Some dates in history are simply ludicrous, even beyond the level of "how do they know?". But the almanacs insist, that March 10th 515 BCE was the date on which the Second Temple in Jerusalem was completed; the work, incidentally of one Zeruv-Babel, or Zerubabel, or Zerubavel, or possibly some other spelling or pronunciation altogether (everything known about him can be found here).
And the year may very well be correct - Jewish historians, theologians and commentators argue the matter with great passion, because that is the key dynamic of our culture, but they argue in the narrowness of 522 BCE as the probable starting-date, and 514 BCE as the latest for completion, so this is not importantly schismatic in the way that, say, the debate over whether gefilte fish should be fried or baked has split on denominational lines.
But to get from the year to an actual day, this is where the concept of pilpul takes root (and for the information, pilpul literally means pepper, and pepper is fine on both baked and fried gefilte fish; a carrot, on the other hand… no, I am not even going to allow myself to start on that one).
And anyway, the Yehudim, the people we now think of as the Jews, used a lunar calendar, as the Arab-Moslem world still does, so who knows what date March 10th might have been, and was it an intercalataory leap year, with the entire month of Adar lived through twice?
What I can say for certain, because the Emperor Titus kept a semi-unofficial diary, and it was called "The Writings of Flavius Josephus" (click here to read it), is that the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed on the 9th of Av in the year 70 CE, and that would have been… but they were using the Julian, not the Gregorian calendar, so I can't tell you that precisely either. Probably early August.
And anyway, the Yehudim, the people we now think of as the Jews, used a lunar calendar, as the Arab-Moslem world still does, so who knows what date March 10th might have been, and was it an intercalataory leap year, with the entire month of Adar lived through twice?
What I can say for certain, because the Emperor Titus kept a semi-unofficial diary, and it was called "The Writings of Flavius Josephus" (click here to read it), is that the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed on the 9th of Av in the year 70 CE, and that would have been… but they were using the Julian, not the Gregorian calendar, so I can't tell you that precisely either. Probably early August.
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