A History of Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths

(#litres_trial_promo) and David almost certainly took over the Jebusite standing army. These were the kereti and peleti (“Cretans” and “Philistines”) of the Bible: they were mercenaries who formed David’s personal bodyguard. There was, therefore, very little disruption after King David’s conquest of the city, which retained its Jebusite character. Its new name—’Ir David—never became popular. Most people continued to use the old pre-Davidic names, Jerusalem and Zion.

Indeed, the royal family may have had Jebusite blood, since it is possible that David actually married a Jebusite woman. Later there would be strict laws forbidding Israelites to marry foreigners, but neither David nor Solomon had any scruples about this. David had seduced Bathsheba, the wife of “Uriah the Hittite,” one of the Jebusite officers of his army. (The Jebusites, it will be recalled, were related to the Hittites.) So that he could marry Bathsheba, David had arranged Uriah’s death by having him placed in a particularly dangerous position in a battle against the Ammonites. Bathsheba’s name may originally have been “Daughter of the Seven Gods” (which was written as sibbiti in cuneiform but became sheva, “seven,” in Hebrew).

(#litres_trial_promo) The son born to David and Bathsheba was thus half Jebusite. He was given the good Israelite name Jedidiah (“Beloved of Yahweh”), as a sign that he had been chosen as David’s heir, but the name his parents gave him was Solomon, which may have been connected with Shalem, the ancient deity of Jerusalem. The Chronicler, however, connects it with the Hebrew shalom: unlike his father, Solomon would be a man of “peace.”

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Other famous Jerusalemites who would become very important in the Jewish tradition may also have been Jebusites. One of these was the prophet Nathan.

(#litres_trial_promo) We are told of the origins of nearly every other prophet in the Bible, but Nathan is introduced without even a patronymic. Perhaps he was the adviser of the Jebusite king; if so, he would have been a very helpful mediator between David and his new Jebusite subjects. Thus Nathan rebuked David sternly after the death of Uriah, not because he was imbued with Mosaic morality but because such a flagrant abuse of power would have been reprehensible in any Near Eastern monarch who had vowed to establish justice in his kingdom. The murder of Uriah could also have gravely damaged David’s relations with the Jebusite population. Zadok, the chief priest of Jerusalem, may also have been a Jebusite, though this has been hotly disputed in the past.

(#litres_trial_promo) Later, as we shall see, all the priests of Israel had to prove that they were Zadok’s descendants, since by that time Zadok had become a symbol of Jewish authenticity. But Zadok is a Jebusite name. Later the Chronicler gave him an impeccable genealogy which traced his ancestry back to Aaron, but it is five generations longer than the number of generations which were supposed to have elapsed between David and Aaron.

(#litres_trial_promo) Perhaps the Chronicler also incorporated Zadok’s own Jebusite lineage. To have dismissed the chief priest of El Elyon could have alienated the local people. To satisfy the Israelites, David appointed Abiathar, a descendant of the old priesthood of Shiloh, to serve alongside Zadok. But Abiathar would not long survive David’s death, and it was Zadok who became the chief priest of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the sight of an Israelite and a Jebusite priest serving side by side was emblematic of the coexistence that David wanted to establish in Jerusalem. He needed symbols that could unite his increasingly disparate kingdom and hold its various elements together. David called one of his sons Baalida, showing that he was open to the local Zion traditions, and many of the Jebusites’ old cultic practices on Mount Zion would blend fruitfully with the Israelite traditions of Yahweh in Jerusalem.

