Jerusalem in Christianity
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For Christians, Jerusalem's place in the life of Jesus gives it great importance, in addition to its place in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, as described above.
Jerusalem is the place where Jesus was brought as a child, to be 'presented' at the Temple (Luke 2:22) and to attend festivals (Luke 2:41). According to the Gospels, Jesus preached and healed in Jerusalem, especially in the Temple courts. There is also an account of Jesus' 'cleansing' of the Temple, chasing various traders out of the sacred precincts (Mark 11:15). At the end of each of the Gospels, there are accounts of Jesus' Last Supper in an 'upper room' in Jerusalem, his arrest in Gethsemane, his trial, his crucifixion at Golgotha, his burial nearby and his resurrection and ascension.
Tradition holds that the place of the Last Supper is the Cenacle, on the second floor of a building on Mount Zion where David's Tomb is on the first floor. The place of Jesus' anguished prayer and betrayal, Gethsemane, is probably somewhere near the Church of All Nations on the Mount of Olives. Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate may have taken place at the Antonia Fortress, to the north of the Temple area. Popularly, the exterior pavement where the trial was conducted is beneath the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. Other Christians believe that Pilate tried Jesus at Herod's Palace on Mount Zion.
The Via Dolorosa, or way of suffering, is the traditional route to Golgotha, the place of crucifixion, and is an important pilgrimage. The route ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (perhaps the most holy place for Christians). The Holy Sepulchre is traditionally believed to be the location of Golgotha and Jesus' nearby tomb. The original church was built in 336 by Constantine I. The Garden Tomb is a popular pilgrimage site near the Damascus Gate. It was suggested by Charles George Gordon that this site, rather than the Holy Sepulchre, is the true place of Golgotha.
The Acts of the Apostles and Pauline Epistles show James the Just, the brother of Jesus, as leader of the early Jerusalem church. He and his successors were the focus for Jewish Christians until the destruction of the city by Emperor Hadrian in 135. The exclusion of Jews from the new city of Aelia meant that gentile bishops were appointed under the authority of the Metropolitans of Caesarea and, ultimately, the Patriarchs of Antioch. Emperor Constantine I and his mother, Helena, endowed Jerusalem with churches and shrines, making it the foremost centre of Christian pilgrimage. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 raised the bishop of Jerusalem to the rank of patriarch, fifth in rank behind Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch. However, Byzantine politics meant that Jerusalem simply passed from the Syrian jurisdiction of Antioch to the Greek authorities in Constantinople. For centuries, Greek clergy dominated the Jerusalem church.
In 638, Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, handed over the keys of the city to Calif Umar's Muslim forces. The Muslim authorities in Jerusalem were not kind to their Christian subjects, forcing them to live a life of "discrimination, servitude and humiliation."[1] The mistreatment of Christians would only worsen as the armies of the First Crusade approached Jerusalem. Fearing that the Eastern Christians had been conspiring with approaching crusaders, the Muslim authorities of Jerusalem massacred much of the cities Christian population, seeing the fortunate escape the city in terror.[2]
On 15 July 1099, the army of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem. Although Eastern Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem were not slaughtered like their Islamic and Jewish counterparts they were, however, exiled from the city, as their new Latin rulers believed they were conspiring with the Muslims.[3] Jerusalem became the capital of a 'Latin Kingdom' with a Latin church and a Latin Patriarch, all under the authority of the Pope. The city's first Latin ruler was Godfrey de Bouillon, who was elected in 1099.[4] Throughout his short reign Godfrey struggled to increase the population of Jerusalem until his death in 1100. In 1100 Godfrey was succeeded by his brother Baldwin I who, unlike Godfrey, took the title of King of Jerusalem. With Jerusalem's population dwindling Baldwin I, as early as 1115, offered the Christians of Transjordan a section of Jerusalem. These Christians were often the target of Muslim aggression and therefore promptly accepted Baldwin's proposal. [5] In 1187, when Saladin captured the city, the Holy Sepulchre and many other churches were returned to the care of Eastern Christians.
From the 17th to the 19th century, various Catholic European nations petitioned the Ottoman Empire for Catholic control of the 'holy places'. The Franciscans are the traditional Catholic custodians of the holy places. Control swung back and forth between the western and eastern churches throughout this period. Sultan Abd-ul-Mejid I (1839-1861), perhaps out of despair, published a firman that laid out in detail the exact rights and responsibility of each community at the Holy Sepulchre. This document became known as the Status Quo, and is still the basis for the complex protocol of the shrine. The Status Quo was upheld by the British Mandate and Jordan. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and the passing of the Old City into Israeli hands, the Knesset passed a law protecting the holy places. Five Christian communities currently have rights in the Holy Sepulchre: the Greek Patriarchate, Latins (Western Rite Roman Catholics), Armenians, Copts and Syriac Orthodox.
The 'New Jerusalem' is the focus of a vision at the end of the Book of Revelation. It is the perfect city where God lives among his people.
[edit] Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible
Jerusalem appears in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) 669 times and Zion (which usually means Jerusalem, sometimes the Land of Israel) appears 154 times. The first section, the Torah, only mentions Moriah, the mountain range believed to be the location of the binding of Isaac and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and in later parts of the Tanakh the city is written explicitly. The Tanakh (or Old Testament), is a text sacred to both Judaism and Christianity. In Judaism it is considered the Written Law, the basis for the Oral Law (Mishnah, Talmud and Shulkhan Arukh) studied, practiced and treasured by Jews and Judaism for three millennia (list of Jewish prayers and blessings). The Talmud elaborates in great depth the Jewish connection with the city. In Christianity, it is considered as the account of God's relationship with His chosen people - the original covenant - and the essential prelude to the events narrated in the New Testament, including both universal commandments (eg the Ten Commandments) and obsolete or Judaism-specific ones.
For example, the book of Psalms, which has been frequently recited and memorized by Jews and Christians for centuries, says: (etc.)
- "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." (Psalms 137:1)
- "For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning . If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof; O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that repayeth thee as thou hast served us." (Psalms 137:3-8) (King James Version, with italics for words not in the original Hebrew)
- "O God, the nations have entered into your inheritance, they have defiled the sanctuary of your holiness, they have turned Jerusalem into heaps of rubble...they have shed their blood like water round Jerusalem..." (Psalms 79:1-3);
- "...O Jerusalem, the built up Jerusalem is like a city that is united together...Pray for the peace of Jerusalem..." (Psalms 122:2-6);
- "Jerusalem is surrounded by mountains as God surrounds his people forever" (Psalms 125:3);
- "The builder of Jerusalem is God, the outcast of Israel he will gather in...Praise God O Jerusalem, laud your God O Zion." (Psalms 147:2-12)
[edit] References
- ^ Prawer, Joshua. "The Settlement of the Latins in Jerusalem," Speculum 27.4 (1952): 491.
- ^ Ibid, 492.
- ^ Ibid, 493.
- ^ Riley-Smith, Jonathan. "The Motives of the Earliest Crusaders and the Settlment of Latin Palestine." The English Historical Review 98.398 (1983): 724.
- ^ Prawer, Joshua. "The Settlement of the Latins in Jerusalem," Speculum 27.4 (1952): 496.
