NESW

Herod's TempleBetaJerusalem · c. 30 CE

Handout
Click anything to read it · drag to orbit, scroll to zoom · Walk in: drag to look, ← → to turn, WASD to move, Shift to run

Herod's Temple Beta

Prepared by Taylor Halverson, Ph.D.

An explorable reconstruction of the Temple Mount as it stood in the time of Christ, c. 30 CE — the platform and its walls, the outer court and porticoes, the Court of the Women, the Court of Israel, the altar and laver, the sanctuary, the veil, and the Holy of Holies with the Foundation Stone within it.

Every location is annotated from the King James New Testament, Josephus, the Mishnah and the Talmud, with notes where the sources disagree. Forty-three locations, one hundred sixty-two passages.

Beta

A work in progress. The reconstruction follows the majority reading of the sources; dimensions, decoration and the lines of the city walls remain debated. Where the sources conflict, the model shows the majority reconstruction and the location's note records the dissent rather than quietly settling it.

On the measurements

Dimensions come from the Mishnah's tractate Middot, with the cubit taken at 0.5 m — a round figure within the range scholars propose — and cross-checked against Josephus. Small differences of a cubit or two are inside the margin of the sources themselves.

© 2026 Taylor Halverson. All rights reserved.

The temple stands in the middle and everything else is a way of asking a question about it. Click any structure to read it.

Moving around

  • Orbit surveys the whole site from above: drag to turn, scroll to zoom. The compass keeps you oriented — the facade genuinely faces the rising sun.
  • Walk in puts you on the ground: WASD to move, drag or ← → to look, Shift to run. On a phone a drive pad appears at the corner.
  • All 43 places lists every annotated location; ‹ Prev and Next › step through them in order, and Esc closes whatever is open.

Seeing inside

  • Roofs and Cutaway lift the porticoes and open the sanctuary so the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies can be seen from outside.
  • Labels pins the names to the model; City adds Jerusalem around the mount — Olivet, Siloam, Golgotha, Hinnom — and can be turned off on a slower device.
  • Plan shows a small schematic of the precinct, north up, with a wedge marking where you stand and which way you face — useful when the courts start to look alike.
  • Morning cycles the hour: dawn, morning, noon, dusk. The light is the same light the pilgrims climbed in.

Reading and teaching

  • Each panel carries the KJV passages for that place, a scholarly note, its sources, and “where the sources differ.”
  • Begin runs a guided sequence — the full tour, the Day of Atonement, a Passover pilgrimage, or Into greater light, which climbs the gradient of access from the open outer court to the Holy of Holies — visiting the places in the order the day required.
  • Handout opens the whole study guide, all 43 locations and 162 passages, ready to print or save as PDF.
  • Copy link gives a link straight to one place, in orbit or on foot, to paste into a lesson.

Sources

  • Dimensions and courts: Mishnah Middot, with Tamid, Yoma and Talmudic material for the service.
  • Elevations, porticoes and the fabric of the building: Josephus, Jewish War and Antiquities.
  • Scripture quoted from the King James Version.

Taylor Halverson, Ph.D.

Author · Teacher · Tour leader · Scripture scholar

Taylor Halverson is a scholar of scripture and a teacher of learners — an entrepreneurship professor in the BYU Marriott School of Business who spends his working life helping people find and act on the best ideas and tools available to them.

He is the author and editor of more than fifty books and nearly a thousand articles and blog posts, and a builder of scripture study resources: the ScripturePlus app with Scripture Central, whose scripture YouTube channel he co-hosted to more than fifty million views, and BYU's Virtual Scripture Group, whose team spent more than five years reconstructing New Testament Jerusalem in three dimensions. This reconstruction of Herod's Temple belongs to that same body of work — tools made so that ordinary readers can see what specialists see.

He leads tours to Israel and the Middle East, China, India, Central America, Europe, and the national parks of the American West, where he unfolds how geology, geography, civilization, and scriptural texts created our beautiful present day.

Academic training

  • Ph.D., Judaism & Christianity in Antiquity — Indiana University
  • Ph.D., Instructional Systems Technology — Indiana University
  • M.A., Biblical Studies — Yale University
  • B.A., Ancient Near Eastern Studies — Brigham Young University

Two doctorates in two separate fields — the ancient world, and the design of learning. Both of them are in this model.

Elsewhere

insights.taylorhalverson.com books.taylorhalverson.com exodustours.com
Study handout — 43 locations, 162 passages or press Esc

Herod's Temple

Jerusalem · c. 30 CE

Prepared by Taylor Halverson, Ph.D. · Beta

This reconstruction needs 3D graphics

The temple is drawn live in three dimensions, which asks your browser for hardware graphics (WebGL). This device or browser has it switched off or unavailable — often the case on older phones, or on managed computers where graphics acceleration is disabled.

Try a current version of Chrome, Safari, Edge or Firefox with hardware acceleration enabled. In the meantime, the whole commentary is readable as text:

Open the study handout — 43 locations, 162 King James passages ›

Raising the House…Building the Temple Mount