Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Books XI–XX

the temple.]

[Whiston / edition note] 24 (return) [ "Into none Of these three did king Herod enter," i.e. 1. Not into the court of the priests; 2. Nor into the holy house itself; 3. Nor into the separate place belonging to the altar, as the words following imply; for none but priests, or their attendants the Levites, might come into any of them. See Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 4. sect. 6, when Herod goes into the temple, and makes a speech in it to the people, but that could only be into the court of Israel, whither the people could come to hear him.]

[Whiston / edition note] 25 (return) [ This tradition which Josephus here mentions, as delivered down from fathers to their children, of this particular remarkable circumstance relating to the building of Herod's temple, is a demonstration that such its building was a known thing in Judea at this time. He was born about forty-six years after it is related to have been finished, and might himself have seen and spoken with some of the builders themselves, and with a great number of those that had seen it building.

The doubt therefore about the truth of this history of the pulling down and rebuilding this temple by Herod, which some weak people have indulged, was not then much greater than it soon may be, whether or not our St. Paul's church in London was burnt down in the fire of London, A.D. 1666, and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren a little afterward.]