Jerusalem, past and future

Ownership is contested because, whenever Jerusalem has changed hands, occupation has been by force rather than by right. The displaced feel resentment, having lived there for generations, long before the immigrants ousted them from their homes. On the other hand, the displaced themselves – considered as a racial group – were not the first to live there. In the absence of an accepted sovereign authority, ownership cannot be decided by title deeds; it has become an argument about history and divine will.

The oldest archaeological remains in Jerusalem date to the Chalcolithic Age, in the 4th millennium. When a city, a permanent walled settlement, was built there is not known. Much later, the name Rusalimum is attested on an Egyptian doll dating to Egypt’s 12th Dynasty: after being so inscribed the doll was smashed in the hope that, with the appropriate incantation, the city itself would be smashed. The 12th Dynasty was about the time of Joseph, great-grandson of Abraham.

The oldest biblical mention occurs in the book of Genesis. Abraham, having rescued his kinsman Lot from a company of armed robbers, is greeted by Melchizedek, king of Salem. We know little about this Melchizedek, only that his name means ‘the King is righteous’ and that as well as the head administrator he was a priest who worshipped the Creator of heaven and earth. Since kings in the Ancient Near East always ruled as viceroys of the deity who owned the city, we may say that the first owner of the city was God himself, Melchizedek’s name a reference to God as righteous. Melchizedek was a type of the Son of God who would one day rule Jerusalem on behalf of his father.

Since his name was similar to Adonizedek’s, a Jebusite king of Jerusalem defeated by Joshua in the 15th century BC, it seems likely that Melchizedek was also a Jebusite. A Jebusite was an inhabitant of ‘Jebus’, an older name for Jerusalem and originally the name of its eponymous Canaanite founder (naming settlements after their founder was a common practice, e.g. Num 32:42). Their land was part of the territory that God gave to Abraham’s offspring (Gen 15:18-21). But despite Adonizedek’s defeat, the Israelites were unable to drive the Jebusites out of Jerusalem. Indeed it was still in their hands when David conquered the city in 1007 BC, and David included them in his administration. Although no longer their own masters, they continued to live in the city and its environs and they retained many rights of ownership. Araunah, from whom David bought a threshing floor on Mount Moriah, was a Jebusite, not an Israelite.

Jerusalem was Judah’s capital for 400 years, until 607 BC, when it fell to the Babylonian heir-apparent, Nebuchadrezzar. He exacted tribute and deported some of the nobility to Babylon. Unwilling to accept foreign domination, the Jews repeatedly rebelled, but to no avail. In 586 BC the king destroyed the city and deported the population to Babylon, all except the poorest. There they remained until 536, when a new conqueror, the Persian king Cyrus, invited the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. Some took up the invitation; others remained. By the time of Xerxes (486-465 BC) there were Jews all over the Persian empire, from India to Ethiopia.

The Persians controlled Jerusalem for some two centuries. In 330 BC they were conquered by the Macedonians, led by Alexander the Great. After his death, Alexander’s empire was divided among his generals and split into four. Judah was allotted to Seleucus. Among his successors the most notorious was Antiochus IV, who thought that he was God in human form (that is what he claimed). Disgusted by his Hellenising government, many Jews rose in revolt, but they were massacred in their thousands, following which Antiochus outlawed the worship of Yahweh and rededicated the Temple to Zeus, supreme god of the Greek pantheon. A vision given to Daniel during the Babylonian exile prefigured Antiochus’s reign as the rise of a ‘little horn’ that came out of one of the four kingdoms after the death of Alexander. In remarkable detail his career was also foretold in Daniel 11. The ‘abomination that makes desolate’ was the erection of Zeus’s image in the Holy of Holies.

Antiochus died in 164 BC, on which occasion the Jews achieved a measure of autonomy. In 142 BC, they elected Simon Maccabaeus to be ‘prince and high priest forever, until there should arise a faithful prophet’ (I Maccabees 14:41). He was not of the Davidic line, and perhaps for that reason the title ‘king’ was initially avoided. The new ‘Hasmonean’ dynasty eventually became strong enough to conquer the surrounding lands of Transjordan, Samaria, Galilee and Idumaea (Edom).

