Jerusalem
As for Jerusalem’s conquest by the Israelites, we can find two different versions in the Bible. According to Judges 1:8, “The sons of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and conquered it by sword and set it on fire”, while the other version has it that Jerusalem, which as Canaan was divided between the tribes, was given into Benjamin’s possession and was afterwards for a long time still a Jebusite city – all the way until David captured it. It seems, the tribe of Judah after destroying Jerusalem left it, and the Jebusites returned there.
The period of the First Temple. After David united Israelite tribes under his authority he found it necessary to liquidate the Jebusite enclave that separated the lot of his own tribe of Yehud from the lots of the other tribes. At the same time David hoped that after he captured Jerusalem, which virtually was not in possession of any tribes of Israel, he would be able to turn it into a national center without causing any inter-tribal strife.
The seizure of Jerusalem was carried out by David evidently in 1002 B. C. by the power of his own troops without help of the tribes’ volunteer army, which safeguarded status of a royal property for the captured city. Having conquered the city, David successfully defended it from the Philistine attacks and was fully entitled to call it Ir David and to transfer the capital of the United kingdom from Hebron into it.
After David moved the Ark of the Covenant from Kiriat Ye-Arim where it temporarily was into Jerusalem, he turned the city into the religious center of the kingdom of Israel. Archeological excavations confirm that the city of David occupied the southern slope of the Temple Mount – Ofel – all the way to the valleys of Ge Benn Hinn, Kedron and Theropion; while in the north it began from the saddle of Millo at the edge of which, probably, the Jebusite fortress Zion towered. Fragments of the city’s wall of David’s time were found as well as stone terraces of Millo, filling up of which provided the city’s development to the north.
During the rule of David’s descendant, Solomon, Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital was even more strengthened. Geographical location of Jerusalem situated in the heart of the country at the crossing of traditional highways from north to south and from west to east facilitated economical prosperity of the city. Through Jerusalem caravans from Mesopotamia to Egypt and from Phoenicia to the Red Sea went. After enlarging the city to the north and building the Temple on Mount Moriah and the king’s palace beside it, Solomon reserved for Jerusalem unique status of the Holy and at the same time capital city.
Later Jerusalem being the center of religious and state life of the Jewish nation turned into a cornerstone of national self-identification and perception of national history, messianic yearnings of the prophets and spiritual leaders of the Jews.
When after Solomon’s death in 928 B. C. the unified kingdom split up Jerusalem remained the capital of the kingdom of Judah ruled by David’s dynasty. In 924 B. C., pharaoh Sheshonk invaded Judea; he did not seize Jerusalem; however, a tremendous tribute paid to the pharaoh by king Rehoboam emptied the treasuries of the Temple and the Ring’s palace and devastated the city. Yet in 786 B. C., during the rule of Amaziah (798-769 B. C.) Israelite king Yehoash invaded Judea and captured Jerusalem. The city was plundered and a section of the fortress wall was destroyed. Kings of Judea Uzziah (785-733 B. C.) and Hezekiah (727-698 B. C.) significantly strengthened the city; during the reign of the latter Jerusalem’s population increased because of the refugees from the kingdom of Israel, which was destroyed by Assyria in 722 B. C.
Fearing Assyria’s invasion into Judea and besieging of Jerusalem, under which the city could be left without water, Hezekiah included into its boundaries a part of highland adjoining Jerusalem on the west (later it was wrongly named Mount Zion) and surrounded it by a mighty wall and dug under the city of David a drain-water tunnel from the Gihon Spring. Assyrian king Sanherib besieged Jerusalem in 701 B. C. but was soon forced to cease the siege and sign a peace treaty because of an epidemic that had broken out in his army. No other capital, including Damascus and Samaria, stood attacks of the Assyrian troops; that is why sudden salvation of Jerusalem was considered by the contemporaries as a miracle and strengthened faith in the city’s holiness, safety of which is overseen by God. Using the fall of the Assyrian empire (612 B. C.) king Josiah turned Jerusalem’s Temple into the unique Jewish cultural center not only for his kingdom’s subjects but also for the remnants of the population of the destroyed kingdom of Israel.
