Herod ‘the Great’, a Roman puppet king – who built the second temple to honour his ego, and not Jewish traditions – towards the end of his life (d.4 AD) carried out a symbolic act to actually mock the Jews and their religious laws while saluting his Roman patrons. He hung a large golden eagle at the main gate leading to the Temple!
This enraged his Jewish subjects so much, that a plot was concocted to take down the offending statue. When Herod found out about the plan, he went berserk and had the traitors burned alive, in order to teach his Jewish subjects a lesson.
By the way, Herod, the so-called ‘King of the Jews’, was an Arab on both his maternal and paternal side.
Following the Jewish Revolt of 66-70AD, Jerusalem was burnt, the city walls razed to the ground and ‘Herod’s temple totally destroyed. No walls were left standing, including the so-called western or ‘wailing’ wall.
The Western Wall was not ‘miraculously’ left standing.
The foundation stones were Herodian, but part of the wall that is visible today was erected first by a Christian ruler, then added onto by an Islamic ruler and finally an Ottoman (Turkish) Islamic ruler.
Fascinating! Jews of all religious persuasions – and none – go to pray at a wall, whose foundations were built by an Arab, and then added-on to and re-built by Christian and Islamic rulers over the centuries.
A truly cosmopolitan site indeed.
Summer 2025 came across this: The Wailing Wall is actually the remains of a Roman fortress called “Fort Antonia” built north of the actual Temple where no protruding rock ever existed but rather was built upon the Gihon Spring.
The rock upon which the Dome of the Rock was built adjoining the Western Wall was actually the centre-piece around which Fort Antonia was built.
Thus, there’s nothing sacred about this rock or this Wall.
This is attested to by the eyewitness, Jewish historian Josephus, who also wrote in his “Jewish Wars” that the Romans left nothing above or below ground of the Second Temple so that one coming to Jerusalem thereafter would never believe a Temple ever existed.
According to Josephus, Titus, the Roman General who razed Jerusalem to the ground in 70 AD, allowed Fort Antonia to remain to house the Tenth Legion left to monitor Roman affairs in Jerusalem.
The Wailing Wall as a Jewish holy place is a modern invention that was selected for Jewish worship by one of the greatest mystics of the Kabbalistic age. His name was Isaac Luria, who in his many geographical mistakes, selected the Western Wall as a holy place for the Jews to assemble – a mere 430 years ago.
In actual fact, the Jewish people today at their Wailing Wall are not praying at a wall of their former Temples. They are actually praying toward the western wall of Fort Antonia.
The shrine on the other side of the Wailing Wall in the time of Jesus was not the Temple built by Herod, but it was a Roman Temple dedicated to the Roman Emperor and the Gods of Rome. Ernest Martin … GET THE BOOK. A MUST READ.