One of David’s first acts was to move the Ark of the Covenant, which was still lodged in Kireath-Jearim on the western border of his kingdom, into Jerusalem. This was an inspired, if perilous, decision. The people of the northern kingdom who still felt uneasy about David would have been impressed by the presence of the Ark, which enshrined their most sacred traditions, in his city. It would legitimize his rule and also transform Jerusalem, which had no religious significance for Yahwists, into a holy place. But David’s first attempt to transfer the Ark ended in tragedy. It was not up to human beings to establish a holy place on their own initiative: the sanctity of a site had to be revealed. Yahweh had often been envisaged as a mobile god in the past, but he could not be moved about at the mere whim of a king. A sacred object is potentially dangerous and can be approached only by those who have taken the proper precautions. This became fatally apparent during the Ark’s first journey when Uzzah, one of the attendants, put out his hand to steady it when it seemed in danger of falling from the cart, and was killed instantly. The Ark symbolized Yahweh’s presence, and the incident showed that David was attempting to bring a mighty and unpredictable power into the city, not a pious souvenir. If Yahweh came to live in Zion it would be because he—and he alone—had chosen to do so.

Three months later, David tried again. This time Yahweh did allow the Ark to enter the territory of Jerusalem without mishap. David danced and whirled before the Ark, clad only in a brief linen garment, like a priest. Periodically he stopped the procession and sacrificed a sheep and a goat. Finally the Ark was carried into the tent-shrine that had been prepared for it beside the Gihon Spring, with great ceremony and rejoicing.

(#litres_trial_promo) By deigning to dwell in the City of David, Yahweh gave an unequivocal sign that he had indeed chosen David to be King of Israel. Henceforth, Yahweh’s choice of Zion as a permanent home was inextricably linked to his election of the House of David. This became clear when David decided that it was time to build a temple for Yahweh in Jerusalem. When he first mooted the idea to Nathan, the prophet was enthusiastic. It was the duty of a Near Eastern monarch to build a house for the god on whom his rule depended. But Yahweh had other plans: he told Nathan that he had always led the life of a wanderer in a tent. He did not want a house for himself; instead, he would build a house for David, a dynasty that would last forever.

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Perhaps Nathan feared that it was too soon for David to dethrone El Elyon by building a temple to a foreign god within Jebusite Jerusalem. David may have chosen the site of the Gihon Spring, outside the walls, out of respect for Jebusite sensibilities. Or perhaps the tribes of Israel and Judah were averse to the idea: they may have become attached to Yahweh’s nomadic image and been reluctant to see him becoming like all the other gods of Canaan, confined to a particular sanctuary. Perhaps people feared the power that such a temple would bring to David. The biblical writers may have included the story of Yahweh’s refusal of a temple because they were disturbed that David, their ideal king, had failed to build a temple for his God. The Chronicler thought that David had been denied this high honor because he had shed too much blood and that Solomon had been given the privilege because he was a man of peace.

(#litres_trial_promo) We have seen that building had a religious significance in the cities of the ancient world. David had achieved other construction work in Jerusalem, as befitted a king. He had built himself a palace of cedar wood brought from the Lebanon; he had repaired the “Millo,” a word that seems to puzzle the biblical writers but probably referred to the old terraces on the Ophel. He had also built the Tower of David, a new citadel. To accommodate the growing number of civil servants, craftsmen, and soldiers that his expanding empire required, he had enlarged the city, breaking down the walls at one point to do so. But just as Moses, who had led the people out of Egypt, had died on the threshold of the Promised Land, David had led the people of Yahweh into Jerusalem but had not been permitted to build the temple that would one day make this Jebusite city the holiest place in the Jewish world.

He had at least been able to prepare the ground by purchasing the site of the future Temple of Solomon from Araunah, who may have been the last Jebusite king. David had sinned, our authors tell us, by ordering a census. This was always an unpopular measure, because it was usually a prelude to taxation and forced labor. As a result, God sent a plague upon the kingdom which killed seventy thousand people in three days. Finally David saw Yahweh’s “angel” standing beside the threshing floor of Araunah on Mount Zion, with his arm outstretched toward the city below. David could only avert the plague, he was informed by a court prophet, by building an altar to Yahweh on the site of this theophany. The biblical writers show David and Araunah working harmoniously together during this crisis. The incident is reminiscent of Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite. Like Ephron, Araunah wanted to give the place away without charging David a single shekel, but David, who could simply have annexed the area, behaved with admirable courtesy and respect toward his predecessor and insisted on paying the full price.

