No, Jerusalem is not significant for the composition of the Bible because of what was composed here, but because it was the ideological, political, and theological center of the world for both Judaism and Christianity. David was king here; so was Solomon. Ḥezekiah rebelled against Assyria from Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:7). Josiah reformed and “found” the Book of the Law here, which many scholars associate with the book of Deuteronomy (2 Kings 22:8). Jerusalem is the city that survived Sennacherib and that Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed. It was the city rebuilt by Persian Jewish repatriates, annexed by Alexander the Great, retaken by the Maccabees, and then ceded to Rome with the rise of the Roman Empire. It is the place of Herod the Great, and of course it is the place of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It was the launching point for Christianity, which both admirers and detractors will concede changed the face of the Western world. For these reasons, Jerusalem is the city that literally built the Bible.
VISITING JERUSALEM
Jerusalem has a long archaeological history. Much of the archaeological attention paid to Jerusalem revolves around the Temple Mount, which Herod the Great built to support and expand the precinct of the Jerusalem Temple. Today the golden-topped Dome of the Rock crowns the Temple Mount, the Western Wall of which is the holiest place in Judaism. It is this holiest of holy places that has drawn people by the millions to the Old City of Jerusalem for over two millennia.
As I walk through the winding streets of Jerusalem today, I see a beautiful mix of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions—an often confusing amalgam of incense, chants, and barbecued lamb that makes me simultaneously nostalgic and hungry. (Man, I could go for some hummus and roasted lamb right about now. Be right back.)
(Okay, I’m back.)
Wandering through the Old City from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus’s burial and resurrection, through the endless shops of the Muslim Quarter to the Western Wall, I am reminded of the thousands of years of history and personal investment that people of all ethnicities and faiths have brought to this great city. It is this continued shared heritage that makes, and must continue to make, Jerusalem the special place that it is.
Today, the holiest site in Judaism is the Western Wall, previously referred to as the Wailing Wall, where Jews went to lament the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. However, following the annexation of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, the wall came to be called the Western Wall by Israelis, as there was no longer any reason to “wail” over the loss of the city. Instead, the name Western Wall accurately describes the location of the Jewish holy place in relation to the lost Temple.
The Western Wall is the western retaining wall of Herod the Great’s elevated Temple precinct, known today as the Temple Mount. The Western Wall is not the western wall of the Jewish Temple, as the Temple was on top of the Temple Mount and was completely destroyed in 70 CE. Following the destruction of the Temple, Jews wanted to come and worship at the place where the Temple once stood. The Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117–38 CE) had banned Jews from Jerusalem, and centuries later, following the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem (637), Caliph‘Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock where the Jewish Temple once stood.
The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem stands where the Jewish Temple likely once stood. The present shrine was built in 691 CE and commemorates the Muslim Prophet Muḥammad’s traditional Isrā’ and Mi‘rāj, or Night Journey into the heavens.
However, once Jews began to resettle in Jerusalem in the fourteenth century, they tended to gravitate toward the Moroccan Quarter, the area closest to the southwestern corner of Herod’s Temple Mount. This coincidentally happened to be the area of Herod’s retaining wall that is closest to where the Temple’s Holy of Holies is believed to have been. Jews had been coming to this western area of Herod’s retaining wall (today’s Western Wall) for centuries to worship, and in the mid-sixteenth century the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent (1494–1566) allowed Jews the right to worship at the wall legally. Over time, Jews came to believe that the Shekinah, the presence of God, moved to the Western Wall. Today, the Western Wall receives over a million visitors each year.
I remember the first time I tried to take a photo of the Western Wall. As an oblivious tourist, I felt I could do whatever I wanted because this was my first and potentially only trip to Jerusalem. I took out my camera at the top of the steps just past the security checkpoint facing the Western Wall and was greeted by a woman wearing a scarf, yelling in broken English, “NO PHOTO! NO PHOTO! SHABBAT!”
