Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JERUSALEM

(Heb. yĕrûšālayim)

Aerial view of Jerusalem from the southeast. Temple mount in foreground (Phoenix Data Systems, Neal and Joel Bierling)

The primary city of ancient Israel, capital of Judah and the United Monarchy.

Name

The name is based on the Hebrew root yrh and the name of a Canaanite god Šalem. The verb yrh usually means “to throw” or “to shoot,” but clearly has the sense of “to lay a foundation” (Job 38:6). Šalem is best known from the Ugaritic texts where he usually is associated with Šahar, both descended from El. Thus the name Jerusalem may have meant something like “founded by Šalem.”

The Masoretic pointing of the name as a dual form seems to reflect a late development. Also, the notion that Jerusalem originally was called Jebus depends heavily on the Chronicler’s interpolation of 2 Sam. 5:6. Where 2 Samuel reports that David and his men “went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land . . . ,” the Chronicler reads “. . . went to Jerusalem, that is Jebus, where the Jebusites were, the inhabitants of the land” (1 Chr. 11:4). Other biblical passages refer to a place called “the Jebusite” and add “that is, Jerusalem” (Josh. 15:8; 18:28; Judg. 19:10). Close examination of the geographical details of these passages suggests that “the Jebusite” was a landmark somewhere in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, probably just north of the modern “Old City,” rather than another name for Jerusalem per se.

Setting

Jerusalem is situated at ca. 750 m. (2460 ft.) elevation in the central Palestinian hill country. It was one of three main cities in the hill country during ancient times, connected with Shechem and Hebron by a natural land route along the north-south spine of the hill country. The earliest part of Jerusalem to be settled and fortified was the knoll immediately south of the present-day Haram esh-Sharif or temple mount. The biblical name for this knoll, or part of it, was Ophel (2 Chr. 27:3; 33:14; Neh. 3:26-27; 11:21). Ophel slopes to the south from the temple mount and is flanked on the east by the Kidron Valley (2 Sam. 15:23; John 18:1) and on the west by the Tyropoeon Valley (this name supplied by Josephus). The temple mount would have been a more naturally shaped hill in ancient times than it appears now (subsequent to Herod the Great’s building program). Also the Tyropoeon, which joins the Kidron at the southern end of Ophel, has been largely filled with debris over time. Situated near the base of the slope on Ophel’s eastern side was a spring, the biblical Gihon (2 Chr. 33:14), which served as Jerusalem’s chief water supply during the city’s early history. This water source was supplemented by cisterns and, during the Roman period, aqueducts from other springs S of Bethlehem.

Opposite Ophel on the east, across the Kidron, is the Mount of Olives. Opposite Ophel on the west, across the Tyropoeon, is the so-called Western Hill, which is broader and provides more gradually sloping space for buildings than Ophel. During Iron II (ca. the time of Hezekiah) and again during Hellenistic-Roman times (the Maccabean period and later) the city expanded to this western hill. Josephus referred to it as the Upper City. It seems reasonable to assume that “the stronghold of Zion” from which the Jebusites defended against David was on Ophel, and that the settlement on Ophel came to be known after David’s conquest as “the city of David” (cf. 2 Sam. 5:6-10). Later, however, after the building of the temple, Zion came to refer to the temple mountain, or to the now expanded city as a whole. Eventually, apparently during the Byzantine period when the temple mount was in ruins and a major church, the basilica of Holy Zion, stood on the Western Hill, the name Zion became attached to the Western Hill.

Curving around the western and southern sides of the Western Hill, and then continuing eastward to join the Kidron just S of the southern tip of Ophel and the Tyropoeon-Kidron juncture, is another prominent valley, Wadi er-Rababa. If “the Jebusite” is to be equated not only with Jerusalem but more specifically with Ophel, on the grounds that Ophel is the oldest part of Jerusalem, then Wadi er-Rababa emerges as the best candidate for the valley of Hinnom and Bir Ayyub, in the Kidron Valley just south of where it is joined by the Tyropoeon and Rababa, as En-rogel (Josh. 15:7-11; 18:15-19, 21-28). Wadi er-Rababa has been renamed Hinnom on some modern maps.

