Adler may not address the Second Temple: he certainly doesn't have a chapter on it: see the Table of Contents. It's probably beyond his scope.
Wikipedia says:
The accession of Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire in 559 BCE made the re-establishment of the city of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple possible.[3][4] Some rudimentary ritual sacrifice had continued at the site of the first temple following its destruction.[5] According to the closing verses of the second book of Chronicles and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, when Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem following a decree from Cyrus the Great (Ezra 1:1–4, 2 Chronicles 36:22-23), construction started at the original site of the altar of Solomon's Temple.[1] These events represent the final section in the 'historical' narrative of the Hebrew Bible.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Te ... _narrative
1. Schiffman, Lawrence H. (2003). Understanding Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. New York: KTAV Publishing House. pp.48–49.
2. Ezra 6:15,16
3. Albright, William (1963). The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra: An Historical Survey. HarperCollins College Division.
4. Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Temple, The Second," The Jewish Encyclopedia.* New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
5. Zevit, Ziony (2008) "From Judaism to Biblical Religion and Back Again," The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NY Univ. Press. p.166.
* The Jewish Encyclopaedia also has:
- The Temple of Herod : https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles ... e-of-herod
- Temple, Plan of Second : https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles ... -of-second
Wikipedia notes that, following its conquest by Alexander the Great, Judea became part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt until 200 BCE, and then part of the Seleucid empire (when Antiochus III the Great of Syria defeated Pharaoh Ptolemy V Epiphanes at the Battle of Paneion).
Rededication by the Maccabees
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... Following the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid empire, the Second Temple was rededicated and became the religious pillar of the Jewish Hasmonean Kingdom; as well as culturally associated with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.[24][25]
Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes launched a massive campaign of repression against the Jewish religion in 168 BCE. The reason he did so is not entirely clear, but it seems to have been related to the King mistaking an internal conflict among the Jewish priesthood as a full-scale rebellion. Jewish practices were banned, Jerusalem was placed under direct Seleucid control, and the Second Temple in Jerusalem was made the site of a syncretic Pagan-Jewish cult. This repression triggered exactly the revolt that Antiochus IV had feared ...
... The main phase of the revolt lasted from 167–160 BCE and ended with the Seleucids in control of Judea, but conflict between the Maccabees, Hellenized Jews, and the Seleucids continued until 134 BCE, with the Maccabees eventually attaining independence.
... In 164 BCE, the Maccabees captured Jerusalem, a significant early victory. The subsequent cleansing of the temple and rededication of the altar on 25 Kislev is the source of the festival of Hanukkah. The Seleucids eventually relented and unbanned Judaism, but the more radical Maccabees, not content with merely reestablishing Jewish practices under Seleucid rule, continued to fight, pushing for a more direct break with the Seleucids ...
... [later] [after] the conflict ceased...Hyrcanus and Antiochus VII joined themselves in an alliance, with Antiochus making a respectful donation of a sacrifice at the Temple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabean_Revolt [see also the excerpt about Daniel and related works in the second post below]
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24. Kaufmann, Kohler (1901–1906) "Ḥanukkah," in Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
25. Goldman, Ari L. (2000) Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today. Simon & Schuster. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-684-82389-8.
Hasmonean dynasty and Roman conquest
There is some evidence from archaeology that further changes to the structure of the Temple and its surroundings were made during the Hasmonean rule ... The Roman general Pompey, who was in Syria..., sent his lieutenant to investigate the [Hasmonean] conflict in Judaea ...
The Romans besieged and took the city in 63 BCE. The priests continued with the religious practices inside the Temple during the siege. The temple was not looted or harmed by the Romans. Pompey himself, perhaps inadvertently, went into the Holy of Holies and the next day ordered the priests to repurify the Temple and resume the religious practices.
