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If you look at all the religious megaliths we have today, like the Vatican or whatever, the reasons those exist is because they were built using several hundred
by Alex3917 6y ago
If you look at all the religious megaliths we have today, like the Vatican or whatever, the reasons those exist is because they were built using several hundred or even thousand years of accrued wealth. (And a significant amount of 'reappropriated' building materials.) If the second temple really was built in 586 BCE, does it make any sense whatsoever that that could have been built with only 3 generations or so of accrued intergenerational wealth? That just doesn't seem plausible. Even assuming the bible is 100% made up, common sense suggests the longer biblical timeline is probably closer to the truth.
If they'd instead stumbled into Dubai-style wealth from these copper mines or whatever only a few decades earlier, surely that would have been written down somewhere.
- bjourne 6y agoBut to be fair, the Second temple wasn't that impressive until Herod expanded it in the 1st century bc.
- Alex3917 6y agoGood point, forgot about that heh.
- coliveira 6y agoYou're assuming that veracity of stories about the grandiosity of Salomon's temple. There is no evidence to demonstrate that there was a fantastic, wealthy temple built by Solomon. If there was one, it could have been a simple temple fit to a small town built by the new rulers of the Israelite tribes.
- Alex3917 6y ago> You're assuming that veracity of stories about the grandiosity of Salomon's temple. I was talking about the temple mount, which you can still visit today. Didn't realize it wasn't finished until 500 years later though, so not sure to what extent my argument still holds.
- verbify 6y agoThe remaining Western wall of the Temple mount today was rebuilt by Herod almost 1000 years later (20 BCE). You can tell by the distinctive stone-dressing - the border around the stone known as Herodian masonry. You can also see this feature on the cave of the patriarchs.