It’s not commonly known that city of Jerusalem – the centre of Jewish culture and religion was actually rebuilt from scratch during the second century. The city had been completely razed to the ground during the First Jewish-Roman War by Roman forces. But around 60 years later the Roman Emperor Hadrian ordered a new city to be built on the same spot and this city would be entirely greco-Roman and pagan in character rather than Jewish and was given the name of Aelia Capitolina.
And in this city were built some prominent temples. A large temple of Jupiter and a large statue of the god along with a statue of the Emperor Hadrian stood on the Temple Mount where the Jewish second temple first stood and where the Muslim shrine Dome of the Rock in the foreground of this image now stands. And the Temple of Aphrodite stood on the exact spot where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands in the western end of the walled city.
But these temples were razed to the ground along with the two statues and the city during the 4th century became to all intents and purposes a Christian city and a place for pilgrimage. The city was also renamed Jerusalem and the name Aelia Capitolina abandoned and which slowly disappeared from usage. So how did this come about? Let’s take a closer look into what happened, why, when and how the temples was originally built and when and how these temples of the city vanished in later centuries.
The Jewish-Roman wars
During the early decades of the first century Jerusalem being the Jewish holy city naturally had a heavily Jewish population although there was a strong sprinkling of non-Jews, Greeks and Romans amongst others. Where the Dome of the Rock shrine now stands was where the Jewish holy of holies – the second temple – stood on the Temple Mount up to the first century. And this was in the eastern half of the city and was a large enclosed and walled structure and therefore easily defendable. There was also the fortress of Antonia adjacent to it on the north wall of the Temple Mount. The rest of the walled city lay to the north and west of the Temple Mount.
The city and country had come under the influence and indirect rule of the Romans in the previous century. And there was a pretty strong hellenic influence not just in Judea but all along the eastern Mediterranean. But the walled city never had any pagan temples during this early Roman period. And that was to placate the Jews who wouldn’t have tolerated pagan temples within the city walls. And the Romans were quite happy with this arrangements if the Jews accepted Roman rule as well.
But this all changed after the Jewish-Roman wars of the first and second century. The Jews would rebel against the Romans no less than three times not including various smaller uprisings. The wars also took place within a fairly short period of seventy years odd and completely changed the face of the region. These never ending Jewish uprisings very much annoyed the Romans and the Emperor Hadrian during his reign decided to end the Jewish domination of the region and the city of Jerusalem permanently and he expelled the Jews triggering off what we know today as the the Jewish diaspora from the region.
| The Jewish-Roman Wars | Events |
|---|---|
| 63BCE | Roman General Pompey captures Jerusalem |
| 6CE | Imposition of direct Roman rule. Judas of Galilee begins resistance to Roman census |
| 46-48CE | Jacob and Simon uprising |
| 66-73CE | First War (‘The Great revolt’) |
| 115-117CE | Second War (Kitos War) |
| 132-136CE | Third War (Bar Kokhba revolt ) |
| Hadrian has Temple o |
Destruction of the city. 70CE
What happened during and after the First Jewish war was pretty dramatic. The War took place between 66-73CE and the city of Jerusalem came under quite a lengthy siege for around 5 months during the middle of that conflict in 70CE.