(#litres_trial_promo) Today many scholars believe that the site may have been one of the holy places of Jebusite Jerusalem: threshing floors were often used in Canaan for public meetings or prophetic divination or in the fertility cult of Baal, and a floor such as that owned by Araunah, in a high exposed position at the entrance of the city, could well have been used in the cult.

(#litres_trial_promo) The biblical writers do not mention this, perhaps because they were disturbed by the possibility of their Temple having been built on a pagan bamah (cult place), but such continuity was common in antiquity. Araunah shows no anger but seems quite willing to share this sacred space with David, even offering to pay for the first sacrifice on the new altar. Holiness was not something that human beings could own or feel possessive about. The theophany had shown that the place belonged to the gods, and in the next generation, the children of David and of Araunah would pray together on Mount Zion.

David is also said to have collected the materials for a new temple, sending to his ally Hiram, King of Tyre, for cedarwood and juniper. The Chronicler in particular cannot bear the idea that David took no part in the building of the Temple. He tells us that Yahweh had revealed the plan of the future sanctuary in minute detail and that David then passed on these divine instructions to his son Solomon.

(#litres_trial_promo) The Temple could thus be built “in accordance with what Yahweh with his hand had written in order to make the whole work clear for which he was providing the plans.”

(#litres_trial_promo) A king could not choose the site of a temple: it had to be built at a site which had been revealed as one of the “centers” of the world. That is why kings so often chose sites of former temples which were known to yield access to the divine. In the same way, an architect was not expected to be original when he designed a new temple. It was to be a symbol. The Greek from which this word derives means that two things have been put together, and in the premodern world this idea was taken very seriously. It was the basis of ancient religion. A temple had to be a copy of the god’s heavenly home, and it was this likeness which linked the celestial archetype with its earthly replica here below, making the two in some sense one. This close similarity was what made it possible for the deity to reside in his mundane sanctuary as he did in his heavenly palace. Consequently the plans of a temple had to be revealed, as they were to David, so that the dimensions and furnishings of the god’s home in the world above could be accurately reproduced on earth.

Yet there was also a strong political element in all this. By conveying the Ark to Jerusalem, David was gradually appropriating the city. First he had brought the most sacred object of his people to the foot of the Ophel and then, by purchasing the threshing floor of Araunah, was preparing the way for Yahweh’s eventual enthronement in his own temple on Mount Zion. Under Solomon, Yahweh would become the El Elyon of Jerusalem, its Most High God. In the same way, David was building a small empire for himself step by step. First he subjugated the Philistines; indeed, he may have defeated them in the Valley of Rephaim, southwest of Jerusalem, before he conquered the city. At some stage, he must also have incorporated the other city-states of Canaan into his empire, though the Bible does not mention this. They may have accepted vassal status. Finally he subdued the neighboring kingdoms of Moab and Edom, together with a substantial area in Syria. (See map.) The Israelites did not forget the Kingdom of David: never again would they be so politically powerful. There is no mention of the kingdom in any of the other Near Eastern texts of the period, however, and for this reason it has been thought by some to be a fantasy which, like the stories of the Patriarchs, has no real historical basis. But the general scholarly consensus is that the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah did indeed exist. Too many political, economic, and commercial details in the biblical account mesh with what we know of Near Eastern society at this time for the empire of David to be an entire fabrication. Mesopotamia and Egypt were both in decline, preoccupied with their own affairs, and may have had no contact with the Davidic state. Moreover, the Bible does not idealize the kingdom. Alongside the glowing descriptions, we also read of a nation bitterly divided against itself, exceeding its resources, and clearly heading for a crisis.

