Biblical Archaeology Review

2 Baruch 6:8. 2 Baruch is set in 587 B.C.E., the time of the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, but there is little doubt that it addressed the concerns of Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple.

Jodi Magness, “Archaeological Evidence for the Sassanian Persian Invasion of Jerusalem,” in Kenneth G. Holum and Hayim Lapin, eds., Shaping the Middle East: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in an Age of Transition 400–800 C.E. (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2011), pp. 85–98.

Leon Yarden, The Tree of Light: A Study of the Menorah, the Seven-Branched Lampstand (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971), fig. 93.

Gideon Avni, “The Persian Conquest of Jerusalem (614 C.E.)—An Archaeological Assessment,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 357 (2010), pp. 35–48.

Reeves, Trajectories, p. 57.

Reeves, Trajectories, p. 47; Martha Himmelfarb, “Sefer Zerubbabel,” in David Stern and Mark Mirsky, eds., Rabbinic Fantasies Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1999), pp. 67–90.

Reeves, Trajectories, pp. 40–66.

Samuel Krauss, Studien zur byzantinisch-jüdischen Geschichte (Leipzig: Buchhandlung Gustav Fock, 1914), p. 106, n. 3. If that were the case, then the “Messiah of the lineage of Joseph” would be said to bring Temple vessels from Justinian’s palace to Jerusalem. This is exactly what Procopius said, minus the messianic element. Ra’anan Boustan has suggested that the Roman emperor was intended to be Emperor Julian (the Apostate) who ruled 361–363 C.E. and planned to restore the Temple in Jerusalem. Boustan, “The Spoils of the Jerusalem Temple,” p. 365, n. 108.