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(not much info here on "further changes to the structure of the Temple and its surroundings")
Herod's Temple
The writings of Flavius Josephus and the information in tractate Middot of the Mishnah had for long been used for proposing possible architectures for the Temple up to 70 CE.[1] The discovery of the Temple Scroll as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 20th century provided another possible source. Lawrence Schiffman states that, after studying Josephus and the Temple Scroll, he found Josephus to be historically more reliable than the Temple Scroll.[27]
Temenos expansion, date and duration
Reconstruction of the temple under Herod began with a massive expansion of the Temple Mount temenos [Greek: τέμενος: land assigned as an official domain]. For example, the Temple Mount complex initially measured 7 hectares (17 acres) in size, but Herod expanded it to 14.4 hectares (36 acres) and so doubled its area.[28] Herod's work on the Temple is generally dated from 20/19 BCE until 12/11 or 10 BCE. Writer Bieke Mahieu dates the work on the Temple enclosures from 25 BCE and that on the Temple building in 19 BCE, and situates the dedication of both in November 18 BCE.[29]
Religious worship and temple rituals continued during the construction process.[30]
Extent and financing
The old temple built by Zerubbabel was replaced by a magnificent edifice. Herod's Temple was one of the larger construction projects of the 1st century BCE.[31] Josephus records that Herod was interested in perpetuating his name through building projects, that his construction programs were extensive and paid for by heavy taxes, [and] that his masterpiece was the Temple of Jerusalem [Jewish War].
Later, the sanctuary shekel was reinstituted to support the temple as the temple tax.[32]
Elements
Platform, substructures, retaining walls
Mt. Moriah had a plateau at the northern end, and steeply declined on the southern slope. It was Herod's plan that the entire mountain be turned into a giant square platform. The Temple Mount was originally intended[by whom?] to be 1,600 feet (490 m) wide by 900 feet (270 m) broad by 9 stories high, with walls up to 16 feet (4.9 m) thick, but had never been finished. To complete it, a trench was dug around the mountain, and huge stone "bricks" were laid. Some of these weighed well over 100 tons, the largest measuring 44.6 by 11 by 16.5 feet (13.6 m × 3.4 m × 5.0 m) and weighing approximately 567-628 tons.[33][unreliable source?]
Court of the Gentiles
The Court of the Gentiles was primarily a bazaar, with vendors selling souvenirs, sacrificial animals, food. Currency was also exchanged, with Roman currency exchanged for Tyrian money, as also mentioned in the New Testament account of Jesus and the Money Changers, when Jerusalem was packed with Jewish pilgrims who had come for Passover ...
Above the Huldah Gates, on top the Temple walls, was the Royal Stoa, a large basilica praised by Josephus as "more worthy of mention than any other [structure] under the sun"; its main part was a lengthy Hall of Columns which includes 162 columns, structured in four rows.[36]
The Royal Stoa is widely accepted to be part of Herod's work; however, recent archaeological finds in the Western Wall tunnels suggest that it was built in the first century during the reign of Agripas, as opposed to the 1st century BCE.[37]
Inner courts
According to Josephus, there were ten entrances into the inner courts, four on the south, four on the north, one on the east and one leading east to west from the Court of Women to the court of the Israelites, named the Nicanor Gate [War 5.5.2; 198; m. Mid. 1.4]. According to Josephus, Herod the Great erected a golden eagle over the great gate of the Temple.[43]
Roofs
Joachim Bouflet [fr] states that "the teams of archaeologists Nahman Avigad in 1969-1980 in the Herodian city of Jerusalem, and Yigael Shiloh in 1978-1982, in the city of David" have proven that the roofs of the Second Temple had no dome. In this, they support Josephus' description of the Second Temple.[44]
Pinnacle
The accounts of the temptation of Christ in the gospels of Matthew and Luke both suggest that the Second Temple had one or more 'pinnacles':
"Then he [Satan] brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here'."[38]
The Greek word used is πτερύγιον (pterugion), which literally means a tower, rampart, or pinnacle.[39] According to Strong's Concordance, it can mean little wing, or by extension anything like a wing such as a battlement or parapet.[40] The archaeologist Benjamin Mazar thought it referred to the southeast corner of the Temple overlooking the Kidron Valley.[41]
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple#Archaeology and, as presented above:
- The Temple of Herod : https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles ... e-of-herod
- Temple, Plan of Second : https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles ... -of-second
So, what to make of this preliminary history?
Of the reliance on biblical narratives for the early—and even most of—the history of the Second Temple?