Ancient Sources

While Jerusalem, Shechem, and Hebron were the main urban centers of the central Palestinian hill country, they were of relatively modest size as ancient cities go, even compared to some cities of the Palestinian lowlands. Jerusalem especially, while enjoying a pleasant setting, was neither overly blessed with agricultural resources nor situated particularly near a major trade route. It should not be surprising, therefore, that Jerusalem turns up only rarely in ancient written sources other than the OT. The nonbiblical epigraphical references to Jerusalem prior to Hellenistic-Roman times are as follows. (1) A place called rwš÷mm (usually transliterated Rosh-lamem, but possibly Rosh-ramem) appears in both the Berlin and Brussels groups of Execration Texts. If this is Jerusalem, as most scholars are inclined to believe, then the Egyptian pharaohs were aware of Jerusalem’s existence ca. 1800 and listed it among their Asiatic enemies. (2) Two of the Amarna Letters from the mid-14th century were sent to the Egyptian court by Shuwardata, the vassal king of Gath, who accused of disloyalty ʿAbdu-ḥeba, the vassal king of Jerusalem. Five of the letters are from ʿAbdu-ḥeba himself, whose name seems to be of Hurrian origin. ʿAbdu-ḥeba insists that it is others who are disloyal to Egypt rather than he, and urges the pharaoh to send military support. (3) An Aramaic inscription fragment discovered at Tell Dan and dated by the excavator to the 9th century seems to refer to “the house of David.” Presumably this is a reference to the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem which, according to the OT, would have been founded by David approximately a century and a half earlier. (4) It was during the 9th century also that the Neo-Assyrian rulers began conducting military campaigns into Syria-Palestine and, accordingly, mention local rulers of that region in their royal inscriptions. Tiglath-pileser III (744-727) provides the earliest mention of a Jerusalemite king; namely, he included Jehoahaz in a list of local Palestinian rulers who paid him tribune. Esarhaddon (680-669) and Assurbanipal (668-627) report tribute from Judah, which of course implies Jerusalem. Surely the most intriguing of the royal Assyrian inscriptions, however, are two annalistic prisms which provide almost duplicate accounts of Sennacherib’s invasion of Palestine and siege of Jerusalem in 701. (5) One of the Babylonian Chronicles reports Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Jerusalem in March 597.

Archaeological Evidence

Jerusalem’s pre-Roman archaeological remains are rather meager, again not surprising because it was not a major city in ancient times. Also, the present occupation of the city, not to mention religious sensitivities and political factors, limit where archaeologists can excavate. Nevertheless, Jerusalem’s archaeological profile for the Bronze and Iron Ages is fairly typical of Palestinian sites. This profile may be summarized as follows.

1. Ceramic evidence indicates some occupation of Ophel as early as the Chalcolithic period.

2. Remains of a building witness to a permanent settlement on Ophel during the early centuries (ca. 3000-2800 b.c.e.) of the Early Bronze Age.

3. Segments of a wall more than 3 m. (10 ft.) thick in places indicate that Ophel was fortified during the Middle Bronze Age.

4. Less impressive architectural remains which are more difficult to interpret and date (e.g., the “stepped structure” discussed below) suggest continued occupation through Late Bronze and Iron I.

5. Construction of a tunnel to transport water from the Gihon spring on Ophel’s eastern side to a reservoir at the foot of Ophel’s southwestern slope, plus fortifications on the Western Hill, verify that Jerusalem experienced a period of expansion during Iron II. An inscription discovered inside the water tunnel commemorated the completion of this project, generally attributed to Hezekiah (cf. 2 Chr. 32:30). The reservoir, which receives the water from the tunnel still today, is the pool of Siloam (John 9:1-12).

6. There are evidences that this expanded Iron II city met with destruction.

7. Settlement seems to have been limited to Ophel during the closing centuries of the Iron Age.

History

In view of the limited epigraphical and archaeological evidence, historians depend heavily on the OT for information about ancient Jerusalem. However, there has been a mood of caution during recent years. Besides the fact that the biblical writers lived long after some of the events they describe, some of what they report about Jerusalem is difficult to interpret.

Josh. 10 recounts Joshua’s defeat of a coalition of five Amorite kings led by Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem. Josh. 12:10 includes Jerusalem in a summary of Israel’s conquests under Joshua. Yet Josh. 15:63 states that “the people of Judah [cf. Judg. 1:21, ‘Benjaminites’] could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites dwell with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day.” 2 Sam. 5:6-10 = 1 Chr. 11:4-9 report that David conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites with no mention of either Judahite or Benjaminite presence. Finally, accusing the inhabitants of Jerusalem of abominations, Ezek. 16:45 states: “Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite.” It seems certain, whether (or to whatever degree) there was any Israelite conquest of Jerusalem before David, that the city had a pluralistic population.

