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Jerusalem began its life as a village over 5,000 years ago.
In a very real way, its location determined its future. The
site marked a central point in the spine of hills and mountains
today known as Judea in the south and Samaria in the north.
It also served as a transit point on the road from the Mediterranean
east to the world's oldest city, Jericho,
in the Jordan Valley.
But why this specific location? That has to do with water,
as it does in the development of any ancient city. Right beyond
the eastern entrance of this ancient wall of Jerusalem (lower
center) flowed a plentiful fresh water spring known as the
Gihon. The Gihon Spring provided more than enough water for
a population of thousands. Along with water to supply the
needs of the city's population, you need security. Jerusalem's
first walls were built to take full advantage of the steep
hillsides created by three valleys on three of the four sides
of the city: the Kidron Valley on the east, Hinnom on the
south, and Tyropoeon on the west. The Kidron separates the
Old City from the Mount of Olives farther east. The Hinnom
intersects the Kidron in the south. Moving first west and
then north, the Hinnom helped define the future boundaries
of the city as it expanded westward. Now just a memory, the
Tyropoeon Valley ran from south to north on earliest Jerusalem's
west side. Millennia of human occupation have filled in the
Tyropoeon Valley.
This scene offers you an artist's conception of how the city
appeared when it made it to the 'big time' of ancient settlements:
it got its own wall. We think this happened somewhere around
1800 BCE (Before the Common Era). Portions of the first wall
were discovered by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon back
in the 1960's, and can be seen in one of Jerusalem's Palestinian
suburbs, Silwan, just south of the southeast corner of the
current Old City Wall. It may be the wall that surrounded
the city during the rule of a certain priest-king named Melchizedek
with whom our ancestral father Abraham concluded a peace treaty,
as mentioned in Genesis 14. By the way, the hill just beyond
the right (north) side of the wall may be Mt. Moriah, where
Abraham would almost sacrifice Isaac in Genesis chapter 22.
This is where Solomon would build Jerusalem's first Temple
to the God of Israel.
With a population of only a few thousand within its walls
3,800 years ago, Jerusalem nonetheless managed to earn an
international reputation. It wasn't a good one.
You're looking at a clay voodoo doll known among scholars
as an 'execration text.' In Egypt 3,800 years ago, you could
visit your local scribe (since you were almost certainly illiterate)
and commission a text that cursed just about everyone you
hated, both local and out-of-town enemies. Execration texts
like this one condemned a number of foreign rulers who were
causing the Egyptians trouble of one kind or another. Along
with larger and more important cities like Hazor,
Shechem,
Ashkelon,
and Byblos,
Jerusalem is mentioned a total of three times as an enemy
of Egypt. These texts mark Jerusalem's first known appearance
on the stage of ancient world history. They also introduce
us to the beginning of a long relationship between the empire
of Egypt and her neighbor, the city-state of Jerusalem which
would someday become the capital of the kingdom of Israel.
TOMB OF KHNUMHOTEP, BENI HASSAN |
SEMITIC VISITORS TO EGYPT, CA 2000 BCE |
What did our ancestors look like from this distant time?
An Egyptian provincial governor named Khnumhotep was so impressed
with a group of visiting Semites (the ethnic ancestors of
the Jewish people) that he immortalized them by including
them in scenes from his tomb, which dates to roughly 2,000
BCE. A caravan of 37 Semites led by a fellow named Avishai
(a name which later appears in the Hebrew Bible) offers some
revealing clues about our ancestors. They were colorfully
dressed traders and craftsmen. Khnumhotep's
inscriptions tell us they came to trade stibium,
and eye-paint treasured by both Egyptian men and women.
Our visitor pictured here possessed other talents as well.
He was clearly ready to sing a song and play the lyre at one
moment, or set up a bronze casting site with his portable
bellows strapped to his donkey's back. The Hebrew Bible recalls
the musical and bronze-working skills of our mythic ancestors,
Jubal and Tubal-cain (Genesis 4). Khnumhotep was genuinely
fascinated by the colorful woven woolen garments of Avishai
and his relatives, since the Egyptians tended to wear simple
and cool garments of white flax. This early Semitic preference
for rich color in their clothes immediately reminds us of
another character from the era of the Patriarchs: Joseph and
his coat of many colors.
CIRCUMCISION RITUAL
Other scenes from Egyptian tombs point out that our cultural
cousins on the Nile shared certain features in common with
our ancestors, the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A
well known wall relief and text from the tomb of an Egyptian
physician portrays a common Egyptian surgical procedure: circumcision.
Unlike the custom of the Patriarchs where an infant was, and
is to this day circumcised on the eighth day after birth (Genesis
17), the Egyptians performed the procedure as a puberty ritual.
The captions associated with the scene tell the whole story.
The physician tells the standing patient: 'Hold firm and don't
give way!' The young patient responds: 'I will do exactly
as you say.'
As the life of Jerusalem passed from the Middle Bronze Age
of 1800 BCE to the Late Bronze Age of four centuries later,
we are offered a tragi-comic glimpse into the life of one
Jerusalem's earliest known rulers in an era when the Egyptian
Empire dominated a very quarrelsome province known as Canaan.
Around 1360 BCE, Jerusalem was ruled by one Abdiheba, a rather
hapless soul who swore his loyalty to Egypt while the rulers
of neighboring city-states were lining up to overthrow both
Abdiheba and the Egyptian yoke.
Abdiheba's boss was none other than the extraordinary Pharaoh
Akhenaten, the man who may well have invented the world's
first monotheism or one-god religion, Atenism. Akhenaten's
passion was to transform the 2,000 year old religious pantheon
of over 700 Egyptian deities by replacing them all with an
obscure god representing the disk of the sun, the Aten. Abdiheba
and Jerusalem were the least of Akhenaten's interests, and
this neglect clearly shows in the surviving cuneiform tablet
correspondence between them known as the Amarna Archive. In
one letter, Abdiheba begs Akhenaten for more Egyptian troops
to defend Egyptian interests in the Jerusalem hill country.
In another, he asks the Pharaoh to withdraw some Nubian Egyptian
archers who broke into Abdiheba's house! In the end, Abdiheba
and Akhenaten apparently lose their thrones. For Jerusalem,
this marked the beginning of a slow decline in Egyptian influence
over the next two centuries. For Egypt, Akhenaten's monotheism
died soon after its birth. The next one-god faith would begin
to evolve about a century later in the fields and villages
of the hill country north and south of Jerusalem.
Over the next two centuries (ca. 1350-1150 BCE), Egypt would
gamely try to hold onto its empire in Canaan. By 1200 BCE,
the Egyptians were struggling against new invaders who wanted
a piece of Canaan for themselves: the Sea
Peoples (Philistines) from the Aegean, and a loose confederation
of tribes the Egyptians knew as Israel. . .
Jerusalem itself struggled through these centuries, conquered
and partially rebuilt by an obscure group known as the Jebusites
who thought they could impose their own name on a city whose
name was probably a thousand years older than its now ancient
walls. By the end of the 12th century BCE, the Egyptians had
abandoned their Jerusalem-area garrison which had operated
at least since the time of Akhenaten. By the end of the 11th
century, the Jebusites' luck was about to run out.
Three thousand years ago, David and his warrior leader Joab
may have been standing at the beginning of a stairway and
at the end of a millennium: in this case, the end of the second
millennium BCE and the beginning of a subterranean stairway
leading under the walls of Jerusalem. History, chronology
and perhaps a bit of influence from Israel's politicians have
determined that David, the new king of the Israelite tribes,
conquered Jerusalem in 1005 BCE.
But exactly how did David do it? On this issue, archaeologists
and scholars of the Biblical text have been squabbling for
years. The conflict revolves around the interpretation of
an obscure passage from the book of II Samuel. Take a look
at II Samuel 5:
6-9. Depending on the translation you're reading, you'll
get a variety of English renderings. Most archaeologists argue
that the text speaks of David's conquest of the city by sneaking
in through a secret underground entrance connected to the
water supply tunnel or conduit which may have been called
a tsinnor. On the other hand, text scholars argue that David
was simply exhorting his soldiers to strike each Jebusite
a fatal slash on his tsinnor, or throat. To this day, the
means of David's conquest of Jerusalem remain a mystery. Did
he take it the usual bloody way by slashing Jebusite throats
in hand-to-hand combat, or did he and his soldiers find a
secret entrance under Jerusalem's fabled walls? We have only
the slightest clue: a presumed Jebusite aristocrat of Jerusalem,
Arauna, not only survived David's taking of Jerusalem, he
actually sold his threshing floor at full price to David as
the future site of the altar of the Temple of Solomon. What's
interesting here is that one of the leaders of the old Jebusite
city survived Jerusalem's conquest. If David and his forces
took the city by a relatively bloodless sneak attack via the
water tunnel, it's possible that David would have been relatively
lenient about putting the old leadership to the sword.
Jerusalem was now Ir-Daveed, the City of David. Now is as
good a time as any to address the all-important question:
was 1995-97 really Jerusalem 3000? The answer is: maybe.
By comparing ancient Biblical chronology with that of ancient
Mesopotamia and Egypt, most secular scholars are more-or-less
comfortable with the notion that David conquered Jerusalem
around 1000 BCE, give-or-take perhaps a decade. So why 1005
BCE? The reasons have to do as much with modern politics as
ancient history. Hershel Shanks of the Biblical Archaeology
Review notes that the original idea for the date came from
Jerusalem's mayor, Teddy Kollek. He was once told that David's
conquest had been dated by the respected archaeologist Kathleen
Kenyon at 996 BCE, so that 1996 CE would be the 3,000th anniversary.