In 63 BC Judaea became a protectorate of Rome. Although still allowed their own kings, the Jews were no longer their own masters and had to pay Rome tribute. They yearned for a Saviour who would restore the nation’s sovereignty. Some hoped that a man called Yeshua (Jesus) would be such a king: he was descended from David, performed many miraculous signs, and appeared to have the anointing of God. But his first priority was a more fundamental problem: sin, something they shared with their oppressors. He declared that he came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. His own body, a temple of the Holy Spirit, would replace the temple of stone, so that, spiritually, true worshippers would find their place in him. Some recognised him as their Messiah, most did not. He was arrested, found guilty under false charges, and executed. In AD 70, following another revolt, Jerusalem was sacked, the national temple demolished, and those who were not slaughtered sold into slavery and exiled. More than a million lost their lives.

It was the fulfilment of God’s wrath on the Jews. Many of them were themselves crucified. From henceforth, Jerusalem was ruled by, and mostly populated by, peoples of Gentile origin – whether pagan, Muslim or Christian.

In AD 395 the Roman Empire split into a western block centred on Rome and an eastern block centred on Constantinople, later known as Byzantium. Jerusalem was part of the eastern block. In 637 it was conquered by Arabs united by a new religion that would later be known as Islam. With Arabia under their control, within five years they went on to conquer the entire Middle East, from Egypt to Mesopotamia. The iconic ‘Dome of the Rock’ was completed in 691, built on the site of the former Jewish Temple and taking its octagonal shape from the church that previously stood there. The Al-Aqsa mosque, on the precinct opposite, was completed in 709.

In the 8th to 11th centuries the Muslim empire looked to expand still further, with attacks on Spain, France, Constantinople and Central Asia. It also underwent a number of dynastic upheavals, as the Umayyad caliphs were replaced by the Abassids, and the Abassids by the Fatimids in the south and Seljuks in the north. From their base in Anatolia (Turkey) the Seljuks forged an empire that extended all the way to Hindu Kush. Much diminished and fearful for its survival, the Byzantine empire besought the Pope for military help. Eventually he organised a Crusade to drive the infidels out of the Holy Land. There were several such crusades, the most successful and bloody being the first. In 1099 Jerusalem came under European rule. Nearly all its inhabitants, tens of thousands, were massacred. In the following century Saladin reunited the empires of Egypt and Syria and founded the Ayyubid dynasty, retaking the city for Islam in 1187. He showed more mercy to the inhabitants than the Crusaders did. The new settlers included a number of Jews.

In 1219 Jerusalem’s walls, only recently rebuilt, were destroyed, in order to render the city indefensible should the Crusaders recapture it. The city was to remain unwalled for over three hundred years, when the present walls were built. From 1250 Jerusalem was ruled by the Egyptians.

In 1453 Ottoman Turkey captured Constantinople, so that this last remnant of the Byzantine Empire became the beginnings of the Ottoman. At its maximum extent, it encompassed the coastlands of North Africa, the coastlands of Eastern Europe, the whole of Turkey, Mesopotamia and most of Persia. In 1517 Jerusalem also submitted. The city remained in Muslim hands until 1917, though a small Jewish community was also allowed to live there. At that time Europe was mired in war, the Ottomans siding with Germany and Austria-Hungary. On 9 December 1917 the British Army captured Jerusalem.

In 1922 the newly formed League of Nations confirmed Britain as Palestine’s governing authority until such time as its people could govern themselves. Spurred by pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, many Jews were agitating to be given Palestine as their homeland. With Britain sympathetic, Jewish immigration began to accelerate, particularly after the Second World War, and tension between the indigenous and immigrant populations intensified. In 1947 the United Nations (successor to the League of Nations) approved a plan for the partitioning of Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem under international administration. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, Arab leaders rejected it. Civil war erupted. The following year, as the British Mandate was about to expire, David Ben-Gurion, head of the World Zionist Organization, announced the establishment of the State of Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq invaded the country to prevent this but were eventually beaten back. In addition to the territory allocated in the United Nations resolution, Israel also took over 60% of the proposed Arab state. Many Arabs fled or were evicted and ended up in permanent refugee camps, while the Jewish population swelled as a result of immigration, more or less forced, from Arab countries. Jerusalem was divided, with its western half under Israeli control and its eastern half in Jordanian hands. Arabs and Jews again went to war in 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, more than two thousand years of Gentile rule had come to an end.

Jesus instructed his disciples: “Do not make any oath, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King.” The Great King was God himself (Ps 48), and the city belonged to him. He would one day reign from Jerusalem over all the nations of the earth.