At first I thought “Shabbat” was a curse word, and she was letting me have it. I lowered my camera and took a few steps, pretending to walk away. Waiting for the cover of a throng of tourists making their way past me, I sneakily raised my camera in another attempt to get a picture of the wall, when I this time heard the voice of a disgruntled elderly man again yelling, “NO PHOTO! SHABBAT! NO PHOTO!”
I thought to myself, “Again with the swearing!”
I made my way to the bottom step of the staircase in front of the wall, and without ever raising my camera above my chest and comically wrenching my neck and looking up into the sky as if to signal that I am doing anything but taking a photo of the massive wall in front of me, I began another attempt, this time to get a completely blind photo of the Western Wall.
The Western Wall, with the Western Wall Plaza in the foreground. The Mughrabi Ramp leading up to the top of the Temple Mount can be seen to the right, and the dome of the Al-Aqṣā Mosque can be seen to the far right.
And that is when I spotted an Orthodox Jewish man dressed in all black walking rapidly toward me. He did not introduce himself; he just began speaking in an assertive, yet polite voice.
“Let me tell you why we do not allow photographs on the Jewish holy day of Shabbat, or Saturday,” he began.
I stood there surprised at the forwardness of this zealous font of unrequested information and yet simultaneously relieved at the realization that I hadn’t been sworn at twice this morning.
“Okay,” I replied, as if I had any choice.
He continued, speaking as quickly as I could listen: “To us, the Jewish people, Shabbat is a holy day of rest and worship. We do not work, and we do not operate machinery, including cameras. So cameras are not allowed here on Shabbat. Besides, it’s rude. It’s the equivalent of a tourist walking into your church building or synagogue back home and taking a photo of you while you and your family are praying. You wouldn’t want me to take a picture of you while you worship, so don’t do it to us. Okay?”
I nodded and scurried away down the stairs. From that day forward, I committed myself to learning the rules of courtesy governing religious-tourist photography. As I visited Jerusalem year after year, I came to understand that it really is common courtesy to refrain from taking photos on Shabbat, even if (and I’ve heard all the reasons) this is your only day in Jerusalem and your only opportunity to get a picture of the Western Wall. As Exodus 23:12 clearly says, “Six days you shall take your pictures, but on the seventh day you shall rest.”
The Dome of the Rock shown in relation to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
One popular tradition at the Western Wall is to write a prayer on a piece of paper and stick it in the wall. I have done this for every one of my children. I write their names and a simple blessing on the paper, fold it up into a toothpick-shaped missile, and attempt to jam it in any remaining open crack in the wall. Those of you who have attempted this know how difficult it is, as every possible crack in the wall is occupied with the hopeful prayers of others, which I am afraid to dislodge and replace with my own blessing for fear of incurring the wrath of the wall and counteracting the entire benefit of the whole blessing-in-the-wall tradition.
The author at the Western Wall. Note the pieces of paper wedged into the cracks, which contain the prayers and blessings of visitors to the Wall.