| The First Jewish-Roman War | Events | |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 66CE | Outbreak of revolt | |
| 14th Apr 70CE | Start of siege | |
| 29th Aug 70CE | Romans breach defences , massacre population | |
| 7th Sept 70CE | Fall of Herod’s palace | |
| 8th Sept 70CE | City entirely under Roman control |
This siege was led by the General and future Emperor Titus who was accompanied by four legions (V Macedonica, XII Fulminata, XV Apollinaris, X Fretensis) along with quite a few auxiliaries and other local allies. It had to be said the Jews did put up a tough fight but the Romans managed to breach the first two walls in the north of the city within three weeks But the third and strongest wall wouldn’t be breached for several months. The city eventually fell and the whole metropolis along with the Second temple on the Temple Mount was entirely razed to the ground as a punitive action. And this was to teach the Jews a lesson as they were proving so troublesome. Much of the loot in the city including what was found in the Second Temple was taken to Rome and paraded around in triumph by Titus and his troops. The Romans also massacred a huge number of the population taking no less than 97,000 Jews as slaves with a lot of these being used as gladiators in Roman arenas. Others were used a slave labour for the construction of the Colosseum and somewhat ironically the Forum of Peace. But the destroyed city would be left in ruins as an example for others thinking of rebelling against Roman rule. ‘The whole of Judaea became desert’ the Roman historian Cassius Dio would write later. Josephus the Jewish ex-General and chronicler of the war and who was present at the siege having switched sides to the Romans earlier during the conflict is the primary source for the information we have on the war. And he also writes a graphic account of the situation prevailing in the city after its fall. The city, he wrote …
’… was so thoroughly razed to the ground by those that demolished it to its foundations, that nothing was left that could ever persuade visitors that it had once been a place of habitation.’
Hadrian orders the building of Aelia Capitolina
So that pretty much the way things would stay for the next 60 years odd till the year 130CE. And that was the year that the Emperor at that time Hadrian decided to build a new city at the same location. Hadrian had come to power in 117CE and was a pretty dynamic character travelling around the empire personally and overseeing construction projects. But this wouldn’t be a Jewish city in character anymore but a specifically much more Greco-Roman affair. And he called the new city Aelia Capitolina. The name Aelia was derived from Hadrian’s family name – Aelius. Capitolina was a nod to the Capitoline hill and the Temple dedicated to Jupiter on the site. Several important temples were built in the new city during its construction . A temple of Jupiter now stood in the prominent place where the Jewish Second Temple had been on the Temple Mount along with large statues of Jupiter and of Hadrian himself.
And Hadrian would also build a magnificent temple to Venus or Aphrodite in the city as well. Venus happened to be the family deity of Hadrians’s family and therefore he had a personal interest in the goddess. And Aphrodite also happened to be a special favourite goddess of the 10th legion that was now garrisoning the new city. So it made perfect sense to have a temple sacred to this particular goddess situated in the city. Unfortunately we don’t really have any eye witness accounts of what the Temple of Venus looked like, the structure and its dimensions and so on. We do know there was also a temple dedicated to the god Asclepius. And the new city was well laid out in Roman fashion with two wide streets running from north to south as well as others running east to west. So the new city quickly came to life but it was also effectively a military colony and what dominated the metropolis at the time was the large military camp of the garrison – the 10th Legion – stationed in the south of the city.
Christians accuse Hadrian of erecting temples to demons
Later Christian sources would blame Hadrian for building the Temple of Venus on the site of what they said was the tomb of Jesus. He had they said deliberately built the Temple on the site to bury the remains of the cave where Jesus had been buried. However Hadrian had never showed any great animus towards Christians or had never persecuted them so this seems a little far fetched. And it’s important to remember Jerusalem had never been a pilgrimage destination for Christians at that time anyway. But let’s go through several of these accusations by the various Christian authors and chroniclers as they are interesting glimpses into the way they perceived things.
Eusebius the Bishop of nearby Caeseria Maritima in his book Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine) mentions the temple of Aphrodite that formerly occupied the site where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built but curiously fails to mention the statue of Jupiter or a Capitolium. He leaves the most colourful account of proceedings attacking both Hadrian and the Roman authorities of the time.
’Once upon a time wicked men – or rather the whole tribe of demons through them-had striven to consign to darkness and oblivion that divine monument to immortality, at which, brilliant with light, the angel who had descended from heaven had rolled away the stone of those whose minds were set like stone in their assumption that the Living One was still with the dead, when he announced the good news to the women and removed the stone of disbelief from their minds by the information that the one they sought was alive. It was this very cave of the Saviour that some godless and wicked people had planned to make invisible to mankind, thinking in their stupidity that they could in this way hide the truth.’