During the war between Babylon and Egypt for inheritance of Assyrian conquests Jerusalem for a period of time happened to be under Egyptian authority and then ended up in the hands of Babylonians. Josiah’s descendants relying upon Egypt’s help rebelled against Babylon. In 598, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem. The city surrendered, and king Jehoiachin along with his noblemen, court, soldiers and craftsmen –– altogether around 200,000 people –– were brought into Babylon. The king’s and Temple’s treasures were taken to the same place. Despite the tragic consequences of the rebellion king Zedekiah enthroned by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 headed in 588 B. C. another uprising. In the same year Babylonians came near Jerusalem and after a two-year exhausting siege the city was seized and utterly destroyed. The Temple was burned down; most of the population was killed or brought into captivity; Zedekiah himself, blinded after he had seen his sons’ execution before his own eyes, was in chains sent to Babylon. The city remained in ruins all the way until the captives’ return.
The period of the Second Temple. Captivity and the humiliation it caused did not diminish the nation’s loyalty to Jerusalem. Identifying their destiny with it the captives did not lose hope in their country’s revival and restoration of Jerusalem. Psalm 137 (especially verses 5 and 6, “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”) is the expression of these loyalty and hope.
In 538 B. C., after the Babylonian empire was conquered by Persia, Persian king Cyrus issued a decree permitting the Jewish captives to return to their motherland, to restore Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. However, the restoration of the Temple begun by Sheshbatssar, whom Cyrus appointed to be the head of the first group of those returning home right away encountered resistance and intrigues of Samaritans and local Persian administration and progressed slowly. Only in the second year of Darius I’s reign (515 B. C.) Judea’s ruler Zerubbabel and Joshua the High Priest succeeded in completing the Temple’s restoration and ceremonially dedicated it. But the city itself remained almost unpopulated, the city wall –– destroyed, until Nehemiah, a high official at the Persian court of Artaxerxes, was appointed in 445 ruler of Judea.
Nehemiah in no time began to restore the city walls and, having overcome the resistance and intrigues of the Samaritan ruler Sanvallat, completed the works in 52 days, having strengthened fortress Bira north-west of the Temple Mount which lay in ruins as well.
To populate the city Nehemiah ordered the noblemen and a tenth part of Judea’s villagers to move to Jerusalem and introduced a temple tax. Nehemiah’s contemporary, Ezra, has the merit of Jerusalem’s retaining its status as the religious center of the Jewish nation.
In 332 B. C., Judea and Jerusalem without resistance were conquered by Alexander the Great who confirmed the privileges given to Jerusalem by the Persian rulers. During the Diadochi wars (327 B. C.) Jerusalem was captured (most likely, in the end of IV century B. C.) and partially destroyed by Egyptian ruler Ptolemy I Sotir who controlled Judea. Many dwellers of the capital were taken into captivity. But stabilizing of the Ptolemy’s power (301 B. C.) brought prosperity to Judea; the country received a large autonomy. The administrative apparatus headed by high priests was in Jerusalem; Jerusalem’s Temple served as the center of religious and public life of the capital and the country as a whole. In Jerusalem spiritual and civil nobility of the country were concentrated who kept close ties with the court of Ptolemys and Greek aristocracy of Egypt.
The situation, it seems, changed by the beginning of the second century B. C. since the Jews not only welcomed Seleucid Syria’s victory over Egypt (198 B. C.), but also rendered the Seleucid powers help in a siege of an Egyptian garrison locked in the fortress of Bira. Antiochus III rewarded the Jews for help by confirming by a corresponding decree their right to live according to “the laws of their fathers” and made Jerusalem’s residents exempt from paying taxes for three years, while the Temple priests and sophrim –– were made exempt forever. The reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 B. C.) was marked with harsh measures in Hellinization of non-Greek population of the Seleucid empire.
Between zealots of Judaism and adherents of Hellinization fears, clashes in struggle for the office of the High Priest began. Antiochus seeing rebellion in The Jewish masses’ resistance to High Priest Menelai appointed by him seized Jerusalem, destroyed the city walls and placed a Greek garrison in Acra fortress built by him in the city. In 167 B. C., Antiochus issued a number of decrees against Jewish religion, which were fulfilled in Jerusalem with special strictness, confiscated the Temple treasures and commanded that the Temple be turned into Zeus of Olympia’s sanctuary, and also to worship the cult of Dionysius there.
