5000 Years in 15 minutes: A Short History of Jerusalem

a.k.a How We Got Into the Shit We Are Now In

My mom showed me this video:




This woman shown is stupid and ignorant: no huge revelation.

But this video prompted my mom to ask me about the history of Jewish and Arab relations in the area, mainly who was there first. This turned into me giving her a rundown of the history of Jerusalem and the region in general in about 10 minutes. Here it is reproduced to the best of my recollection:

(Note: I know that this is very terse and simplistic. That’s the point.)

In order to determine who was “there first,” one has to go back all the way to 3000 B.C. It was around this time that a man from the Sumerian city state of Ur named Abram was told by his God to travel to the land of Canaan. (His house can still be seen in modern day Iraq. If it hasn’t been blown up yet.) Abram changed his name to Abraham (Ibrahim). Abraham’s wife Sarah was the mother of his son Isaac. Unfortunately, prior to Isaac’s birth, Sarah was afraid she would never have a son, so she had her husband sleep with her slave woman to conceive a son she could adopt as her own. This son was named Ishmael. Ishmael was the ancestor of the Arabs, Isaac was the ancestor of the Jews. (So technically the ancestor of the Arabs was the eldest son of Abraham- a bastard eldest son, but the eldest son nonetheless.) Eventually, Sarah feared that Ishmael would be a threat to her own son Isaac and banished Ishmael and his mother. And the Arab-Jewish feud began.

One of Abraham’s allies was Melchezidek, priest-king of the city of Salem. Salem was a city-state much like the surrounding cities of Ur and Sumer. As seen in the first reading for today’s Feast of Corpus Christi, Melchezidek worshipped the same God as Abraham. After Abraham had successfully defeated five kings of the surrounding area (who also happened to be rivals of Melchezidek. Convenient.) Melchezidek blessed Abraham and offered a sacrifice of bread and wine to God.

Abraham’s son Isaac had a son named Jacob. After same nasty business involving his twin brother Esau, Jacob wrestled with an angel and as a prize he received a new name: Israel. Israel subsequently had twelve sons (by four different women) and one of these sons, Joseph, was sold into slavery by his brothers. (There seems to be a pattern of brotherly conflict and hatred in this family; talk about dysfunctional.) Joseph wound up in Egypt and his ability to interpret dreams helped to save Egypt from a famine and win the favor of Pharaoh. He became Viceroy. Israel and his sons and their families, after learning that Joseph was alive in Egypt, moved there to escape the famine and settled in the region of Goshen.

A different Pharaoh, who did not know Joseph, came to power and was afraid that the descendants of Israel, now known as “the children of Israel” (because they were) would take over his country, enslaved the Israelites. Everyone who has seen The Ten Commandments knows the rest of the story. Moses led the Israelites on the Exodus from Egypt and into the desert where they got lost for 40 years. After Moses’ death, Joshua led the Conquest of the Promised Land. The Israelites took city after city, killing anything that moved. Once the Conquest was over, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, descended from the sons of Israel, divided the land among them.

At some point, someone had added Jeru to the name of the city of Salem, and it was now called Jerusalem. Jerusalem remained under control of a Canaanite tribe known as the Jesubites until about 1,000 B.C. when David was anointed king. Upon the death of Saul, the previous king, David was acclaimed king in Hebron, the capital of the territorial region of Judah, his tribe. After a few years of civil war against the descendants of Saul, David eventually managed to unify all the tribes and set up his capital in Jerusalem which he had conquered. Jerusalem was known thereafter as the “City of David.”

Jerusalem was the capital of the unified Kingdom of Israel for about 80 years under David and his son Solomon, at which time the nation was at its peak. Following the death of Solomon, the ten Northern Tribes seceded and formed the separatist nation of Israel, with its capital at Samaria. The remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin retained their capital of Jerusalem, renaming their kingdom Judah. (This actually where we get the term “Jew”.)