2 Sam. 5:8 quotes David as saying, “Whoever would strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft (ṣinnôr) . . .” (NRSV). In 2 Sam. 5:9 he is said to have “dwelt in the stronghold . . . and built the city all around from the millôʾ inward.” It is tempting to suppose that David was calling for a volunteer to climb up a particular water shaft which archaeologists have discovered in the eastern slope of Ophel above the Gihon spring (i.e., Warren’s Shaft). Also it has been proposed that a stepped stone structure uncovered at the top of the slope and a short distance north of Warren’s Shaft is a surviving remnant of David’s rebuild. However, the meaning of ṣinnôr is not entirely clear, and archaeologists debate the dating of both Warren’s Shaft and the stepped structure. An alternate view regarding the stepped structure is that it belongs to a pre-Davidic phase of the city.

The OT (as well as later tradition reflected in both the NT and the Qurʾan) depicts Solomon’s reign as one of unsurpassed splendor. Actually the epigraphical and archaeological evidence (or relative lack of same) suggests that the 10th century, when Solomon would have lived, was somewhat of a “dark age” throughout the Middle East including Palestine. Clearly this is the impression from the meager Iron I archaeological remains at Jerusalem. True, the temple mount where Solomon’s temple and palace would have stood is not accessible to archaeologists, and probably was cleared by Herod the Great’s builders anyhow. Nevertheless, in view of the biblical claims regarding Solomon’s exceeding wealth and extensive building activities, one would expect more tangible and impressive archaeological remains from that brief moment of Jerusalem’s history when, according to the OT, it was the center of a world-class empire.

For the later centuries of the Iron Age, it becomes much easier to coordinate the biblical materials regarding Jerusalem with archaeological and epigraphical sources. It seems reasonable to attribute the Iron II water tunnel to Hezekiah, and probably the fortification of the Western Hill as well. Jerusalemite burial practices of this period are known from several cemeteries (one immediately N of the present-day “Old City,” another across the Kidron from Ophel on the western slopes of Silwan, and the so-called Ketef Hinnom cemetery SW of the Western Hill). Among the discoveries at the latter cemetery were two small, rolled silver plaques with the benediction from Num. 6:34-36. Burned building remains excavated on the eastern slopes of Ophel (built against the “stepped structure”) probably witness to the Babylonian destruction of the city. One of the rooms apparently contained an archive of documents which perished at the time. Only the clay bullae which sealed the documents survive — more than 50 of them, having been fired in the conflagration.

1-2 Maccabees and Josephus are important written sources for information about Jerusalem during the Hellenistic period, and Josephus also for the early Roman period. The Maccabean rebellion was a major turning point, with Jerusalem enjoying a period of economic revival and relatively far-reaching political influence under the Hasmonean rulers, especially John Hyrcanus (135/134-104) and Alexander Janneus (103-76). Once again the city expanded to the Western Hill. The city continued to flourish after Pompey secured Roman control of the whole region and of Jerusalem in particular. Indeed, Herod the Great almost completely changed the face of Jerusalem, beginning with the temple mount on which he essentially rebuilt the modest “Second Temple,” which itself had been constructed by the postexilic Jewish community during the Persian period. While the central shrine of Herod’s rebuilding no doubt preserved the basic plan of the Second Temple, the overall layout was of typically Hellenistic-Roman design — i.e., the central shrine (cella) was surrounded by a large open court (temenos), which itself was enclosed by a colonnaded portico. At the northwestern corner of the temple compound, both to protect and command it, and possibly at the site of the Hellenistic Akra (1 Macc. 1:29-36; Ant. 12.5.4 [252]), he built a fort named the Antonia (after Mark Antony). Other Herodian features included a palace on the Western Hill and three towers which commanded the western defenses of the city. Contemporary with Herod and active in the city were two learned and influential rabbinical teachers, Shammai and Hillel (ca. 30 b.c.e.–10 c.e.). Herod’s Jerusalem also is the city that Jesus and Paul would have known, although their activities are to be associated with the generation following Herod himself. Their younger contemporary, Josephus, was involved in the First Jewish Revolt and witnessed the resulting conquest and destruction of the city by Titus in 70 c.e.

