The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

Chapter 3 Enigma of King Solomon's Temple
King Solomon's reign was sometime during the period 1015BCE
to 931BCE. His father, King David, had consolidated Judah and Israel
into the United Kingdom of Israel, ruled from Jerusalem. By the time of
Solomon's kingship, Jerusalem had become a wealthy centre of trade.
The Books of I Kings and II Chronicles describe how Solomon
constructed a mighty temple to house the Arc of the Covenant. He
decorated it with the most sumptuous of stonework, woodwork and
metalwork using Phoenician artisans provided by the King of Tyre.
Although there were many older temples on Mount Zion, Jewish
and Biblical scholars consider King Solomon's Temple the First Temple
of Jerusalem.
The Babylonian King Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem at the time
of Hezekiah in 700BCE. Hezekiah paid him a tribute of a king’s ransom
including thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious
stones and antimony. 27 The next Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar
invaded Jerusalem in 597BCE and again in 587BCE. 28 In the latter
invasion, he destroyed the Temple and transported the population of
Jerusalem to Babylon. 29
King Cyrus of Persia later returned the descendants of these
Israelites to Israel in 538BCE. He financed the construction of the
Second Temple by Zerubbabel, albeit in an austere style. The name
Zerubbabel actually means Children of Israel and is probably an
archetype. The Jews completed the Second Temple in 515BCE. It
operated until 169BCE when plundered by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the
Illustrious. He allegedly removed both the visible and hidden treasures. 30
With permission from the Sanhedrin, Herod the Great demolished
Zerubbabel's Second Temple in 20CE and constructed a grandiose Third
Temple in only eighteen months. Fifty years later, the Roman General
Titus burned this temple to the ground on the very anniversary of the
destruction of the First Temple. His action was in response to fanatical
militancy by Jewish Zealots who murdered a garrison of surrendered
Roman troops in Jerusalem.
The Jewish chronicler Flavius Josephus and Roman historian
Tacitus both wrote that Titus had not wanted to destroy the Third Temple.
They did so because after heavily fortifying the temple, the Zealots
fervently defended it. 31
25