Beyond the veils was the Holy of Holies. In Solomon’s original temple it had contained the Ark of the Covenant, a gold-lidded box within which had rested the two stone tablets on which God, according to the Jews, had passed the Law to Moses. Now the small room was empty and dark, and no one remembered when or how the Ark had been lost or whether a conqueror had removed it. Still, the Holy of Holies, into which only the high priest was allowed to enter and that but once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, remained to every Jew of good faith the place where the Presence of God abided.

We were too close to the building to see its summit, but I had read that the Temple’s exterior sloping roof was formed with huge sheets of hammered gold alternated with slabs of pink marble and pure alabaster, studded with thin spikes of gold sharpened to impale any bird crass enough to attempt to leave its droppings on the holy surface. On an immense arch, outside the wall and facing the city proper, Herod had once hung a monstrous golden eagle, but before his death he had suffered the humiliation of seeing his tasteless tribute to Rome pulled down and destroyed.

Joseph was still testing my knowledge. Leaning close to my ear so that he could be heard above the chanting, screaming, laughing humanity that pushed and shoved from all sides, he shouted, “Do you know the name of this courtyard?”

I did know and I told him. This outside court, the Court of the Gentiles, was so spacious that it could hold more than 300,000 visitors as well as countless herds of sacrificial animals. Here, both Jew and non-Jew were allowed, free to intermingle, conduct business, or merely rest in the shade of huge cedar beams, supported by long rows of Corinthian marble columns, some fifteen feet in circumference, that completely surrounded the court along each of four walls of more than a thousand feet in length.

No non-Jew was allowed beyond the Court of the Gentiles into any of the elevated inner courts guarded by stone railings. Signs were posted prominently in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin around the entire ornate balustrade with an explicit warning: Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his death which follows.