And then he describes the building of the Temple of Aphrodite on the site in equally colourful fashion.
’Indeed with a great expenditure of effort they brought earth from somewhere outside and covered up the whole place, then levelled it, paved it, and so hid the divine cave somewhere down beneath a great quantity of soil. Then as though they had everything finished, above the ground they constructed a terrible and truly genuine tomb, one for souls, for dead idols, and built a gloomy sanctuary to the impure demon of Aphrodite; then they offered foul sacrifices there upon defiled and polluted altars. They reckoned there was one way alone and no other to bring their desires to realization and that was to bury the Saviour’s cave under such foul pollutions.’
St. Jerome the 4th/early 5th century theologian mentions the temple of Jupiter standing on the Temple Mount and a marble statue of Venus on the rock where the crucifixion took place
’Where once was the temple and the reverence of God, there is a statue of Hadrian, and an image of Jupiter has been erected.’
And the construction of the temples is mentioned by Sulpicius Severus, a Christian Roman writing around 403CE. And in his summary of the reign of Hadrian, Severus refers briefly to the suppression of the Jewish revolt putting a heavily pro-christian tint on matters.
’At that time, Hadrian, thinking that he would destroy the Christian faith by causing injury to the place, erected statues of demons in both the Temple and in the place of the Lord’s passion’.
And other writers also mention these temples in brief for example Origen the second century Christina theologian mentions the statues of Hadrian and Gaius (or Titus) on the former site of the Temple and tries to relate that to Daniel’s “Abomination of Desolation”.
But I’ll leave the last word to Cassius Dio, the pagan Roman historian who records the actions of Hadrian in reviving the city and the events that followed.
’At Jerusalem Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there’.
The building of this temple and the fact that it was built on the same site as the Second Temple – the holy of holies of the Jews – was pretty much the reason for the war. If the Jews weren’t upset already with Roman domination and taxes they certainly didn’t like the idea of pagan temples in the city of Jerusalem even though Jerusalem technically didn’t exist anymore. However the Jews would lose this war as well and to put an end to matters, Hadrian would entirely eliminate the whole province of Judea renaming it Syria-Palestina to ensure it lost its ties with Judaism. Jews were also banned from living in Jerusalem after the third war. However there is evidence to suggest this didn’t last long and they seemed to have returned to the province by the time of the Byzantine period.
Constantine and Jerusalem
So lets fast forward 200 years to the reign of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor. It was in the year 324CE that Constantine officially renamed the city back to Jerusalem. And to raise the presence of the city he would decide to get rid of the Temple of Venus and build his church of the holy Sepulchre at exactly the same spot. Eusebeius mentions this decision in the Life of Constantine.
‘Such was the situation when another memorable work of great importance was done in the province of Palestine by the God beloved. It was this. He decided that he ought to make universally famous and revered the most blessed site in Jerusalem of the Saviour’s resurrection. So at once he gave orders for a place of worship to be constructed, conceiving this idea not without God, but with his spirit moved by the Saviour himself.’
So orders for the pulling down of the Temple of Venus were issued around the year 326CE. Eusebius mentions that the ruins of the temple were entirely rejected being pagan.
‘Possessed therefore by the divine Spirit he did not negligently allow that place which has been described to remain smothered by all sorts of filthy rubbish through the machination of enemies consigned to oblivion and ignorance, nor did he yield to the malice of the guilty; but calling upon God to be his collaborator, he ordered it to be cleared, thinking that the very space which enemies had sullied should especially benefit from the great work being done through him by the All-good. At a word of command those contrivances of fraud were demolished from top to bottom, and the houses of error were dismantled and destroyed along with their idols and demons. His efforts however did not stop there, but the Emperor gave further orders that all the rubble of stones and timbers from the demolitions should be taken and dumped a long way from the site. This command also was soon effected. But not even this progress was by itself enough, but under divine inspiration once more the Emperor gave instructions that the site should be excavated to a great depth and the pavement should be carried away with the rubble a long distance outside, because it was stained with demonic bloodshed. This also was completed straightaway.’
