In 70 AD, Herod’s Temple was leveled to the ground by the Romans, fulfilling Jesus’s prediction for this “den of thieves” (Mark 11:17): “There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). Whether Jesus really said that, or the prophecy was attributed to him in hindsight, the person who included it in his gospel in the early 70s AD would not have put it in those terms if it had been proven false.
The utter destruction of the temple is confirmed by another eyewitness, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. The words he ascribes to Eleazar, the Jewish commander at Masada, around 73 AD, make clear that nothing was left of the city but the Roman fort:
Where is this city that was believed to have God himself inhabiting therein? It is now demolished to the very foundations, and it has nothing left but that monument of it preserved, I mean the camp of those [the Romans] that hath destroyed it. (Jewish War, VII, 8, 379)
According to Josephus, every stone of the Temple was overturned because it contained huge amounts of gold, which melted during the fire and descended into the cracks of the stone foundations. The Tenth Legion had the Jewish captives dig up every stone to recover the gold (Jewish War, VI, 6, 1). All the gold recovered from the Temple and from various hiding places (64 according to the Copper Scroll), was instrumental to the ascension of Vespasian and Titus on the imperial throne.
Read it all: https://radbodslament.substack.com/p/holy-irony
