RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - Emperor Julian and the Third Temple
Aired: 2026-03-07
Duration: 06:48


=== Tucker's Best? (03:05) ===

[00:00:00]  I have been railing against Tucker Carlson for some time, and I will in the future, but I would say that his last monologue was, in my mind, a little more coherent and interesting, in fact, and even compelling in a way.
[00:00:21]  So it was maybe Tucker at his best.
[00:00:24]  And he was actually talking about the temples.
[00:00:28]  And so you have the first temple to Yahweh that was, again, apparently built right where the Dome of the Rock is.
[00:00:38]  And this is destroyed by Babylon.
[00:00:42]  And these stories are told in a few books.
[00:00:45]  Daniel tells a story of the captivity, of basically the Jewish community surviving among a few people in a way who are living in exile and what they can do there.
[00:00:57]  They can interpret dreams.
[00:00:59]  They can demoralize Nebuchadnezzar with visions of a collapsing colossus that is sort of him that's going to be smashed by the rock, which is Yahweh, all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:09]  A lot of interesting things.
[00:01:11]  But Babylon is taken over by Cyrus and Persia.
[00:01:16]  And then Cyrus effectively frees the Jews, allows them to return to Jerusalem and finances the construction of the second temple, which is very interesting.
[00:01:29]  Very interesting.
[00:01:30]  Might Trump be a sort of Cyrus?
[00:01:32]  Is maybe that his best biblical analogue?
[00:01:36]  And as you pointed out, I remember when we talked a year ago or so, that Cyrus himself is an anointed one.
[00:01:42]  Cyrus is a Messiah type, which is important.
[00:01:46]  And there's expansions of the temple with Herod and so on.
[00:01:51]  Jesus is in the time of the second temple.
[00:01:55]  He predicts in the Gospel of Mark, maybe the first gospel, that this whole thing is coming down.
[00:02:01]  And at least in the way that it was interpreted by Tucker Carlson, that I am the third temple in a way.
[00:02:08]  And I am going to rise from the dead in three days and so on.
[00:02:13]  That's how it's traditionally understood.
[00:02:15]  I think it might, well, you might not like this, so I think it might very well suggest that the Gospel of Mark was written much later.
[00:02:22]  We thought it was written after 70 AD, unless we think that there's a prediction going on there.
[00:02:27]  But anyway, I'll leave that aside.
[00:02:30]  But so he, Tucker then goes on to a story of this question of the third temple.
[00:02:36]  And for a lot of time, the old temple was a dung heap.
[00:02:41]  It was not maintained.
[00:02:44]  There was a man, Julian the Apostate, who's coming post Constantine, post-Christianization, who genuinely wanted to return to paganism.
[00:02:56]  And again, who, at least at first glance, would be the least likely to build the third temple?

=== Julian's Vision of a Third Temple (03:43) ===

[00:03:05]  Maybe Julian.
[00:03:07]  Because you would say, this guy, he hates the Jews.
[00:03:10]  He hates the Christians.
[00:03:11]  You know, he would never do it.
[00:03:12]  But he actually did attempt it at great cost, but also, for Audest, a little bit half-heartedly, he was involved in Persian campaigns.
[00:03:23]  There were also all of these natural. phenomenon that occurred like earthquakes and so on.
[00:03:29]  Now, divine or not, that's up to you, of course, but it is interesting.
[00:03:33]  And so the project was abandoned.
[00:03:35]  But I think what's so powerful about Julian, and this is where Tucker really lost me, was when he said, oh, Julie, you know, he's a pagan.
[00:03:44]  And if you want to rebuild the third temple, that means you're a pagan too.
[00:03:48]  Okay.
[00:03:50]  I don't think so.
[00:03:50]  I don't think Pete Hegseth is a pagan.
[00:03:53]  I don't think Chabad are pagans.
[00:03:56]  I think that's wrong.
[00:03:57]  But there is something to this notion of a third temple.
[00:04:02]  And from my perspective, I've almost come around to this third temple stuff.
[00:04:07]  So hear me out.
[00:04:09]  You know, if Julian did it, maybe it's good enough for me.
[00:04:11]  Because what Julian was saying, in effect, is that you will have a temple to Yahweh in the way that we have a temple to Apollo, in the way that you can have beautiful statues to Venus that you can adore.
[00:04:27]  This is your thing.
[00:04:29]  And you Jews, you didn't like the idea of Yahweh in the pantheon, but okay, we'll compromise.
[00:04:36]  We're going to center your religion.
[00:04:38]  And in a way, he's enclosing Yahweh in that temple.
[00:04:44]  He's saying that Yahweh can't escape because he's there.
[00:04:47]  And there is something, you know, the thing that is most powerful about Judaism, as opposed to, I don't know, some religion in the Congo or whatever, is precisely because Yahweh's cup overfloweth.
[00:05:03]  He's not confined to Jerusalem.
[00:05:06]  He's not confined to his temple.
[00:05:08]  He has expanded throughout the world to become the most dominant God of them all.
[00:05:14]  He's, you know, in so many ways through Christianity, most obviously, and Jesus ism, let's say.
[00:05:20]  He's expanded to Islam, the Islamic world.
[00:05:23]  They are worshiping.
[00:05:23]  They call him by a different name.
[00:05:25]  They don't call him by Yahweh.
[00:05:26]  It's Allah.
[00:05:27]  Jesus might have called him Abba.
[00:05:28]  I mean, if he spoke Arabic, you know, it expands into Islam.
[00:05:34]  It even expands into philosophy.
[00:05:37]  And so all of these rationalist philosophers are saying things, you know, like, there's no such thing as an uncaused cause.
[00:05:45]  So there must be one unmoved mover and his name is God or whatever.
[00:05:49]  That's just another place where Yahweh travels.
[00:05:52]  He's gotten into the heads of philosophy departments.
[00:05:55]  He's gotten in the heads of Arabs.
[00:05:57]  He's gotten in the heads of Christians, whites, et cetera.
[00:06:01]  And I think what Julian was trying to do genuinely, it was sort of anti-Semitic on some level, ironically, by building a temple to Yahweh, by saying, we're going to confine you here.
[00:06:14]  And so Tucker is saying, oh, to Christians, this is anathema.
[00:06:18]  To real Christians, you know, which is like whatever.
[00:06:21]  flavor he's become last week or something.
[00:06:24]  I take people at their word.
[00:06:26]  If you say that you worship Christ, this is the most meaningful thing in your life.
[00:06:31]  I take you at your word.
[00:06:32]  I'm not going to call you a heretic or something like that.
[00:06:35]  Real Christians do want to re many real Christians do want to rebuild the third temple.
[00:06:39]  Many find it anathema.
[00:06:42]  I think Julian was a fascinating man who was coming at it from his own perspective of confinement.