Word: jerusalem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Jerusalem-the name means "foundation of Salem" (an ancient Semitic deity)-has a superb setting. Situated in the Judean Hills nearly 2,500 feet above sea level and protected on three sides by steep valleys, it was a natural site for a fortress adjacent to trade routes between the Mediterranean and cities to the east. There was a plentiful water supply from a spring that still flows out of the Kidron valley, just below the southeast edge of the present city. Archaeological evidence suggests that Jerusalem was settled around 3000 B.C. by Bronze Age Canaanite tribesmen. According to Genesis...
Home for the Ark. Jerusalem's religious importance actually begins with David. When the twelve tribes of Israel sought to consolidate their conquest of the Promised Land around 1000 B.C., David decided to capture the citadel from the Jebusites, a tribal ally of the Philistines. He did so after a prolonged siege, and made it his capital. There he brought the ark of the covenant, a gold-lined chest that Moses had built to contain the tablets of the law. David's son Solomon, who reigned from circa 970 to 930 B.C., built a magnificent Temple to contain...
Sacred as it was to Judaism, Jerusalem also attracted pagan conquerors. In 586 B.C., the city and its Temple were destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, who marched most of its inhabitants off to captivity -a tragedy that inspired the Psalmist to some of his most wistful lamentations. Thanks to the generosity of King Cyrus of Persia, who conquered the Babylonians, the Jews returned 48 years later to rebuild the Temple. In the next centuries, though, Jerusalem was conquered time and again by Greeks, Egyptians and finally the Romans, who adopted Herod as their vassal King. Although hated by Orthodox...
Roman Camp. Before he entered Jerusalem for the Last Supper, according to Luke, Jesus predicted the city's destruction, declaring that its enemies would "not leave one stone upon another in you." In A.D. 70, after a four-year Jewish revolt, Roman legions smashed through the walls, burned the city, and killed or exiled most of its inhabitants. Enough of them remained, however, to organize another insurrection in A.D. 132 under the messianic fanatic Bar Kochba; the legions once again leveled the city, rebuilt it in the form of a Roman camp called Aelia Capitolina. It was not until...
...Dome of the Rock over the site of the Old Temple. More often than not, they tolerantly allowed Christians and Jews free access to the shrines of the city. In 1095, however, inspired by rumors of Islamic persecution of pilgrims, Pope Urban II proclaimed a holy crusade to reconquer Jerusalem for Christ. Four years later, mail-clad knights led by Godfrey of Bouillon took the city by storm and slaughtered every Moslem they could find-afterward repairing for prayer at the shrine of the Holy Sepulcher...