event · E0007

Building of the Second Temple בניין בית שני

Delayed for years by hostile neighbors and imperial politics, the Second Temple was finally completed on the third of Adar in the sixth year of Daryavesh — seventy years, on the traditional count, after the First Temple burned. It was a smaller, poorer house, raised by a remnant; but around it the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah rebuilt the mesorah itself, and this atlas's eras turn on this exact year.

I. Who

Hebrew
בניין בית שני
Also known as
Beit HaMikdash HaSheni completed
Era
second-temple

II. When

Traditional
3 Adar, 3408 AM (353 BCE by traditional reckoning)
Academic
516 BCE
Date range
353 BCE (traditional) / 516 BCE (academic)
Precision
exact

III. Where

Places
Jerusalem

V. How do we know

ClaimEvidenceConfidenceSources
"And this house was completed on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Daryavesh the king."
Confidence is for what the biblical text states; the verse gives the day itself.
biblical ★★★★★
The traditional date, 3408 AM, is exactly seventy years after the churban of 3338 — the closing of Yirmiyahu's seventy years counted from destruction to rebuilding — and it is precisely the atlas's era boundary: the era of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah begins at 3408 in data/eras.yaml.
Academic dating is 516 BCE (sixth year of Darius I); the traditional arithmetic equivalent (353 BCE) differs by the Persian-period seam stated at Destruction of the First Temple.
tradition reconstruction ★★★☆☆

Referenced by: Galut Bavel