Temple in Aelia Capitolina

[Ecgþeow]

As I was reading As a Driven Leaf and looking at my one Aelia Capitolina coin, I had two questions.
First was that I thought that the ruins of Jerusalem were held by the Romans throughout the Bar Kokhbah revolt, as there have only been two coins found in Jerusalem.  However, there was no city to conquer there, and the book portrays Bar Kokhbah as taking the hill and slaughtering the small Roman garrison.  So what happened?  Am I right in thinking there was no city to defend, and the Romans lost the ruins of the city initially?
My second and more important question is, what happened to the Temple to Jupiter built on the ruins of the Jewish Temple?  Jerusalem was not conquered as Aelia Capitolina until the reign of Heracleus, and by that time, the Empire was Christian.  Did the Christians destroy the pagan temple?  Did they convert it into a church?  They certainly wouldn't have left it as is.  And what happened to the building when the Muslims conquered the city?  Did they tear it down to build the Dome of the Rockm or was it even standing by this point?

thanks,
~Zach

[Ibex-coins]

Zach,
The first thing you have to remember is that the book As A Driven Leaf is a work of fiction.  It also was written many years ago and our knowledge of the Bar-Kokhbah revolt has increased a great deal since that time.  The Rabbic lore was that Bar-Kokhbah had reconquered the city of Jerusalem and re-established a temple their.  There is no archaeological evidence to support this supposition.  With the discovery of the cave of letters in the Judeaen Desert in the late 1950's our understanding of the revolt has increased many fold.  According to Leo Mildenberg the scope of the revolt was quite limited geographically and was primarily confined to the Judeaen hills and desert.

As for the Temple of Jupiter, the short answer is no one knows for sure.  Supposedly it was on the temple mount from what I remember, and yes supposedly a church once occupied this spot also.  Later the dome of the Rock was built on this area.  Because it is a sacred Muslem place no archaeologic excavations will likely ever be done there to either support or refute this history.

I am sure that their are others who can add further detail to my commentary.
Ronn

[Ecgþeow]

thanks.
Yeah, I know that it is fiction, but Steinberg seemed to really know his history and seemed generally historically accurate. 
It is a shame, archaeologically speaking, that the Temple Mount will never be excavated, as it is one of the most important sites in the world, and it would be amazing to see what is there.  I remember recently the Waqf was building a new Mosque or something on the Temple Mount, and dug out massive amounts of dirt that they discarded, and a group of researchers have been sifting through it, trying to salvage whatever they can, as it is the only dirt from the actual site open to study.  They have come up with some interesting finds, including a lot of Roman stuff.

[Ibex-coins]

Zam
The area of the current construction/digging going on on the temple mount is on the easern side of the mount and is quite a distance from the Dome of the Rock, so unfortunately it is hard to correlate any of the finds to the various churches, temples and mosque that may have occupied the site.  Still, with all that they are finding through secondary sifting of the dirt that is discarded from this site it serves to wet the appetite of our imaginations of what could really be found in an organized, controlled dig from this important site.

I enjoyed the book As a Driven Leaf very much, but had a hard time because I knew a little too much about the real history of the time when I read it.