Join­ing a long list of works on the Tem­ple, Lundquist’s The Tem­ple of Jerusalem attempts to fill a void by giv­ing a com­pre­hen­sive account of every­thing we cer­tain­ly know, and much that can­not ever be known about the most famous build­ing in his­to­ry. The writer strikes a con­fi­dent tone and gives con­vinc­ing detail about the archi­tec­ture, pur­pos­es, rit­u­als, and sym­bol­ic inten­tions of this revered struc­ture and pro­vides a wealth of use­ful and inter­est­ing his­to­ry. How­ev­er, its dense recount­ing of facts elides a bit too smooth­ly into inter­pre­ta­tion, and this mat­ter- of-fact­ness robs many of the ideas of their boldness.