From Josephus until the Jerusalem Talmud, the memory of the Jerusalem temple seems to be more and more elaborate. It embodies variable projects, with always the idea that the place chosen by God is greater, more beautiful, more imposing than any other sacred place. The remembered temple is not historically reliable, but the memory itself is rich for understanding the diverse cosmogonies of the schools inside Judaism, especially in the context of the development of foreign cults and, then, of Christianity as a new challenge for the identity of the "holy land".