“Judaism only became a “religion of the book”—that is, one whose core entailed the study of sacred texts—following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70.”

So the Torah itself could be seen as the Third Temple, or the true First Temple rebuilt, manifested in a form that could never be torn down, stone by stone, ever again? A form that could ever be with the Jews in their trials and travels over the Centuries, carried and copied and taught. A poetic thought…