Tradition

Some landmarks in and around Jerusalem which figure in the NT can be identified confidently — e.g., the Mount of Olives, the Pool of Siloam, and the temple mount. Others are less certain, although often located by ecclesiastical traditions which date back to the Byzantine period. The following are representative examples.

John 5:2-9 reports Jesus’ healing of a man at the pool of Beth-zatha (Bethesda, Bethsaida), which was said to be near the Sheep Gate and had five porticoes. Early Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem spoke of the “twin pools” of Bethsaida, and in 1888 workers clearing some ruins on the grounds of the St. Anne Church discovered an old fresco which seems to represent the healing of the man at the pool. Excavations uncovered the foundations of a Byzantine church built over what could be interpreted as the layout of twin pools with porticoes. Also, a fragment of a relief from the Roman period discovered nearby may connect the place with Asclepius, the Roman god of healing.

Matt. 26:36 = Mark 14:32 relate that Jesus’ betrayal by Judas on the eve of the Crucifixion occurred at a place called Gethsemane (probably meaning “oil vat”). The other two Gospels do not actually call the place by name: Luke 22:39-40 informs us only that the incident took place on the Mount of Olives; John 18:1-11 notes that it occurred “across the Kidron Valley . . where there was a garden.” Apparently Gethsemane (whether a garden, oil vat, or whatever) was located on the Mount of Olives side of the Kidron. The beautiful garden pointed out today is as likely a spot as any. However, the claim that the roots of olive trees in this garden are very old has no bearing on the question of whether it is in fact the authentic Gethsemane.

Early Christian tradition located the site of the Upper Room (Mark 14:15; Luke 22:12) on the Western Hill. It was believed that the apostles celebrated the first Pentecost in this same room (Acts 1:13) and that Caiaphas’ house was located nearby (Matt. 26:57; Mark 14:53; Luke 22:54). Thus a major church, the Basilica of Mt. Zion, was erected on the Western Hill during the Byzantine period and is depicted in the Madeba mosaic map. The complex of old buildings located on the spot today date from medieval times and later.

Constantine commissioned the building of a church over what was believed at the time (326 c.e.) to be the place of Jesus’ burial. According to Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea who served as consultant to Constantine, the location of the tomb had been remembered even though previous Roman authorities had covered it over with soil and erected a temple to Venus on the spot (Vita Const. 3.25-28). Somewhat later there arose a tradition that Helena, Constantine’s mother, found the “true cross” in a cistern nearby. Originally two adjacent churches marked the traditional locations of Jesus’ crucifixion (Golgotha) and burial (Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb), but since the Crusader period these have been combined one roof, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Some scholars have objected that the spot marked by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would have been inside the city during Jesus’ day, and thus an unlikely spot for crucifixions. An alternate candidate (the so-called Garden tomb) is very popular among Protestant tourists.

Jerusalem (Arab. el-Quds, “the holy”) is a holy city for Muslims also, if for no other reason than that Islam incorporated many biblical traditions. Solomon has an important place in the Qurʾan, and Mohammed himself prayed facing Jerusalem during his early career. However, Muslim reverence for Jerusalem focuses primarily on the opening verse of Qurʾan Sura 17, which alludes to an occasion when God transported Mohammed from one holy shrine to another distant one and showed him miraculous signs. Later Muslim interpreters, connecting this verse with other passages in the Qurʾan, took it to mean that God transported Mohammed from Mecca to Jerusalem in a dream and that from Jerusalem Mohammed was raised to heaven where he saw wonderful things and communicated with earlier prophets. Jerusalem, in other words, came to be identified as the “distant shrine” (al-masjid al-Aqsa), and Mohammed’s elevation to heaven is commemorated by the Dome of the Rock monument and the nearby al-Aqsa mosque.

Bibliography. D. Bahat, The Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem (New York, 1990); H. Geva, ed., Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (Jerusalem, 1994); W. H. Mare, The Archaeology of the Jerusalem Area (Grand Rapids, 1987); B. Mazar, et al., “Jerusalem,” NEAEHL 2:698-804; F. E. Peters, Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets (Princeton, 1985); J. D. Purvis, Jerusalem, the Holy City: Bibliography (Metuchen, N.J., 1991).

J. Maxwell Miller

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JERUSALEM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)