A rebellion headed by Judas Maccabaeus enticed by these measures had as its goal to get autonomy for Judea and to clear Jerusalem of pagan filth. Having not enough power to capture Jerusalem, the rebels, however, were able to isolate the city from the other parts of the country and to hinder Syrian troops sent to help the besieged garrison from entering into the city. In December of 164 B. C., the rebels managed to seize the Temple Mount, to clear the Temple of the items of the pagan cult and to resume traditional sacrifices. To mark this event Judas Maccabaeus and his comrades had an eight-day festivity of sanctification Hanukkah, which since then has been annually celebrated by Jews.
During the reign of under-aged Antiochus IV Eupator the Jews were granted freedom of faith, and Menelai was removed from the office of High Priest. Under conditions of the truce the Acra fortress remained in the hands of the Syrian garrison. However, soon military actions resumed but only in 141 B.C. the powers of Simon Thassi entered into Acra and put an end to foreign presence in the Holy City. Jerusalem became the capital of the Hasmonean Kingdom. Its significance as the religious center of the Jews of Eretz Israel and the Diaspora was restored.
The Jews in dispersion as well as non-Jews converted into Judaism and those who sympathized with Judaism (the number of which in Hellenistic world at that period of time was quite big) helped to strengthen the welfare of Jerusalem by contributing a traditional annual Temple tax. Crafts and trade developed in the city; monumental constructions were erected including, as it seems, the city wall, which separated in the North the Upper City from the markets (the so-called First Wall) as well as the so-called Second Wall (around the markets; completed under Herod the Great). Jerusalem’s teachers of the law were famous for being knowledgeable in the entire Jewish world.
In 64 B. C., Seleucid Syria was joined to the Roman state. The Roman interference into the affairs of Judea became just a matter of time. Having used the war for succession of the throne that broke out after Salome Alexandra’s death, the Roman troops headed up by Pompey in 63 B. C. approached Jerusalem. Supporters of Salome’s older son, Hyrkanus II, opened the city gates to Pompey but on the Temple Mount the Romans encountered severe resistance, which was overcome only after a three-month siege. The Romans broke into the Temple; Pompey walked into the Holy of Holies but the Temple treasures remained intact.
After political regulation imposed by Pompey, Jerusalem ceased to be the capital of a vast independent state and turned into the administrative center of a Roman protectorate that occupied only a part of the Hasmonean kingdom. In 40 B. C., Jerusalem was seized with the help of Parthians by Antigonus II who replaced ruler Hyrkanus II acknowledged by the Romans. Three years later Jerusalem was besieged and seized by Herod I and his allies –– Romans. The seizure of the city was accompanied with plundering and murder, and Herod with great difficulty managed to save the city and the Temple from complete destruction by Roman legionaries.
Herod I (ruled in 37-4 B. C.) enlarged and strengthened the city; rebuilt the old fortress Bira (Baris in Greek) and called it Antonia in honor of his patron –– Triumvir Mark Anthony; near today’s Jaffa gates a citadel was built, tower Ptsael of which has still remained; splendid palaces and forums were erected. Fortified Royal Palace adjoining the Citadel was especially luxurious; behind its outer fence gardens were planted with marble porticos and many statues. The Temple was enlarged and rebuilt, and its height was doubled. Herod filled up with earth the square on the upper part of the Temple Mount; to do so, he erected near the Mount a retaining wall made of huge cut stones; the above ground part of the wall from the side of the Temple Square had roofed arcades. The southern wall of the Temple Mount was crowned with basilica-like “King’s Colonnade,” from which a luxurious stairway led downstairs.
Soon after Herod’s death Judea was turned into a Roman province and excluding a three-year period of the reign of Agrippa I (41-44 A. D.) was ruled by Roman procurators having their residence at Caesarea. The management of Jerusalem was in the hands of a High Priest and Sanhedrin. From time to time especially on pilgrim’s holidays when the city was overcrowded with pilgrims from all over the country and the Diaspora the procurator accompanied by a group of soldiers arrived to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem’s Square of the time was approximately 2.6 sq. km. (1.6 sq. mi) while the population estimated to have been from 30 to 100 thousand people. The significance of Jerusalem was a lot deeper than its position of the biggest city of a small Roman province: in the eyes of the Jewish nation Jerusalem kept status of the capital of the Jewish nation and was a symbol of oneness of the Jews –– Eretz Israel and the Diaspora, the center that attracted the Jews and proselytes from the entire ancient world. The city enjoyed broad fame among non-Jews as well: Plinius Senior testified that Jerusalem was the most famous city in the Orient. Jerusalem’s population continually increased, and north of it a new suburb (Bet Zeita) appeared; its surrounding by a wall (the so-called Third Wall) began under Agrippa I. The Roman authorities insisted the works be stopped; they were completed only during preparation for an anti-Roman uprising in 66 A. D.