David may have been a hero posthumously, but he was not universally loved in his own lifetime. His son Absalom led a revolt against him, erecting a monument to himself at the spring of En Rogel, a cult-place associated with the Jebusite monarchy, and was acclaimed King of Israel and Judah at Hebron. The situation was so grave that David had to flee Jerusalem and crushed the revolt, which had popular support, only with his superior military capability. The union between Israel and Judah was also fragile, since David seems to have favored his own Kingdom of Judah. After Absalom’s revolt, the whole of Israel seceded from his United Kingdom, and again David could reassert his power only by using force. At the very end of his life, there was a split between the Jebusites and the Israelites in Jerusalem. As David lay dying, his eldest surviving son, Adonijah, had himself crowned at En Rogel with the backing of the old garde of Hebron, including Joab, the commander, and Abiathar, the priest. What can perhaps be called the Jebusite faction obtained David’s support for a countercoup. Nathan, Zadok, and Bathsheba, accompanied by the old Jebusite army of kereti and peleti, took Solomon to Yahweh’s shrine beside the Gihon Spring and crowned him there with great fanfare. Adonijah immediately surrendered, and together with Joab he was eventually executed, while Abiathar the priest was banished. When David died, the Jebusite party could be said to have triumphed over the newcomers to Jerusalem.

Under David, Jerusalem ceased to be a minor Canaanite city-state and became the capital of an empire. Under Solomon, who began his reign in about 970 BCE, Jerusalem acquired a regional status and doubled in size. Solomon had a huge harem of princesses, the daughters of allied or subject kings. He also achieved the rare distinction of marrying one of the pharaoh’s daughters. The kingdom now had a powerful army of chariots—the latest in military technology—and a fleet at Ezion Geber on the Gulf of Aqaba. Solomon became an arms dealer, trading chariots and horses with Egypt and Cilicia. The Bible tells us that the Queen of Sheba (in modern Yemen) came to visit Solomon, attracted by his reputation for wisdom. The story may reflect the growing importance of Solomon’s kingdom, since if he had started to trade in the Red Sea this might have upset the Sabean economy. Solomon achieved legendary status; his wealth and wisdom were said to be prodigious, and, as befitted a successful king, he embarked on a massive building project, restoring the old fortress cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Arad.

Jerusalem became a cosmopolitan city and was the scene of Solomon’s most ambitious construction program. Extending the city to the north, Solomon built a royal acropolis on the site of Araunah’s old estate on the crest of Mount Zion: its plan, as far as we can tell from the biblical sources, was similar to other tenth-century acropolises which have been unearthed at several sites in Syria and northwestern Mesopotamia. It consisted of an elaborate Temple to Yahweh and a royal palace for the king, which, significantly, took nearly twice as long to build as the Temple.

(#litres_trial_promo) There were also other buildings: the cedar-pillared House of the Forest of Lebanon, whose function is not entirely clear to us; a treasury; the Judgment Hall, containing Solomon’s magnificent ivory throne; and a special palace for the daughter of the pharaoh, Solomon’s most illustrious wife.

None of this has survived. Our knowledge of the Temple, which proved to be the most important of these buildings, is derived entirely from the biblical writers, who dwelt lovingly on every remembered detail, sometimes long after the building itself had been destroyed. It was dedicated to Yahweh and designed to house the Ark of the Covenant. Unlike most Near Eastern temples, it contained no effigy of the presiding deity to symbolize his presence, since from the time he had revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush Yahweh had refused to be defined or represented in human iconography. But in every other respect, the Temple conformed to the usual Canaanite and Syrian model. It was built and probably designed by Tyrian craftsmen and seems to have been a typical example of Syrian imperial architecture.

(#litres_trial_promo) Ordinary worshippers did not enter the temple buildings, and the sacrifices were performed in the courtyard outside. The sanctuary itself was quite small and consisted of three parts: the Vestibule (Ulam), at the eastern end; the cult hall (Hekhal); and, up a short flight of steps, the Holy of Holies (Devir), which housed the Ark and was hidden by a curtain of blue, crimson, and purple linen.

