1. The Temple at Jerusalem, built by Herod, around the time of Jesus.

3. King Herod became king when Jerusalem was captured in 37 BC
King Herod became king when Jerusalem was captured in 37 BC. Midway in his reign, he launched the project of rebuilding the temple on a grander scale. The building started in BC. The temple itself, was finished in a year and a half, but it took 8 years to complete the courts and cloisters. Herod died in 4 B.C., so Jesus could not have been born after 4 B.C. ! The total work of rebuilding was not entirely completed till 64 AD. So, around 30 A.D. Jesus' disciples would have seen the completed temple, some of it nearly fifty years old and it's surroundings, some of which had yet to be completed.
Top - A model showing the view across Jerusalem towards the Temple of Herod the Great. At left is the Antonia Fortress; in the middle of the picture is the palace of the Judean royal family
Bottom - A model of the city in King Herod's time. All available land would have been covered by buildings

4. Temple Mount from the City of David spur

6. The Temple with a pan to the Royal Stoa.

8. Thanks to both the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Urban Simulation Team at UCLA.

10. A reconstruction of the Temple built by Herod the Great and the surrounding city of Jerusalem as it was at the time of the Roman occupation. Built of white marble, covered with heavy plates of gold in front and rising high above its marble-cloistered courts, themselves a succession of terraces, the temple was compared by Josephus to a snow-covered mountain. It was a conspicuous and dazzling object from every side. "Whatever was not overlaid with gold was purest white" (Josephus, Jewish War, ).