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& Travel . A Brief History of The Holy Land The other evening, we saw a broadcast on WCAX News about a local web site -- Emissary of Light -- that was collecting prayers for peace in the Middle East. {We added our own to the list.} Click
here to go to the Emissary of Light site and add your prayer for That got us to thinking about how many people make, or would like to make, a pilgrimage to 'The Holy Land'. ... With the Islamic New Year {Hijri} coming with the visible crescent moon around March 25th, and with Passover & Easter approaching, we were saddened to think that, with all the turmoil in the Middle East, potential visitors might forego such a trip for obvious reasons. ... In such a context, we're not advising that you take a trip to The Holy Land any time soon. But we did think it might be of some interest to take a brief look at the history of this land in this month's Travel Here & There. ... A Brief Early History: 6,000 Years of Promise & Strife ...
The Holy Land, as it has come to be commonly known, is a relatively small space. In the NASA radar photo at right, which actually ranges from Hebron to the south {the yellowish spot at the bottom center} to the Jordan River as it meets the Dead Sea {top center}, we're seeing an area roughly 45 miles long by some 28 miles wide -- a little more than the distance between Middlebury & Burlington, and slightly wider than the Valley from the Lake to the foothills. The Holy Land proper itself, which centers on the city of Jerusalem {the yellowish area at left center, 31° 46' 45" N. / 35° 13' 25" E}, is obviously important to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. The city now known as Jerusalem was probably inhabited since at least the 4th millennium BCE. The popular name of Jerusalem comes to us from the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, and is confirmed by the discovery of cuneiform tablets discovered at Tell Amarna, Egypt, in 1888. Jerusalem had been known as Salem {Ur-ru-sa-lim or ir-Shalom, the "City of Peace", and later, by Muslims as ir haq qodes, "The Holy City"}. The Exodus & the Kingdom of Israel After the time of Abram {later, Abraham}, for centuries -- like most of what was then known as Canaan -- Jerusalem was under the rule of the Chaldeans. Around 1400, before The Exodus, the Khabiri invaded and occupied Jerusalem, but were unable to maintain their stronghold. At this point, the city fell to the Jebusites, who called the city Jebus. During The Exodus, then, which can probably be dated in roughly the mid-13th century BCE, it was the Jebusites who occupied Jerusalem. Most likely an Amorite people, who occupied lands in Northern Palestine and Syria, traditionally, the Jebusites are said to have refused passage to the Israelites. ... With the subsequent conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, nonetheless, Jerusalem remained independent for a good while. It was assigned to the descendants of Benjamin, close to the border with Judah. But, as we learn from Judges [1:8], "the children of Judah" laid siege to the city, and eventually set it on fire. Thus, Jerusalem remained somewhat independent until the time of David, and in Judges 19:11, is still referred to as Jebus. Eventually, after the war between Israel and the renegade tribe of Benjamin, Jerusalem became the capital of the Kingdom of Israel under David. David had a palace built there and eventually brought the Ark of the Covenant into the city, as well as materials imported for the building of a temple, a project which subsequently fell to Solomon. Solomon began work on the Temple in his 4th year on the throne and completed the work in some seven-plus years.
There is really not enough time or space here to go into all the details of the long history of Jerusalem between the time of Solomon and the destruction of the Temple under Roman occupation, some 1,000 years later. But at the other end of this period, the city, for obvious reasons, had also taken on a religious and historical significance for the Jewish sect, and the Gentiles who joined them, who would later come to be called Christians. The Early
Christian History in Jerusalem After laying siege for a year, the Emperor Hadrian put down the rebellion, leaving the city to become a literal desert wasteland. On the ruins, the Romans built Ælia Capitolina, a new city, as well as erecting a temple to Jupiter on the site of the old Temple. Moreover, afterward, no Jew or Jewish Christian was allowed inside the town, under penalty of death. This effectively brought about the demise of the old Jewish Christian community and, in its place, a Church of Gentile Christians, with Gentile bishops, was formed. With the final destruction of Jerusalem and the ascent of the Gentile Bishops, Jerusalem no longer held the primacy it had once had for the Christian community. For more than 200 years, Jerusalem, now Ælia, continued in its diminished role until, with the Edict of Milan in 313, Christianity was recognized as as a legitimate religion. And by his death several years later, it had become the religion of the government under Constantine, as well. The 4th century CE, then, saw the beginnings of mass pilgrimages to The Holy Land, as well as the migration of ascetic communities, similar to the older Jewish Q'mran community, which likewise situated themselves in the outlying desert. But with the advent of these pilgrims & migrants, the role of the Bishop of Jerusalem took on a new importance, presiding, as he did, over the most holy places referred to in what we now call the New Testament. Subsequently, the Council of Nicaea I {325 CE} declared the See of Jerusalem to hold a place of honor only behind those of the patriarchal Sees of Rome, Alexandria & Antioch, though they did not go so far as to remove it from the regional jurisdiction of the metropolitan at Caesarea, a political feat which was accomplished in great measure more than 100 years later by Juvenal at the Council of Chalcedon {451}. continued ... *Note: If you would like to download the full-size image of this photo, you can get it directly from the NASA site. However, be aware that it is a very large, high-quality *.tif image file, 18 megabytes in size. If you'd like it nonetheless, click here. SOURCES: . ******* ******* If you would like to submit something for our Travel Here & There feature, or if you simply would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ... autotravel@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* If you would like to advertise in this section, or throughout the magazine, please visit our Advertising Info Pages ... or call, write, or e-mail ads@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* *******
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