The Assyrians utterly annihilated Israel in 722 B.C. Judah was not far behind. The Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C., razing Solomon’s Temple and dragging thousands of Jews into captivity. After some time, Babylon was conquered by Persia, and the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to go back to the Promised Land and rebuild the Temple. When Alexander the Great conquered Persepolis, he gained control of the entire Persian Empire. Alexander traveled to Jerusalem where he offered sacrifice to the Hebrew God (as he did with all the gods of areas he conquered) and allowed the Jews to continue their worship unhindered. Then he died. He had no heir, reportedly having answered the question of how should inherit his empire with “the strongest.” The empire was divided among his three leading generals. Seleucus got Syria and Judea. His successors where not as tolerant of Jewish customs and attempted to make the Jews into Greeks. Greeks spend a lot of time naked, which would be weird for the Jews who were circumcised, so circumcision was outlawed, along with the reading of the Torah. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus executed Jews and desecrated the Temple by sacrificing a pig and setting up a statue of Zeus. Judas Maccabeus led a successful revolt and military campaign against Antiochus, reclaiming the Temple and eventually control of Jerusalem. Judah’s brother Simon became the first leader of the Hasmonean dynasty which controlled Jerusalem until 63 B.C. when the Roman general Pompey took advantage of a period of civil war and took control of the city of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem remained under Roman control until 66 A.D. when Zealots and other Jewish freedom fighters started a revolt which escalated into a full out war with Rome. The emperor sent Vespasian and his son Titus to put down the revolt. Vespasian was recalled to Rome in 68 A.D. to become Emperor and his son continued the war, taking and razing the city in 70 A.D. For the next seventy years, Jerusalem was mostly a heap of ruins until 135 A.D. when Simon bar Kochba got delusions of grandeur. Thinking he was the Messiah, Simon bar Kochba started the second Jewish Revolt. It ended about as well as the first. Simon was killed, everybody else got crucified and what was left of Jerusalem was further destroyed. Hadrian had enough of these shenanigans and ordered that a Roman city called Aelia Capitolina be built over the rubble of Jersualem, which Jews were not allowed to enter. He installed a temple of Venus on the Temple Mount and even changed the name of Iudea (Judea-land of the Jews) to Syria Palestina (named after the Philistines- the greatest enemy of the ancient Israelites.) Ouch.

In 314 A.D. Constantine legalized Christianity. Shortly, thereafter his mother, Helena, found the True Cross of Christ. Constantine started knocking over the pagan temples and building Christian churches at the sites of various events in the life of Jesus, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Jerusalem became a city of Christian pilgrimage. Jersualem remained under Roman control until the Empire fell.

And than Mohammed came along. In 610 A.D. he began receiving what he believed were revelations from Allah (Arabic for God), which called him to found a new faith known as Islam, which was basically an amalgamation of Judaism, Christianity and the paganism of the Arabs. Like most religious figures, he was a trouble maker, and was kicked out of his hometown of Mecca. He fled to Medina, but returned to Mecca with an army, conquered the city and cleansed the Kabba (a stone building supposedly built by Ibrahim) of the pagan idols within it. In a short time, Islam swept across the Near East and the Muslim Arabs soon had control of the entire region, including Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the third holiest city in Islam (after Mecca and Medina) because Mohammed supposedly travelled there and was assumed into Heaven on the very spot where the Dome of the Rock now stands. On the Temple Mount. Yeah.

This makes Jerusalem a holy city for three major religions. (Who won’t stop fighting over it.)

In the beginning, the Christians did not have a problem going on pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The Muslims know all about pilgrimages and they revere Jesus (Isa) as a prophet, second only to Mohammed. So it wasn’t really a big deal. That was until the 11th century when the Seljuk Turks converted to Islam. They were not as friendly to Christians and began to persecute Christians and attack pilgrims. Towards the end of the eleventh century, Pope Urban II was getting fed up with the Muslim shenanigans and when the Byzantine Emperor asked for assistance against the Turks, Urban saw his chance. He called for a Crusade to take the Holy Land back from the Muslims.

Thousands of knights who either 1) had nothing better to do 2) were looking for riches or 3) genuinely believed the preachers who said “God wills it” in regard to the Crusade, answered the Pope’s call. After fighting their way across Muslim territory for two years, the Crusaders finally reached Jerusalem. After breaching the wall, they entered the city, killing anything that moved. Their leader, Godfrey de Bouilion stated “I will not wear a crown of gold in a city where my Savior wore a crown of thorns” and accepted the title of Defender of the Holy Sepluchre. Subsequent rulers were not so humble and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was formed, a Christian city-state which lasted until 1187.

For the rest of the story watch Kingdom of Heaven. The short story is that the last king of Jerusalem went to war against Saladin, the Muslim leader but was completely incompetent. He led an army out into the desert to meet Saladin, but they had no water and were soundly defeated at the battle of Hattan. This left the defense of Jerusalem to Balian of Ibelin who fought well but was eventually forced to surrender to Saladin, after negotiating safe passage for the surviving defenders (the alternative was to fight the Muslims to the death, during which time Balian promised Saladin that they would kill 10 Muslims for every Christian who fell). Jerusalem was under Muslim control once more.

