Been reading some good books latley

[Theodosius the Great]

any religious community would still have to seek permission from the authorities to rebuild (and claim!) such a vast complex

Rebuilding the whole, lavish Herodian complex would probably not have been feasible with Jewish donations alone, I suspect. More realistically, they could have built something more modest - anything, as long as they can say they have a Temple. That's the most important thing.

Granted, it was probably more difficult for the Jewish community to rebuild the Temple by the late fourth century. However, before the Bar Kokhba revolt there was (perhaps) an open window of a few decades since the destruction of Jerusalem for rebuilding. This assumes two big things on my part :

• that the state did not seize the ground at that time (I'm not sure what purpose it could serve since it was just rubble)
• that there was no official "ban"

The urgency to rebuild the Temple on the part of the Jewish community would probably have been greatest during this period since the same generation must have visited it sometimes in their lives when it still stood.

BTW, the author says that it was contrary to standard Roman practice to forbid rebuilding holy places of those they conquered and thus would have been seen as outrageous that the Temple was not rebuilt. Before the Jewish Revolt the Romans thought the Jewish religion was very strange but not repulsive. There were no negative depictions of the Jews in Roman literature with the exception of a single line by Seneca who refers to them as a "most wicked race". But Seneca may have written this in Nero's reign just before the Revolt broke out when everyone knew the situation in Judea was bubbling up.

militant Christianity, with synagoghs being destroyed everywhere (despite Theodosius' initial bans he was forced by Ambrose to back down), so I guess there was simply no chance for the Jews to rebuild their temple.

I'm not sure about synagogues being burnt "everywhere." I remember reading that pagan temples were the primary targets and that one major synagogue in Anatolia was destroyed. As for Saint Ambrose, I read that he changed the emperor's mind about rebuilding it at state expense (which I have no problem with since the state didn't burn it down. The arsonists, IMO, should have been arrested and punished though).

~Theo