63 BC Roman General Pompey enters Jerusalem and breaches the Holy of Holies, ending Jewish independence
The expansion of the Roman Republic into the Near East: Pompey the Great annexed Syria into a Roman province, intervened in the civil war between Hasmonean brothers Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, besieged the Jerusalem Temple Mount for three months, and sacrilegiously walked into the Holy of Holies.
Rigorous 4-part empirical analysis separating ancient text from bias and consensus
Josephus (*Antiquities* 14.69–72) and Tacitus (*Histories* 5.9) record: 'Pompey was the first of our countrymen to conquer the Jews and enter the sanctuary by right of victory... but found no image of a god, an empty sanctuary and unrevealed mysteries.'
Marks the definitive historical transition from Greek Hellenistic rule to Roman iron rule over Judea, fulfilling Daniel 2:40 (the fourth kingdom of iron crushing all others) and creating the Roman provincial framework of the Gospels.
Pompey left the temple treasures intact, but his entrance into the Holy of Holies traumatized the Jewish world, inspiring the anti-Roman apocalyptic fervor preserved in the Psalms of Solomon.
Roman triumphal accounts portraying Pompey's Eastern Settlement as bringing Pax Romana and law to a chaotic Orient.