may dispute superiority with the most finished works of antiquity.[1] A great number of superb tombs, of original taste, were raised at the same time in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.[2] The style of these monuments was Grecian, but appropriate to the customs of the Jews, and considerably modified in accordance with their principles.  The ornamental sculptures of the human figure which the Herods had sanctioned, to the great discontent of the purists, were banished, and replaced by floral decorations.  The taste of the ancient inhabitants of Phoenicia and Palestine for monoliths in solid stone seemed to be revived in these singular tombs cut in the rock, and in which Grecian orders are so strangely applied to an architecture of troglodytes.  Jesus, who regarded works of art as a pompous display of vanity, viewed these monuments with displeasure.[3] His absolute spiritualism, and his settled conviction that the form of the old world was about to pass away, left him no taste except for things of the heart.

[Footnote 1:  Jos., Ant., XV. viii.-xi.; B.J., V. v. 6; Mark xiii. 1, 2.]

[Footnote 2:  Tombs, namely, of the Judges, Kings, Absalom, Zechariah, Jehoshaphat, and of St. James.  Compare the description of the tomb of the Maccabees at Modin (1 Macc. xiii. 27, and following).]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xxiii. 27, 29, xxiv. 1, and following; Mark xiii. 1, and following; Luke xix. 44, xxi. 5, and following.  Compare Book of Enoch, xcvii. 13, 14; Talmud of Babylon, Shabbath, 33 b.]

The temple, at the time of Jesus, was quite new, and the exterior works of it were not completed.  Herod had begun its reconstruction in the year 20 or 21 before the Christian era, in order to make it uniform with his other edifices.  The body of the temple was finished in eighteen months; the porticos took eight years;[1] and the accessory portions were continued slowly, and were only finished a short time before the taking of Jerusalem.[2] Jesus probably saw the work progressing, not without a degree of secret vexation.  These hopes of a long future were like an insult to his approaching advent.  Clearer-sighted than the unbelievers and the fanatics, he foresaw that these superb edifices were destined to endure but for a short time.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Jos., Ant., XV. xi. 5, 6.]

[Footnote 2:  Jos., Ant., XX. ix. 7; John ii. 20.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xxiv. 2, xxvi. 61, xxvii. 40; Mark xiii. 2, xiv. 58, xv. 29; Luke xxi. 6; John ii. 19, 20.]

The temple formed a marvelously imposing whole, of which the present haram,[1] notwithstanding its beauty, scarcely gives us any idea.  The courts and the surrounding porticos served as the daily rendezvous for a considerable number of persons—­so much so, that this great space was at once temple, forum, tribunal, and university.  All the religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical