Jerusalem
had never seen such misery in the thousand years
or so since David made it his capital. It was 70
AD and the Romans had brutalised the city and its
inhabitants with an army three times the size needed
to invade Britain, killing 600,000 Jews in the aftermath.
Referring to this in 1868 in his commentary on Matthew,
C.H. Spurgeon said "The destruction of Jerusalem
was more terrible than anything that the world has
ever witnessed, either before or since"(page 412).
The Temple had been utterly destroyed and so, almost,
had Judaism itself, if a leading Pharisee, Yochanan
Ben Zakkai, hadn't been able to escape in a coffin
and set up an academy in Yavneh by the coast. This,
subsequently, became the center for the Jewish community
in the land and ensured the future of Rabbinic Judaism.
Jews who were followers of the new Christian faith
had already fled Jerusalem for Pella, in response
to the prophecy of Jesus in Luke 21:20 "When you
see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will
know that its desolation is near". After filling
in the details with unerring accuracy Jesus uttered
the following pronouncement, in verse 24, "Jerusalem
will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times
of the Gentiles are fulfilled". This is the story
of that trampling of the land, God's Covenant land,
by nations outside of the Covenant He made with
Abraham over 2000 years earlier.
The story wasn't quite over for the Jews in the
land, but it was the beginning of the end of their
majority status. Some zealots had a famous last
stand at Masada in 73AD, preferring suicide to capture
by the Romans, serving as an enduring national symbol
of defiance for modern Israel. Others escaped the
enemy's clutches and were sufficiently emboldened
to organize a second Jewish revolt. They were led
by Simon bar Kochba, who was proclaimed Messiah
by a leading scholar, Rabbi Akiva, in order to attach
an apocryphal element to the struggle. Messianic
Jews, believing that the Messiah, Jesus, had already
come, found it impossible to follow this man and
this cemented the final split between these Christian
Jews and their brethren. This revolt exploded in
132 AD, significantly on the very same day, the
9th of Av, when both the First and the Second Temple
had been destroyed! In order to blot out any Jewish
associations with the land, the Romans renamed The
City of Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina, forbidding
any Jew from living there and the land was given
the name Palestine. This is the first use of the
name Palestine. It is a Roman name, not an Arabic
name, and derives from Philistine, historic arch-enemies
of the Jews - just to give that added bit of spite!
It is interesting to note that in virtually every
current Bible you can mention, any map shown of
the Holy Land in Biblical times will invariably
include the heading "Palestine", even though this
name, unlike "Israel", was not in existence until
100 years after the resurrection.
So we now enter the Times of the Gentiles. After
the second Jewish revolt the center of Judaism moved
to the north, to Galilee, which held the largest
concentration of Jews in the country. Gentiles were
concentrated on the coastal plain. The next event
of historical note was the Christianization of Europe
under Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century and
the official beginning of state-sponsored anti-Semitism,
on the mistaken grounds that the Church has supplanted
the Jewish people as 'God's chosen' and therefore
the Jews "must be utterly rejected by God", giving
the right to the Church to "carry out God's will"
in persecuting Jews at every opportunity. Christianity
returned to the Holy Land with a vengeance, under
the banner of the Byzantine Empire. In 326 AD Constantine
built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem
on the supposed site of Jesus' burial and the city
became the spiritual capital of the Empire. Missionary
work commenced in Galilee, provoking a Jewish revolt
in 351 AD and, although this area continued being
an important Jewish center, many Churches were built
there alongside the synagogues. There were also
troubles between Jews and Christians in Samaria.
The revolt, already mentioned, led to the destruction
of many Jewish settlements there. The coastal cities,
such as Gaza and Ashkelon, with a lower Jewish population,
became important commercial centers, exporting,
among other things, religious paraphernalia - after
all, this was the Holy Land - to the rest of the
Christian world. The southern area of the land,
the Negev, became a favourite among the new Christian
inhabitants. The deep south was used as a place
of exile for misbehaving bishops and the Sinai area
was already attracting the interest of pilgrims
and religious tourists. In 614 AD the Persian Empire
came to visit, conquering Jerusalem in the usual
brutal manner, burning many of the churches that
had sprung up there and killing many priests. For
the only time in history there were no Jewish deaths
- Jews, if you remember, had been expelled from
the city by the Romans five hundred years earlier.
At about that time came the event that is very much
at the heart of the current conflict. A 40 year
old Arab called Muhammed had a religious experience
and Islam was born. Six years after his death the
Muslims were in the Holy Land, having defeated the
Romans at the battle of Yarmouk. They captured Jerusalem
from the Byzantines, who had wrenched it back from
the Persians nine years earlier. On the Temple mount
they built the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock in
691 AD, still there today as the city's most recognizable
and controversial feature. It was about that time
that Muslims also identified Jerusalem as the third
holiest site of the Islamic faith. This was curious
as the Koran, their holy book, says nothing about
Jerusalem (although the Old Testament mentions it
over 700 times), despite there being hundreds of
references to the other two holy sites, Mecca and
Medina. There is also no historical evidence that
Mohammed ever visited Jerusalem. These are important
facts to consider in t he context of the current
conflict.
Yet it was welcome relief from Byzantine rule as
Jews were now allowed back into Jerusalem and, in
general, Jewish communities throughout the land
were allowed to prosper, particularly in Tiberias
in Galilee. Under Muslim rule, Jews were considered
as one of the "people of the Book" and were given
a "protected" status, a much better deal than the
Christians ever gave them! The Muslims used the
coastal cities of Tyre, Acre and Caesarea pretty
much as their Christian predecessors did, as important
centres of commerce with the outside world. Later
on in their rule they even populated these towns
with Muslims from other parts of their Empire, such
as Persia, in order to strengthen their hold. These
tended to be soldiers, to fight off constant attack
from Byzantine ships from the west. The Negev, of
earlier interest for Christian pilgrims, was now
a place of interest for Muslim pilgrims, as it was
an important route to Islamic holy places. In 969
AD the country was invaded by the Fatimids, from
Egypt, who were also Muslims. They (naturally) captured
Jerusalem and were more aggressive in their faith
than their predecessors, destroying all the non-Muslim
religious buildings, including the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, built six centuries earlier. |
