zerubbabel initiated the rebuilding of the second temple.
zerubbabel initiated the rebuilding of the second temple.
who initiated the rebuilding of the second temple?
zerubbabel
seven years later, cyrus the great, who allowed the jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple, died () and was succeeded by his son cambyses. on his death, the "false smerdis", an impostor, occupied the throne for some seven or eight months, and then darius became king (522 bce). in the second year of his rule the work of rebuilding the temple was resumed and carried forward to its completion (), under the stimulus of the earnest counsels and admonitions of the prophets haggai and zechariah. it was ready for consecration in the spring of 516 bce, more than twenty years after the return from captivity. the temple was completed on the third day of the month adar, in the sixth year of the reign of darius, amid great rejoicings on the part of all the people (), although it was evident that the jews were no longer an independent people, but were subject to a foreign power. the book of haggai includes a prediction that the glory of the second temple would be greater than that of the first ().
second temple
middot, like tractate tamid, differs from most of the other tractates of the mishna in that it is primarily a descriptive, rather than a halachic (legal) text. maimonides, in his introduction to this tractate, notes that the purpose of this tractate was to elucidate details for the rebuilding of the temple, even though according to jewish tradition, the design of the third temple would be based on the vision of the prophet ezekiel () and differ in some regards from that of the second temple; nonetheless, a description of the second temple is helpful, as the third temple will largely correspond to it and serve as a guide for the rebuilding of the temple when the opportunity should arise. thus, occasionally, the rabbis use ezekiel’s visions of the temple in their own description, even though they were aware that the actual temple did not look exactly as ezekiel described it and on other occasions they even use descriptions of solomon's temple, assuming that the first temple served as guideline for the building of the second temple.
middot (talmud)