(#litres_trial_promo) (See diagram.) The furniture shows how thoroughly the Jerusalem cult of Yahweh had accommodated itself to the spiritual landscape of the Near East. Apart from the Ark, there were no obvious symbols of the Exodus. Instead, the Bible tells us, there were two large golden candlesticks in the Hekhal, together with a golden table for shewbread, and an incense altar of gold-plated cedarwood. There was also a bronze serpent, later said to have been the one used by Moses to cure the people of plague, but which was probably connected with the old Jebusite cult.

(#litres_trial_promo) At the entrance of the Ulam were two freestanding pillars, known enigmatically as “Yakhin” and “Boaz,” and outside,

(#litres_trial_promo) in the open courtyard, stood the imposing altar of sacrifice and a massive bronze basin, supported by twelve brazen oxen, representing Yam, the primal sea. The walls of the Temple, within and without, were covered with carved figures of cherubs, palm trees, and open flowers.

(#litres_trial_promo) Syrian influence is clear. The bronze sea recalled Baal’s battle with Yam-Nahar, the oxen were common symbols of divinity and fertility, while the pillars Yakhin and Boaz may have been Canaanite standing-stones (matzevot). The biblical authors refer to the Canaanite rather than the Hebrew calendar when they describe the building of the Temple, and its dedication in the month of “Ethanim” (September/October) could have coincided with the autumn festival of Baal, which celebrated his victory over Mot and his enthronement on Mount Zaphon. In the Israelite tradition, this festival would be known as Sukkoth (Tabernacles), and eventually, as we shall see, this agricultural celebration would be reinterpreted and linked to the Exodus.

CONJECTURAL PLAN OF SOLOMON’S TEMPLE

1. Devir (Holy of Holies)

2. Hekhal (the cult hall)

3. Ulam (Vestibule)

4. Chambers

5. Jachin and Boaz pillars

6. Winding staircase

7. The Ark

8. The Cherubim

9. Tables for candlesticks

10. Incense altar

11. Table of shewbread

Yet the Temple, teeming with apparently “pagan” imagery, became the most cherished institution in Israel. Some prophets and reformers would feel unhappy about it and urge the people to return to the purer religion of the Exodus, but when Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, most Israelites felt their world had come to an end. Perhaps we should not be surprised that most of the people found these symbols of Canaanite and Syrian myth compatible with the religion of the Ark and the Exodus. We have seen that the legends of the Exodus had transposed, in another key, the old myths of Baal and Marduk. If we see the Exodus story as merely a historical event which is “true,” then Baal’s battle with Yam is simply a fantasy that is “false.” But if instead we look for the inner meaning of the Exodus events and experience its power as a timeless truth, we can see that the brazen sea in the courtyard of Solomon’s Temple was not entirely out of place. Both speak of that endless battle with the powers of darkness and of a rite of passage. Just as Jews remind themselves that every generation must regard itself as having escaped from slavery in Egypt, the presence of Yam was a reminder that the forces of chaos were never entirely overcome. Placed at the threshold of the Temple, which housed the divine Presence, it was a reminder of the challenge and effort that the creativity inspired by the sacred seems to inspire and require.

