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[Above: Subterranean fires defeat Julian's effort to rebuild the temple—James Dabney McCabe, The Pictorial History of the World, 1877 / public domain, Wikimedia]

A DIVINE INTERVENTION from the fourth century was well-attested by Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan historian. Three contemporary church fathers (Gregory Nazianzus, Chrysostom, and Ambrose) also wrote about it as did subsequent church historians.

Julian the Apostate hated Christianity and sought to restore paganism to the Roman Empire. Knowing it would discomfit Christians, he promised to rebuild the Jewish temple. A widespread Christian belief at the time was that the Bible promised the temple would never be restored. Therefore, Cyril of Jerusalem is said to have predicted the attempt would result in failure. God could not let the work prosper without discredit to his word. Whatever one thinks of this particular interpretation of prophecy, as it turned out, when work on the temple foundation began on this day, 19 May 363, unusual natural phenomena brought the project to a halt. Julian died a few months later during his Persian expedition and the work never resumed.

Here is Marcellinus’s barebones account.

 [Julian] having an eye in every quarter, and being desirous to eternize his reign by the greatness of his achievements, he projected to rebuild, at an immense expense, the proud and magnificent Temple of Jerusalem; which, (after many combats, attended with much bloodshed on both sides, during the siege by Vespasian) was, with great difficulty, taken and destroyed by Titus. He committed the conduct of this affair to Alypius of Antioch, who formerly had been Lieutenant in Britain. When, therefore, this Alypius had set himself to the vigorous execution of his charge, in which he had all the assistance that the governor of the province could afford him, horrible balls of fire, breaking out near the foundations, with frequent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place, from time to time, inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen; and the victorious element continuing, in this manner, obstinately and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, Alypius thought best to give over the enterprise.

Detailed accounts by Christians noted that a tempest and earthquake preceded the balls of fire, which they attributed to eruptions, but which may have been ball lightening. Workmen, attempting to escape, fled to a nearby church, but the doors closed, presumably from the press of the frightened mob against them. Metal tools melted. Spots appeared on garments, likely a phosphorescent residue, grey under sunshine, but glowing at night.

Many pagans became Christians because of these miraculous events. In the terror of the moment, Jews were at first inclined to credit Christ, but later they explained the project’s failure as God’s anger because they had introduced pagan involvement in the construction of the holy temple. God, they said, had not allowed David (a man after his own heart) to build the first temple, because of his warrior past, how much less the godless Julian and his agent Alypius.

If not by divine intervention, it is hard to explain the perfect timing and rout of the project in a city that does not experience volcanic activity. Rev. Warburton gathered and harmonized all of the known accounts and published the evidence in 1751.

—Dan Graves

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Two documentaries describe earlier forms of the Jerusalem temple. Solomon's Temple (destroyed in 586 B. C.) and Herod's Temple: The Temple Jesus Knew. Watch at RedeemTV.

You can purchase Solomon's Temple and Herod's Temple at Vision Video.

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Other Events on this Day

• Alcuin the Educator Was a Friend of a Great Emperor
• ANNE BOLEYN IN HAUGHTY PROSPERITY AND IN HARSH ADVERSITY

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