A couple of times a year, a custodian of the wall collects the prayers an
d respectfully buries them on the Mount of Olives. And don’t worry, if you can’t make the trip to Jerusalem to place a prayer in the wall, you can text, e-mail, use the Send a Prayer iPhone app, and now even tweet your prayers to the wall electronically. I kid you not. Tweet a prayer to @TheKotel, and the service prints out the prayer, folds it up, and sticks it in the wall for you.1 In fact, Bezeq, the Israeli telephone company, has a fax line providing the same service. And if you’re technophobic, worry not, because letters addressed to “God, Jerusalem” are sorted by the Letters to God Department of the Israeli postal service (this really exists!) and are squeezed into the wall on the days after the cracks are emptied.2
Visiting the Muslim shrines on the top of the Temple Mount is more difficult. Unless you are a Muslim (and look Muslim, as there are no apologies on either the Palestinian or Israeli side for the open, rank racial profiling that goes on in a security-obsessed place like Jerusalem), you can enter neither the Al-Aqṣā Mosque nor the Dome of the Rock. This policy was established in response to the new U.S. and European regulations following the attacks of 9/11. Essentially, non-Muslims are not allowed to enter either building, as they are now purely religious venues for prayer (read: no tourists). I was fortunate enough to enter and visit both structures in 1999 and 2000, prior to 9/11. The Dome of the Rock, which is where most scholars believe the Jewish Temple once stood, is truly amazing, not only because it is a beautiful example of Islamic art and architecture,3 but because this space was the epicenter of Judaism for over a millennium.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF JERUSALEM
The archaeological evidence we have to date suggests that there was a settlement near the Giḥon Spring by around 3500 BCE. Both the archaeological and the biblical accounts agree that there were Cana‘anites living in Jerusalem long before any Hebrews appeared there. The name of the city first appears in Egyptian execration texts from Luxor during the reign of Pharaoh Senusret III (r. 1878–1839 BCE). The names of nineteen Cana‘anite cities (whom the Egyptians considered to be enemies) appear on the broken shards of multiple ceramic vessels, including the name of Jerusalem, which is written as Rushalimum in hieratic (or cursive Egyptian) script.4
Execration texts are a form of sympathetic magic in which the names of enemies or persons to be harmed are written on a surface, in this case pottery, that is then broken or otherwise destroyed; the destruction is thought to cause a similar effect on the named parties.5 An alternate form is creating an effigy of a person to be harmed (think voodoo dolls) and then smashing it, cutting it, poking it, peeing on it (yes, that’s one of the things), and ultimately disposing of it by burning it, throwing it in the trash, or burying it.
This form of magical religious writing appears in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Num. 5:11–31)6 and the New Testament as well. In Philippians 4:3 and multiple times in the book of Revelation,7 the names of the saved are said to be written down in the “Book of Life.” This is likely echoing the same motif in Daniel 12:1, “But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book,” which in turn echoes Exodus 32:33, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book.” Again, the idea that having your name written in a divine book determines that you are “saved” is very much rooted in the well-established tradition of ancient Near Eastern sympathetic magic and the numinous power of writing.8
In addition to the Egyptian execration texts, there are other extrabiblical references to Jerusalem. The name U-ru-sha-lim is used to describe Jerusalem in the Amarna Letters dating to around 1400 BCE.9 Thus, Jerusalem was a known, inhabited, and attested city with a name that resembles the lengthy name of Jerusalem long before any Hebrews or Israelites came to the city. It is this question of how, in fact, the Israelites came to be in the city of Jerusalem that has puzzled scholars for some time. Most important, the question of how David came to be so intimately connected to Jerusalem—so that it came to be called the “City of David”—is what we’ll explore next.
DAVID’S CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM
So how exactly did the Israelites come to inhabit Jerusalem? We read in 2 Samuel 5 and its parallel in 1 Chronicles 11 of David’s conquest of the Jebusite city (what the Bible calls Jerusalem before David conquered it). Thus, the easy answer appears to be that David conquered Jerusalem and set up his capital there.
But scholars have long acknowledged the problems with the Bible’s contradicting claims about early Israelite interactions with Jerusalem. For example, look at the discrepancy between 2 Samuel 5:6–9 and its parallel in 1 Chronicles 11:4–8, which offer varying accounts regarding who actually conquered Jerusalem. Second Samuel 5:7 says that David took the stronghold of Zion, while 1 Chronicles 11:6 maintains that it was Yo’av (Joab) who took Zion and that David rewarded his bravery and success by making him chief of his army. But this discrepancy is easy to explain: David was the leader, and Joab was the soldier who actually conquered Jerusalem upon David’s command. This isn’t the real problem with the conquest of Jerusalem.