So the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was straightaway built on the ruins of the temple. And Eusebius quotes the letter Constantine would write to the Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem giving him carte blanche to effectively to spend as much as he wished with the imperial treasury at his disposal.
‘The thing therefore which I consider clear to everybody is what I want you in particular to believe, namely that above all else my concern is that that sacred place, which at God’s command I have now relieved of the hideous burden of an idol which lay on it like a weight, hallowed from the start by God’s decree, and now proved yet holier since it brought to light the pledge of the Saviour’s passion, should be adorned by us with beautiful buildings.’
The new Church was dedicated on 13 September 335CE and this meant that Jerusalem now rapidly became a centre for pilgrimage for Christians. And this was something new. For during the first , second and third centuries Jerusalem had no great attachment for Christians and was never a place to travel to. On a side note, on building the church they conveniently found a tomb underneath. Now that would have been no surprise as there must have been numerous tombs and caves in and around Jerusalem but this particular cave was happily assumed to have have been Jesus’ burial place despite no real evidence to suggest this.
Contemporary accounts of Aelia Capitolina
And this construction of the Church meant we do have some contemporary or near contemporary accounts still existing of Jerusalem or Aelia Capitolina as it was still called then although with the Empire now Christian under Constantine, the old name of Jerusalem was now resurfacing. However unfortunately these visitors were Christians and therefore had no interest in the pagan temples or even of writing about them except perhaps as a minor anecdote from a greater description of Christian Jerusalem.
The very earliest witness is known as ’The Bordeaux pilgrim’, and he or she was an early Christian traveller from Europe who went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 333CE – in other words during the reign of Constantine. The journal kept by the Bordeaux Pilgrim is known as the Itinerarium Burdigalense – or the Burgundy Itinerary in English. By the time the Bordeaux pilgrim reached Jerusalem the Temple no longer existed and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was in the stage of being built since it was consecrated in 336. But the pilgrim interestingly does mention the existence of Roman statues on the Temple Mount.
’There are two statues of Hadrian, and not far from the statues there is a perforated stone, to which the Jews come every year and anoint it, bewail themselves with groans, rend their garments, and so depart.’
Now the pilgrim probably made a mistake as its thought the second statue was in all probability that of Antoninus Pius, a statue that was erected somewhat later than the one of Hadrian. But interestingly he or she does mention the Wailing Wall or what we call the Wailing Wall now which is what’s left of the retaining wall that surrounded the Temple Mount. So even during those times the Jews had turned this into a place of prayer and pilgrimage mourning the loss of the Temple.
The Bordeaux pilgrim’s account is fairly brief unfortunately but around fifty years after that, sometime around 381 to 384CE we have another account of Jerusalem from another pilgrim, another woman, who seems to be of high station and wealthy and who has actually written one of the best accounts of early Christian Jerusalem. And that was a women called Egeria or Etheria and you can read her very interesting account in ‘The pilgrimage of Egeria’ in which she describes her journeys to Jerusalem and surrounding areas. Egeria travelled across the Mediterranean to Egypt, through Sinai visiting the various monasteries and sites before going to Palestine. She doesn’t mention the Temple of Venus of course as that was now history but neither does she mention the temple of Jupiter on the Temple Mount either. However interestingly she calls Jerusalem by the name Aelia suggesting that name was still in currency even by the late 4th century.
’We set out from Tatnis and, walking along the route that was already known to me, I came to Pelusium. Thence I set out again, and journeying through all those stations in Egypt through which we had travelled before, I arrived at the boundary of Palestine. Thence in the Name of Christ our God I passed through several stations in Palestine and returned to Aelia, that is Jerusalem’.
