For the Temple: a Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem

For the Jewish people the fall of Jerusalem was a disaster.  Following the destruction of the Temple, and their defeat in the second century Bar Kokhba revolt, they became a people without a home.  Dispersed all over the world, their religion changed from one based on a central authority in Jerusalem, to one which was dependent on the authority of individual community-based rabbis. 

The destruction of Jerusalem also had a major impact on the development of Christianity.  Originally Christianity took two major forms, a Jewish version and one based on the teachings of St. Paul.  With the Roman destruction of Judea, and the dispersion of the Jews, the Paulinian form was the only one left standing. One can only speculate what both Christianity and Judaism would look like today if Jerusalem had not been destroyed. 

In For the Temple, a young Jewish boy is swept up in the events surrounding the Roman invasion.  From guerrilla leader, to a defender of Jerusalem, to being a slave in Alexandria, he experiences the horror and frustration of fighting a hopeless war.  He soon comes in contact with a Jewish religious group called the Essenes, who lived a reclusive life of severe self-denial.  From them he hears of a Jewish teacher who was crucified only a few years earlier, and that story changes his life.