The main (northern) road to Jerusalem went through Har ha-Sofim (“mountain of observation”; Scopus in Latin); a general view of the city opens from there. Passing through the Kedron Valley and the King’s shrines (burials of the kings of Adiabene) the road led to the women’s gates in the Third City wall, behind which Bet-Zeita suburb was located with timber and sheep markets and several water reservoirs near the Second Wall, which ran as a curved long line from Herod Is Palace (near today’s Jaffa Gate) to Antonia fortress that towered above the north-western corner of the Temple Mount. The gates in the Second Wall led to the Lower City. The main city’s markets and a highly populated district situated in the northern part of Therapion Valley were there. Through the water (garden) Gates in the First city Wall one could get to the Upper City –– a dwelling place of aristocrats and well-off residents.
Palaces of the High Priest and Hasmonean noblemen were here, while in the north-western corner towers of Herod’s Palace rose up to 40, 36 and 21 meters. A broad bridge over Therapion Valley connected the Temple Mount to the Upper City, while a monumental staircase –– with the Lower City that included the highly populated southern part of Therapion Valley and Breha ha-Shilloah Basin in the south-eastern corner. Smoothly chiseled rocky crevice that stretched from north to south-west separated the Upper City from the Lower one. The Temple Mount rose above the entire city surrounded by a massive wall with colonnades. The Temple itself was surrounded by another wall reaching a height of 45 meters and shining with white marble and gilding as a “snow-covered mountain.” Behind the city walls, mainly to the east and south, in Kedron Gay-Hinnom valleys there was Jerusalem’s Necropolis, among the tombstones of which shrines of Jehosophat, Absalom, Zachariah as well as the priestly tribe Hezir stood out, while in the north the so-called shrine of the Judges (the Sanhedrin’s members).
Arbitrary actions of Roman Procurators of Syria, which included Judea after Agrippa I’s death, in 66 A. D. provoked an uprising, which soon turned into a real war. The small Roman garrison that was in Jerusalem was destroyed, while troops of Roman ally Agrippa II were cast out of the city. Roman regiments sent to Jerusalem in October of 66 seized the New City but were not able to hold it and as they were retreating were defeated in its vicinities. In the summer of 68 Vespasian’s soldiers approached the Jerusalem walls. But Jerusalem still remained free. In the spring of 70 a Roman army headed by Titus approached Jerusalem. Strife and bloody clashes that had been unceasingly occurring between different factions were dropped, and all the rebels united their forces for the city’s protection.
The siege of Jerusalem and battle for the city continued for five months. Several weeks after the siege began Titus managed to destroy a section of the Third Wall and captured Beth-Zeita. Having approached the Second Wall (near today’s so-called Russian quarter), Titus got hold of it after fierce fighting: people under siege fought with extreme perseverance digging saps underneath Roman earthworks and burning their siege machines. Fierce resistance caused Titus to give up the storming of the walls, and he made an attempt to take the city by attrition. Roman legions completely blocked the city, and when in the beginning of August the storm resumed the Antonia Fortress fell, and several days later the Romans after severe fighting seized the Temple and burned it. The Upper city was captured a month later. The majority of Jerusalem’s residents were killed or starved to death; those who remained were executed or sold into captivity. The city was ruined: only three towers of Herod’s Citadel and an adjoining section of the city wall that was used for protection of the Tenth Legion, which remained in the midst of the city’s ruins, were an exception.
The Roman period. For a period of time the city lay in ruins, among which a small number of residents strived to survive. When a rebellion of Jews in the Diaspora was suppressed all the Jews of the Empire experienced bloody repressions, and on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount a pagan sanctuary was erected.