We know from the psalms which are connected with the Jerusalem cult of Yahweh that the Temple was imaginatively associated with Mount Zion. Once the Ark was installed there, the site became for the Israelites a “center” that linked heaven and earth and also had its roots in the underworld, represented by the primal sea. Like the Sacred Mountain, the Temple was a symbol of the reality that sustains the life of the cosmos. Like Jacob’s ladder, it represented a bridge to the source of being, without which the fragile mundane world could not subsist. Because it was built in a place where the sacred had revealed itself in the past, worshippers could hope to make contact with that divine power. When they entered the holy precincts, they had stepped into another dimension which, they believed, existed contemporaneously with the mundane world and kept it in being. Mount Zion had become radically different from the surrounding territory, therefore: in Hebrew the word for “holy” (kaddosh) means “other,” “set apart.” The very plan of the building, with its three-tiered gradations of sanctity culminating in the Devir (the Holy of Holies), symbolized the transcendence of the sacred. Entry to the Devir was prohibited to all except the priests; it remained silent, void, and inaccessible. Yet since it enshrined the Ark and the Presence, it tacitly bore witness to the fact that the sacred could enter the world of men and women: it was at once immanent and transcendent.

Built on the summit of the sacred mountain of Zion, the Temple also represented the Garden of Yahweh, as described by J in the second and third chapters of Genesis.

(#litres_trial_promo) The great candlesticks resembled branched trees, covered with almonds and flowers; the palm trees and flowers on the doors and walls of the Hekhal also recalled the garden where the cherubim had walked at the beginning of time; there was even a serpent. J may have been writing during the reign of King Solomon, but even if he lived at a later date, he had clearly been influenced by the spirituality of the Temple. When Marduk created the world, he built a temple, but, J tells us, after Yahweh completed the creation, he planted a garden, where he walked in the cool of the evening and conversed familiarly with the first human beings at the dawn of history.

In the Eden story, we can see what the divine meant for the Israelite worshippers in Solomon’s Temple. As in all the myths of the lost paradise, Eden was a place where there had been easy access to the heavenly world. Indeed, Eden was itself an experience of the sacred. It was, J says, the source of the world’s fertility; in its midst was a river that divided into four streams once it had left the garden and fructified the rest of the earth: one of these streams was called the Gihon. In the Temple there were two large candlesticks; in Eden there were two trees, which, with their power to regenerate themselves each year, were common symbols of the divine. Eden was an experience of that primal wholeness which human beings all over the world sought in their holy places. God and humanity were not divided but could live in the same place; the man and woman did not know that they were different from each other; there was no distinction between good and evil. Adam and Eve, therefore, existed on a plane that transcends all opposites and all divisions: it is a unity that is beyond our experience and is quite inconceivable to us in our fragmented existence, except in rare moments of ecstasy or insight. It was a mythical description of that harmony which people in all cultures have felt to have been meant for humanity. Adam and Eve lost it when they “fell” and were ejected from the divine presence and barred from Eden. Yet when the worshippers entered Solomon’s Temple, its imagery and furnishings helped them to make an imaginary return to the Garden of Yahweh and to recover—if only momentarily—a sense of the paradise they had lost. It healed in them that sense of separation which, we have seen, lies at the root of the religious quest. The liturgy and architecture all aided this spiritual journey to that unity which is inseparable from the reality that we call “God” or the “sacred.”

These ideas are also implicit in J’s story of the Tower of Babel, which describes the creation of a perverse holy place. Instead of waiting for the sacred site to be revealed to them, human beings themselves take the initiative. “Come … let us build ourselves a town and a tower with its top reaching heaven.” This attempt to scale the heavens is an act of pride and self-aggrandizement: the men concerned want to “build a name for themselves.” The result is not unity but discord and fragmentation. To punish these people for their presumption, God “scattered them thence over the whole face of the earth” and muddled their language so that they could no longer understand one another. Henceforth the place was called Babel, “because God had confused (bll) the language of the whole earth there.”

(#litres_trial_promo) J’s story reveals a profound hostility towards Babylon and its imposing ziggurats. Instead of being a “gate of the gods” (bab-ilani), it was the source of the alienation, disharmony, and disunity that characterizes mundane existence at its worst. Quite different was the worshippers’ experience in Zion, the city of peace (shalom) and reconciliation. There the people of Israel could congregate on the holy mountain that God himself had established as his heritage, not on an artificially constructed sacred mountain rooted in human ambition and the lust for power.