Unfortunately, Kollek was confused by timeline math. Subtract
3000 years from 1996 CE, and you get 1004 BCE. But that's
still wrong. Since there is no "Year 0" between
BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (otherwise known as AD),
the actual year should be 1005 [cf. Shanks, Jerusalem: An
Archaeological Biography (1995), p. 11]. Another story, perhaps
apocryphal, has a poignant ending. It goes like this: Mayor
Kollek was weighing the choice of running for a final term
as mayor of Jerusalem. Now in his eighties, and having recently
recovered from major intestinal surgery, Kollek would have
every reason to retire after a quarter century as Jerusalem's
well-loved leader. However, an adviser suggested to Kollek
that a truly golden opportunity awaited him if he ran for
one more term. If elected, Kollek would complete 30 years
as mayor and would then usher in 3,000 years of David's Jerusalem.
The story goes that the temptation was too great for Kollek,
and he ran. The irony: Ehud Olmert of the Likud coalition
won the election, and is currently basking in the glory of
Jerusalem 3000. A sad and entertaining story, although the
facts are far from clear!
Whatever the actual date, David won Jerusalem about 3,000
years ago. No other tribe had succeeded in taking and holding
Jerusalem during over two centuries of the Israelite Settlement
in Canaan (roughly 1250-1000 BCE). Although David belonged
to the large and powerful tribe of Judah, Jerusalem became
his personal, dynastic possession. David, the king of all
the Israelite tribes, made Jerusalem, a city which had belonged
to none of them, the capital of all of them. In doing so,
David transcended his Judean origins and created a political
center that all the tribes could proudly claim.
CITY OF JERUSALEM
Naturally, David wanted to make Jerusalem a capital worthy
of the tribes' respect as his empire grew. The Biblical
text tells us that he expanded the millo, a stepped stone
support structure originally built before 1200 BCE to create
an enlarged and level platform for the construction of new
royal buildings in the area (II Samuel 5:9; I Chronicles 11:8).
Looking again at the rendering of Jerusalem from the Biblical
Archaeology Society, you can see the millo just above the
center of the scene. Aside from this, archaeologists have
revealed very little in Jerusalem that can confidently be
assigned to the reign of David (ca. 1010-970 BCE).
Of course, David's grand dream was to make Jerusalem both
the political and religious center of the tribes of Israel.
To accomplish this, he brought the Ark of the Covenant, containing
the now ancient Tablets of the Law from Mt Sinai, into Jerusalem.
Beyond this, he planned to transform the portable tent shrine
that served as the wandering temple (also called the Tabernacle
or mishkan) of the tribes into a permanent structure of stone:
the Temple. Towards this end, he purchased a high, wind-blown
threshing floor from a Jebusite named Arauna (noted above)
just north and above the north end of the city (scroll up
to the Jerusalem panorama above: the Temple was located at
the top right). There he built a sacrificial altar on the
site at God's command. But the Biblical text (I Chronicles
22) reports that God denied David the honor of building the
Temple. Why? The reason given was that David had "shed
so much blood on the earth" in the course of his building
of an Israelite empire. God apparently preferred a man of
peace. David's son Solomon would be that man.
The First Temple, built by Solomon, took seven years to complete
(ca. 960 BCE). Ironically, if you were a local Canaanite looking
at the outside of the Temple for the first time, you'd probably
think it was a temple of Israel's coastal neighbors, the Phoenicians.
The Bible makes no bones about the fact that the sophisticated
work of providing materials and building this structure was
undertaken at Solomon's request by the artisans of Hiram,
king of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre. Borrowing from
a more advanced, if pagan, neighboring culture was often standard
procedure in the ancient world. Sixteen centuries later, the
conquering armies of Islam would borrow architectural and
decorative elements from the Byzantine Roman world in building
the shrine that now occupies the site of Solomon's Temple;
The Dome of the Rock (see below).