In 130 Emperor Adrian visited Jerusalem and ordered that a Roman colony be built on the city’s ruins, which received the name of Aelia Capitolina. Foundation of a Roman city on Jerusalem’s ruins and desecration of the Holiest Place in the eyes of Jews with a pagan service worship became one of the main reasons for the Bar-coh-ba rebellion, during which the Jews captured the city, built a temporary Temple on that spot and, maybe, resumed offering sacrifices. Jerusalem remained in the hands of the rebels for almost three years (132-135). In the summer of 135 the Romans recaptured the city and on Adrian’s decree access to the city was barred to anybody who had been circumcised under the penalty of death.
Aelia Capitolina just like other Roman colonies was built by the pattern of a Roman military camp (a square, inside of which there were streets that crossed at a straight angle). Since then the city has not experienced any major replanning, so the general lay-out and size of today’s Old City to a great extent match those formed under Adrian. On the site of the Temple Jupiter’s sanctuary was erected; on the spot where there used to be the Holy of Holies an equestrian statue of Adrian was established. Other pagan temples were built in the city as well (those of Venus, Jupiter, Iunon and Minerva); two triumph arches and thermae were erected. Aelia Capitolina was a small provincial town. For two or three centuries a Christian community existed in the City, and Christian pilgrims flocked to it; Jewish pilgrims in fact were also allowed to visit the city but could not live in it.
The Byzantine Period. When in 324 A. D. Emperor Constantine I took possession of Eretz Israel Jerusalem obtained predominantly Christian appearance. On the site of Jesus’ burial the Church of the Sepulchre was erected, and Jews were again barred from visiting Jerusalem; an exception was at the time of Av IX when they were allowed to bemoan the destruction of the Temple on the Olive Mountain and Temple Mount which was turned into a city dump.
The situation drastically changed under the rule of Julian the Apostate who decided to give Jerusalem back to the Jews and in 363 gave an order to rebuild the Temple. An earthquake that occurred soon after that and Julian’s death several months later, however, resulted in Jews’ being barred from living in Jerusalem again, and the Temple Mount once again became a city dump. Only in 438, thanks to Empress Eudokia’s intercession Jews were once again allowed to live in the city built up and significantly enlarged by her.
A mosaic map of the time of Emperor Justinian I preserved the layout of Byzantine Jerusalem. Behind the northern (today’s Shhem or Damascus) gates there was a semi-round square with a pillar in the center (Arabic name of the gates originates from it –– Bab al-Amud –– the gates of the Pillar). Beside the church of the Sepulchre, the Forum, the Palace of the Patriarchs and towers and monasteries near today’s Jaffa gates two streets with rows of columns on the sides (Cardo an decamanus) leading from the square to the southern part of the city are also shown on the map. The Temple Square is depicted in the form of an empty ground with the only gates in the eastern fence (the Golden Gates) and a church in the south-eastern corner.
In 1614, Persians headed by Khosrau II besieged Jerusalem. Seizure of the city was accompanied by a bloody massacre and destruction of Christian sanctuaries; the Patriarch was taken away into captivity. The Jews saw in the Persians liberators from the practice of conversion into Christianity by force and supported them. For the Jews’ help in seizure of the city the Persians gave Jerusalem to them; the Jews were headed up by a man with a Messianic name Nehemiah (literally “God has comforted”) Ben Hushieel who traced his origin back to Joseph. But in 617, the Persians gave authority over to the Christian majority and executed Nehemiah and his closest companions. When in 629 the Byzantines headed by emperor Heraklius once again took possession of Jerusalem, they relentlessly slaughtered the Jews and drove them out of the city.
The Arabic Period. In 638, Patriarch Sophronius surrendered Jerusalem without fighting to the head of Arabic conquerors Caliph Omar ibn-al-Hattab. It seems like Omar ordered the Temple square be cleared up and a wooden mosque be built on the site of a Byzantine church of Mary destroyed by Persians (near al-Aks mosque built in VIII century). According to a number of testimonies, Omar had several Jewish advisers in his court, and it is to them that clearing up of ages-long garbage on the Temple Mount and maintaining good order on it was commissioned. In spite of Sophronius’ resistance Omar allowed 70 Jewish families to dwell in the city. A district south-west of the Temple Square was ceded to them; this is the place where Jews lived since that time on.