[1] After the Neo-Babylonian Empire was annexed by the Achaemenid Empire, the Persian king Cyrus the Great issued the so-called Edict of Cyrus, which is described in the Hebrew Bible as having authorized and encouraged the return to Zion—a biblical event in which the Jewish people returned to the former Kingdom of Judah, which the Persians had recently restructured as the self-governing Jewish province of Yehud Medinata.

The completion of the Second Temple at the time of the Persian king Darius I signified a period of renewed Jewish hope and religious revival.

According to biblical sources, the Second Temple was originally a relatively modest structure built under the authority of the Persian-appointed Jewish governor Zerubbabel, the grandson of Jeconiah, the penultimate king of Judah.

[2] In the 1st century BCE, the Second Temple was refurbished and expanded under the reign of Herod the Great, hence the alternative eponymous name for the structure.

[3] In 70 CE, at the height of the First Jewish–Roman War, the Second Temple was destroyed by the Roman siege of Jerusalem,[a] marking a cataclysmic and transformative point in Jewish history.

[4] The loss of the Second Temple prompted the development of Rabbinic Judaism, which remains the mainstream form of Jewish religious practices globally.

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.

[8] Based on the biblical account, after the return from Babylonian captivity, arrangements were immediately made to reorganize the desolated Yehud Province after the demise of the Kingdom of Judah seventy years earlier.

The body of pilgrims, forming a band of 42,360,[9] having completed the long and dreary journey of some four months, from the banks of the Euphrates to Jerusalem, were animated in all their proceedings by a strong religious impulse, and therefore one of their first concerns was to restore their ancient house of worship by rebuilding their destroyed Temple.

[12][10] The Samaritans wanted to help with this work but Zerubbabel and the elders declined such cooperation, feeling that the Jews must build the Temple unaided.

According to Ezra 4:5, the Samaritans sought to "frustrate their purpose" and sent messengers to Ecbatana and Susa, with the result that the work was suspended.

[10] Seven years later, Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple, died,[13] and was succeeded by his son Cambyses.

In the second year of his rule the work of rebuilding the temple was resumed and carried forward to its completion,[14] under the stimulus of the earnest counsels and admonitions of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.

[10][17] No detailed description of the Temple's architecture is given in the Hebrew Bible, save that it was sixty cubits in both width and height, and was constructed with stone and lumber.

He also, according to Josephus, "compelled Jews to dissolve the laws of the country, to keep their infants un-circumcised, and to sacrifice swine's flesh upon the altar; against which they all opposed themselves, and the most approved among them were put to death.

Salome Alexandra, the queen of the Hasmonean Kingdom appointed her elder son Hyrcanus II as the high priest of Judaea.

The Roman general Pompey, who was in Syria fighting against the Armenians in the Third Mithridatic War, sent his lieutenant to investigate the conflict in Judaea.

[28] The writings of Flavius Josephus and the information in tractate Middot of the Mishnah had for long been used for proposing possible designs for the Temple up to 70 CE.

[33] 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, but that his masterpiece was the Temple of Jerusalem.

[46] Jews from distant parts of the Roman Empire would arrive by boat at the port of Jaffa,[citation needed] where they would join a caravan for the three-day trek to the Holy City and would then find lodgings in one of the many hotels or hostelries.

Josephus, while an apologist for the Empire, claims the burning of the Temple was the impulsive act of a Roman soldier, despite Titus's orders to preserve it, whereas later Christian sources, traced to Tacitus, suggest that Titus himself authorized the destruction, a view currently favored by modern scholars, though the debate persists.

[32] Although Jews continued to inhabit the destroyed city, Emperor Hadrian established a new Roman colonia called Aelia Capitolina.

[55][56] The Midrash Rabba (Eikha Rabba 1:32) recounts a similar episode related to the destruction of the city, according to which Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, requested of Vespasian that he spare the westernmost gates of the city (Hebrew: פילי מערבאה) that lead to Lydda (Lod).

When the city was eventually taken, the Arab auxiliaries who had fought alongside the Romans under their general, Fanjar, also spared that westernmost wall from destruction.

[60] Another ancient inscription, partially preserved on a stone discovered below the southwest corner of the Herodian Mount, contains the words "to the place of trumpeting".

Visitors and pilgrims also entered through the still-extant, but now plugged, gates on the southern side that led through colonnades to the top of the platform.

Archaeologist Ehud Netzer confirmed that the large outlines of the stone cuts is evidence that it was a massive public project worked by hundreds of slaves.

[66] The period between the construction of the Second Temple in 515 BCE and its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE witnessed major historical upheavals and significant religious changes that would affect most subsequent Abrahamic religions.

The origins of the authority of scripture, of the centrality of law and morality in religion, of the synagogue and of apocalyptic expectations for the future all developed in the Judaism of this period.