 The
Biblical texts describing Solomon's Temple (I Kings 6-8 and
II Chronicles 2-5) tell the reader just enough about the Temple's
construction and features a million reconstructions that are
anything from realistic to fanciful. The reconstruction you
see here offers a conservative and believable view of the
Temple's appearance. In size, the Temple was like the Jordan
River: far smaller than you might imagine. At under 100 feet
in length, 50 feet in height, and 30 feet in width, the Temple
was only average by Phoenician standards, and positively minuscule
when compared to contemporary Egyptian or Mesopotamian religious
structures. The structure had three rooms built on an east-west
axis. The entrance on the eastern end, flanked by two mysterious
free-standing pillars named Yachin and Boaz led to the first
chamber, a kind of vestibule known as the ulam. The following
chamber, the heikhal, derives its name from the ancient Semitic
word for palace. It was the largest of the rooms at roughly
60 feet long by 30 feet wide. It is here that most of the
daily rituals were performed by the priesthood. Here the floors
and walls of cypresswood were overlaid with beaten gold sheeting
depicting cherubim, flowers and palm trees. Finally, the third
room, the debir, formed a perfect and completely darkened
cube roughly 30 feet high, wide and long. Here rested the
sacred Ark of the Covenant, protected by two gold-plated olive
wood cherubim whose wings touched each other above the Ark
and reached out to touch the opposite ends of the room. The
meaning of the word debir is intriguing. Perhaps related to
the Hebrew word for "speaking", this may suggest
that this was not only the room where the Divine presence
rested, but where God 'spoke' to the High Priest. Tradition
has it that here in this room, only on Yom Kippur, the High
Priest would utter the sacred name of God.
For those few men privileged to enter the Temple, the interior
must have inspired a variety of profound emotions we can summarize
in one word: awe. With beams of light flashing through clerestory
windows to decorated walls of gold, the heikhal created a
sense of transcendence for those who served in it. Surely,
they thought, the very presence of God was in the next room,
the devir. There, in a darkened space, a perfect cube with
a lower ceiling and a higher floor, only the High Priest would
confront the Ark containing the very word of God protected
by massive cherubs which symbolized His earthly throne.
It is probably next to impossible to convey to the reader
the emotional impact on the mind of the High Priest as he
touched the Divine Presence. We belong to a century and a
culture which have taken pride in debunking past faiths. For
example, it is now common knowledge that Israel's Temple borrowed
architectural and decorative ideas from both Phoenicia and
Egypt to create a spiritual environment appropriate for the
House of the God of Israel. Recent research, some of it dubious,
has argued that the God of Israel had a female consort; that
Israel's faith was not truly monotheistic until at least the
time of Isaiah (700 BCE) or later; that even the actual existence
of King David may be questioned. These points pale in significance
in a century where millions have declared God to be dead.
Some of these research discoveries may be true. The issue
is more than our modern loss of faith: it is our quickly disappearing
ability to feel what the ancient priests in Jerusalem could
grasp and hold so deeply: a sense of awe.
[more on the Temple]
 From
the House of God to a home for you and me is quite a leap.
You are looking at the central courtyard of the ancient equivalent
of a three bedroom, two bath ranch house. Located at Tel Qasile
in north Tel Aviv, this home possesses all the comforts (or
lack of them) that a middle-class household enjoyed from the
time of Solomon until the end of the kingdom of Judah in 586
BCE. The open courtyard was a simple and brilliant air conditioning
device that helped circulate breezes through the adjoining
rooms of the house. Here you could crush grapes or olives
in one of the plaster-line vats, weave a blanket or a rug
hung from the open rafters, or climb up a rickety ladder to
sleep under a smog-free blanket of summer stars. At times,
it must have been a wonderful life. Just keep in mind that
most of the population didn't make it much past the age of
40. [more on daily
life in ancient Israel]
David's Israelite empire collapsed with Solomon's death around
930 BCE. Solomon's son and successor, Rehoboam, took the 'tax
and spend' political policy of his father a bit too far when
he told the tribes: "My father made you bear a heavy
burden, . . . but I will make it heavier still!" (I Kings
12:14). The result was a political split of the empire into
two states: the northern country known as Israel and the southern
country named after its largest tribe, Judah. Jerusalem remained
the capital of the southern state, while Samaria ultimately
became the northern kingdom's capital.
These two Jewish kingdoms would spend the next two centuries
alternating between friendship and open conflict. Surprisingly,
the religious centrality of Jerusalem, so recently established
as the focus of Israelite worship, would endure. The great
pilgrimage festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot held
in Jerusalem would continue to command the greatest number
of visitors, while the imitation festivals established in
Israel failed to capture the respect of the people.
In the end, the rivalry of the two Jewish kingdoms would
be ended by the ominous expansion of the Assyrian Empire,
occupying what is now modern Iraq and Syria. The Assyrians
had a well-earned reputation for near genocidal brutality
against their enemies, a trait emulated by their modern successors:
Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Hafez el Asad of Syria. Over the
last two centuries, the Assyrian war machine had advanced
from its hill country homeland in the upper Tigris river valley
to expand its rule from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.
Between 734 and 722, Assyrian kings pushed the empire southward
along the Mediterranean, swallowing chunks of the northern
kingdom of Israel along the way. Finally, in the autumn of
722 BCE, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III broke through the
defenses of the Israelite capital, Samaria, after a siege
lasting two years. This marked the end of the northern Jewish
kingdom of Israel. Judah and Jerusalem were next. . .
Continue to
Part II of this course
Questions or comments? E-mail the instructor at jgrist@lehrhaus.org
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