
Christians at the time naturally interpreted the event as divine intervention. We cannot prove that conclusion from the historical evidence alone, but the theological significance is fascinating.
Perhaps the Christian hope was never supposed to be another Temple in Jerusalem.
Jesus presented Himself as the fulfillment of the Temple. His sacrifice was final, so no further sacrifices for sin are needed. And the New Testament describes the Church itself as a temple being built upon Christ, the cornerstone.
The Temple had pointed forward to something greater.
And by A.D. 363, Christians believed that something greater had already come.