Herod’s Roman Temple

For King Solomon’s Temple, the Phoenician king, Hiram of Tyre, supplied not only construction materials and masons (1 Kings 5:1–12) but apparently the architectural plan as well. The structure, as it is described in the Bible, is clearly a Syro-Phoenician building, for which archaeology has found several parallels in that cultural sphere.^a Solomon made use of the best skills and building techniques that he could obtain from Phoenicia, because they were not available locally.

A millennium later, Herod the Great followed his example, seeking state-of-the-art expertise and design for his rebuilding of the Second Temple. Only this time, it was not the Syro-Phoenician world but the Greek and Roman cultural sphere that was preeminent and that Herod adopted.