Egeria does go into pretty heavy detail on describing the various churches and their services and liturgies in Jerusalem and other areas. So definitely worth a read if you want to read what Jerusalem was like in the 4th century.
A few years later, Saint Jerome writing in 398CE does mention that an equestrian statue of Emperor Hadrian was still standing on the Temple Mount but he does not mention the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. And we have to presume it was pulled down by the Christians by this time as well.
’So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation: or to the statue of the mounted Hadrian, which stands to this very day on the site of the Holy of Holies’
Now the general consensus is that either the Christians destroyed these statues of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius shortly after that as the city became a Christian stronghold. Or on the chance that the statue and temple of Jupiter still existed even in ruins then the Jews in AD 614 must have destroyed it during the Byzantine/Persian War when the city was captured by the Persians for a short period and who gave over control of the city to the Jews. And if by any chance the ruins of either the temple of the statues still existed they would have been destroyed by the Muslim Arabs who conquered the city in AD 638. And on the Temple Mount the Muslims would build the Dome of the Rock mosque in the later 7th Century. So this successive razing to the ground by the Christians, then Jews and then Muslims means any trace of these structure has pretty much vanished.
The other important temple in Jerusalem was the north of the Temple Mount and that was the temple of Asclepius. But with the banning of worship at pagan temples during the 4th century this temple was also closed down and began falling into ruin. We do know the ruins were knocked down and a Byzantine basilica was built over its foundations in the 5th Century. And that pretty much completed the removal of temples in the city and the Christianisation of what was first an entirely Jewish and then a pagan city.
Aftermath
Somewhat ironically for a holy place, Jerusalem has one of the more sadder and unhappier histories of any major Christian centre. There have been various fires, riots and earthquakes throughout the centuries. Most importantly there has been a lot of bloodshed, violence and wars in that area as well. And the Church of the Holy Sepulchre especially hasn’t had a very fortunate history. The city was captured in 614CE by the Persians during the Byzantine/Persian war and in the resulting fire in the city the church was completely destroyed. However it didn’t stay in Persian hands too long and the city was recaptured by the Byzantines in 629 by the Emperor Heraclius. The church was rebuilt between 616 and 626CE. But this recapture wouldn’t last long either. Byzantine Jerusalem was conquered by the Arab armies in AD 638, bringing about an end to Christian control of the city for nearly five hundred years till the first crusade.
Interestingly the Arabs renamed it to its former name calling it ‘Illiya’ a corruption of Aelia Capitolina. The Temple Mount was now named Madinat bayt al-Maqdis – meaning ‘City of the Temple’.
And we do have some accounts of the Temple Mount where the Arabs were busy demolishing what was left of the Temple of Jupiter and the statues and constructing what would be the precursor to the Al-Aqsa mosque that exist there now today. This early mosque was built we know during the time of Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem during the city’s capture. Another chronicler Anastasius of Sinai writes that around 660CE he saw Egyptian workers clearing the Temple Mount presumably in preparation for building the mosque. The debris from the clearing up – presumably some of the statues and temple was thrown he says into the Kidron valley adjacent to the Temple Mount .
Meanwhile the church of the holy sepulchre from 746 to 1009 went through a series of more misfortunes before being demolished by the caliph al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah in 1009. It was then rebuilt by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Monomachus in 1048 shortly before the Crusades. And the Crusaders after they conquered the city would do some extensive rebuilding as well on the on the existing building
And that’s it for the short history of pagan Jerusalem which lasted from 130CE to 324CE. So if you’re visiting the city and naturally visit the Church of the holy Sepulchre be sure to remember there was a temple of Aphrodite there in the first place and similarly on the Temple Mount that there was a Temple of Jupiter standing on the hill. And of course modern research and archaeology may have uncovered more information about these structures by now so do look into that .