Richard the Lionhearted lead a Third Crusade against Saladin but it ended as a stalemate with Jersusalem still under Islamic control. Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control for the next six centuries. The Fourth Crusade didn’t even make it to Jerusalem, they decided to sack Constantinople instead. Saint King Louis IX of France lead a few Crusades, but they failed mostly because they were halfhearted. Europe had more important things to worry about, like the Plague. Jerusalem passed through a succession of caliphates, sultanates and other assortments of Muslim rulers. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire until they picked the wrong side in World War I.

In 1917, Jerusalem once again came under Christian control as the British entered Jerusalem following the Battle of Jerusalem. The League of Nations approved the British Mandate of Palestine which, among other things, called for two states in Palestine, one Arab and one Jewish. Around this time, with the Muslims no longer in control, the Jewish Diaspora throughout the world saw this as an opportunity to form a Jewish homeland for the first time in over 1800 years. A movement was formed known as Zion, taking its name from Mount Zion, the site of Solomon’s Temple. Zionism was the belief that the only place the Jews could truly have a homeland was in Zion, the city of David and the land of Israel. Zionists began immigrating to Palestine, and started taking a decidedly Old Testament approach to the Arabs living there i.e. we will kill you all and take your land.The age-old sibling rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael reared its head. Zionist forces attacked Arabs. The Arabs attacked the Jews. When the British tried to keep the peace, the Zionists attacked them too. Basically the whole thing went to shit.

Many Jews were wary of the Zionist movements. They had dreamed of returning to the Land of Israel but believed that the Messiah was the one to come and gather all the Jews in Israel. They believed that the secular Zionist movement was jumping the gun. (For reference, read Chaim Potok’s The Chosen) Besides they had good lives in Europe, especially Germany and Poland.

Yeah, about that….

That was when Hitler came along. By the time World War II was over, six million Jews were dead. It could have been worse. Hitler was close allies with the Arab Mufti, a Muslim leader who wanted to drive the Jews into the sea. If he had won the war, Hitler had planned to set up concentration camps in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. (Just thinking about that gives me the chills…brings up echoes of the Abomination of Desolation In 1947, the UN Partition Plan still called for a separate Arab and Jewish but the Western nations still felt guilty about doing absolutely nothing to stop the Shoah. In order to assuage their collective guilt, huge concessions were made to the Jews which made the Plan utterly unacceptable to the Arabs. The point became moot however in 1948 when the British withdraw, and the Israelis simultaneously declared independence and war on the Arabs. The Arabs invaded the new nation of Israel, starting a fight they could not finish, and igniting the Arab-Israeli conflict which has ramifications down to this day.

The next years were almost a replay of the Old Testament. At the end of the 1948 war, Jerusalem was split, with East Jerusalem under Arab control and West Jerusalem until the jurisdiction of Israel. Jordan controlled the holy sites and like during the time of the Crusades, access by Christians and Jews were limited. In 1967, the Israelis took control of East Jerusalem during the Six Day War, unifying the city. Jerusalem was once again the capital of a unified nation of Israel as it had been when David did when he took it 3,000 years before.

In conflict after conflict, the Israelis have stood their ground against superior forces and won. Their attitude toward their neighbors is straight out of the Old Testament. One can not really blame them either. They are driven by the collective memory of the Shoah, and they will not allow something like that to happen to happen again. They are surrounded by enemies and they know that they are fighting for nothing less than their survival. For 5,000 years the story of the Jews has been one of tears and tragedy. Whether they were being enslaved, dragged into captivity, crucified, persecuted or hunting to near extermination; these people can not seem to get a break. They were promised a land which they lost, regained, lost, regained and lost again. Now they have a homeland and a nation, and they’ll be damned if they give an inch of that up.

At the same time, you have the Arabs. They are also children of Abraham. Muslims had this land for over six hundred years. That is a very long time. They believe that their claim is as good as the Jews. They forced out of the land they had known as home for generations. It is ironic that a people who were displaced by invaders is now displacing others. They want the land that was stolen from them. Most of all, the Arabs want Jerusalem back because it is holy to them as well. And they won’t give up either.

Remember this conflict goes back 5,000 years: to Ishmael and Isaac.

Besides the Lord’s messenger said to her: “You are now pregnant and shall bear a son; you shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard you, God has answered you. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him. In opposition to all his kin shall he encamp.” -Genesis 16:11-12

I believe that describes the present Israeli-Arab conflict perfectly. This fight is going to last until the end of time. In fact, it will probably kick the end times party off.

**For more info about the religious implications about Zionism see my previous blog "The Antichrist and the Eucharist" http://youwillmostlikelybeoffended.blogspot.com/2009/08/antichrist-and-eucharist.html