The much larger problem regarding the conquest of early Jerusalem arises from the multiple contradictory literary accounts in the Bible, namely, the question of who conquered Jerusalem, Yehoshu‘a (Joshua) or David. The Bible presents conflicting accounts, and there is a dearth of archaeological evidence about early Israelite Jerusalem that makes the truth about Jerusalem’s early history a mystery. These conflicting texts have caused scholars to suggest that many of the stories surrounding Jerusalem’s founding as the capital of ancient Israel were the products of later editors’ attempts to demonstrate Jerusalem’s significance prior to the conquest of Samaria in 722 BCE. These biblical accounts of the so-called conquest of Jerusalem are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile. Let’s outline them.
A FOUNDATIONAL STORY FOR JERUSALEM
Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), which is surprising for a faith that ultimately centered on Jerusalem. Furthermore, in much of Israel’s patriarchal history Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob interact with sites in Samaria, Shechem, and Shiloh—areas that would later become the center of Judah’s rival, Israel—and to the south of Jerusalem in Ḥebron. Therefore, it was important for those editing the Bible during the exilic and postexilic periods to provide a foundational story for Jerusalem, so that it could compete in historical significance with other storied centers of Israelite worship, especially Samaria.
One tactic used by biblical redactors was to claim that the city of Shalem referred to in Genesis 14:18 was a reference to Jerusalem, despite the fact that at no time was Jerusalem’s name ever shortened—it was always some lengthy version of Ru-sha-limum or U-ru-sha-lim. However, by insisting that Melki-ṣedeq’s (Melchizedek’s) city of Shalem was actually Jerusalem, the editors of the Bible could argue that ancient Jerusalem had patriarchal sanction by none other than Abram himself.10
A second tactic to provide this foundational story for Jerusalem was to tell the story of how it became the city of David, God’s chosen leader. Let’s look for a moment at the conflicting claims about Jerusalem’s conquest.
BIBLICAL CONTRADICTIONS REGARDING THE CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM
Jerusalem is first mentioned in Joshua 10:1, when its pre-Israelite king ’Adoni-ṣedeq (Adoni-zedek) joins a coalition of cities warring against Joshua and the Hebrews, who had just invaded Cana‘an. It is mentioned again in Joshua 15:8, when we are told that Jerusalem was called the Jebusite city before it was conquered by King David.
Joshua killed the king of Jerusalem, Adoni-zedek, according to Joshua 10:23–27. Joshua 10:40 offers a definitive summary statement that Joshua “defeated the whole land” and “left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded.” Joshua 21:44 underscores this claim stating, “The LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their forefathers; not one of all their enemies had withstood them.” Joshua 12:10 clearly lists the king of Jerusalem as having been killed, and Joshua 24:11 explicitly states th
at Joshua and the Israelites defeated the Jebusites. So Joshua and the Israelites clearly conquered Jerusalem.
And yet the Bible also says that the Israelites did not conquer Jerusalem. Joshua 15:63 makes this explicitly clear when, at the end of a comprehensive list of the cities and lands that the Israelites would inherit, the text reads, “But the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites live with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day.” So even though the Bible says Joshua and the Israelite army destroyed all of the surrounding lands and killed all of their kings, and despite the fact that multiple earlier passages say the Israelites defeated the Jebusites, Joshua 15:63 says they did not conquer Jerusalem. The question then becomes: Why would the Bible preserve conflicting traditions that the Israelites both conquered and did not conquer Jerusalem?
Judges 1:8 exacerbates the problem with Jerusalem’s early history, as it quite clearly says, “Then the people of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it. They put it to the sword and set the city on fire.” And despite the fact that the king’s name in this account (1:7) is ’Adoni-bezeq (likely a scribal error or a variant tradition of ’Adoni-ṣedeq, mentioned in Josh. 10:1), the result is the same: the Judahites sacked the city and burned it to the ground. That is, except for the fact that only a few verses later, Judges 1:21 says that the Benjaminites could not drive the Jebusites from the very city they just burned to the ground. So now we have two claims of the destruction of the city and two counterclaims that Jerusalem still remained full of Jebusites!
The Cities That Built the Bible Page 17