Archbishop Mark Coleridge invites you to explore the rich tapestry of Jerusalem’s history in his podcast series “The Navel of the Earth: Jerusalem in time, theology and imagination”. This episode will explore Jerusalem’s evolution from a fortified settlement under King David to a city of profound theological significance, reflecting on its enduring legacy amidst ongoing conflict in the Middle-East.
Transcript
In recent times, the Middle East has yet again been much in the news. But in a very real sense, the Middle East has been much in the news for thousands of years. So, in that sense, what is new? And if the Middle East is in the news, so too is Jerusalem, the city.
So as conflict rages all around it, I want to reflect in these podcasts upon Jerusalem. Not just the place, but the history, the story. As it were, the biography of this extraordinary city, I think the most extraordinary city on earth. So, the story and also what Jerusalem has become over time in theology or thought, but also in imagination. Because it occupies a unique place in the human heart and imagination. Which is why it really is the most fateful city on earth.
The title that I give to these podcasts on Jerusalem is, The Navel of the Earth: Jerusalem in time, theology and imagination. The Navel of the Earth was originally a title given to the great shrine at Delphi in Greece. Long before that title was conferred upon Jerusalem. And in a sense, it was conferred upon Jerusalem, we think, for the first time in the Book of Jubilees, which appears close to the New Testament period, so it’s quite late in Old Testament terms. As a way of saying that Delphi was not the Navel of the Earth, but Jerusalem was.
So, it was really, as it were, plundering the Greek title that had applied to the great shrine to the god Apollo in Delphi. So, The Navel of the Earth: Jerusalem in time, theology and imagination. So, let’s begin with time. People say sometimes that it is tragic that the city of Jerusalem, the name of which is claimed to speak of peace, has been a city of such violence.
But really, when you, whatever about the name referring to peace, it’s known nothing but violence. And it was really violence that brought it onto the stage of world history. So, if you go back to about the year 1000 BC, BCE. You strike the figure of King David. And this is where we start to tell the story of Jerusalem.
Up until David’s eye fell upon what was a mountain fortress in the Judean Hills. It really was just a small town or village, really, a fortress. In the hands of Canaanite people, in other words, native of the land, the land of Canaan. Who were known as the Jebusites. And this may well be because the town itself, or the village, was known as Jebus.
Now, David had been in conflict with the first king of the united tribes. The twelve tribes of Israel came together in a new way under a king for the first time, because of the threat of the Philistines. Having arrived in the Promised Land, the twelve tribes of Israel found themselves surrounded by a much more sophisticated people. Whom we know from the Bible as the Philistines, who eventually give their name to the Palestinians. Palestine and the Palestinians goes back to the Philistines.
Now, the Philistines have a bad reputation, at least in the language, if I called you a Philistine you would not be flattered. And yet they were a sophisticated people who had migrated to what we know as the Holy Land, around Gaza in fact, where all the violence is at the moment.
In about 1200 BC, they had come from the Mediterranean world, probably from the Mediterranean islands, because of some natural cataclysm, we don’t even know exactly what it was. It might have been earthquakes and tsunamis and so on. But whatever the reason, these people migrated from the island nations of the Mediterranean to that area on the coast of the Holy Land around Gaza. They settled there, and they brought with them the civilisation of the Mediterranean world. And part of that civilisation was technology. And part of the technology, certainly from a military point of view, was the latest in high tech weaponry, iron weapons.
So, the tribes of Israel find themselves surrounded by this sophisticated people who have iron weapons. And there’s this sense that God has led them not to the Promised Land, but into a trap. So, to meet a new kind of threat, they need a new kind of organisation. And they say, what we need is a new kind of unity, both political and military.
And therefore, we need a new kind of political structure to give us that unity. In other words, we need a king. Now at first Samuel, who is the leader, he’s a kind of a crossover between a judge and a prophet Samuel. Samuel says to the people, no, you can’t have a king because your king is God. In other words, he stands up for a theocracy, a society in which God is the king.
But eventually there is a compromise reached. That they can have a king, yes, but this king is going to be a king with a difference. He’s not going to be divine. He’s not going to be the source of the law. He will be just one of his brothers and sisters, a slave set free. So, he’s one of the mob, and he is as much subject to God’s law as anyone else.
Now, in all the other nations and societies of the Middle East at that time, the ancient near East, as they call it, the king was the source of the law. But in this community, ancient Israel, the king was not the source of the law, God was, and it came through Moses. So, the king didn’t even mediate God’s law, that was referred to Moses. So, the king was subject to the law as much as anyone else. So, Saul becomes the first king, and the Bible tells this story.
Saul in time develops a kind of paranoia about David. David, who is a servant of Saul. But what Saul recognises in David is a kind of competitor. And as the paranoia of Saul grows worse, he starts to cast murderous eyes upon his competitor. The thing is too David, as he grows older, shows himself to be a mighty man on the battlefield. And this was always the basis of David’s power and prestige. He could win battles and win wars. And he was never happier than riding into battle. So, he was a warrior king.
Eventually, Saul is killed in battle. And at that point David, who has become a kind of an outlaw, a kind of a Robin Hood figure because of the persecution by King Saul. David reappears onto the scene no longer as an outlaw, but as a leader, a new kind of leader. And David, who has assumed the leadership of the tribe of Judah. In that sense, he was the king of Judah down to the southern tribe.
With the death of Solomon, and then eventually Solomon’s son Ishbosheth. The tribes of the north, there were ten tribes of the north and two in the south, and they were much smaller, Judah and Benjamin. So, the ten tribes of the north were much bigger, more powerful, wealthier, and more cosmopolitan. The leaders of the ten tribes of the north recognise in David, the kind of leader they now need to meet the kind of threat that the Philistines presented.
So, they come to David, and they put to him that David assume control, rule, of the twelve tribes. He’s the man to lead them. That’s what they recognise. And David, not surprisingly, accepts. Now some would claim that David had always had that ambition to replace Saul and to rule over the twelve tribes. Now, finally, that’s what happens.
Apart from being a very successful military leader, David was also a very shrewd politician. And one of the things he recognised was that he needed a neutral capital to embody that new kind of unity. It was not unlike the decision they made in Australia in the early years of this century. That the first Parliament met in Melbourne. But then you had the old sense of competition between Sydney and Melbourne. So, what did they decide to do? They decided to establish a capital in neutral territory, and that’s why we’ve got Canberra. Again, for political purposes and to avoid the kind of, the local rivalries that can plague a nation.
So, David looks around and his eye falls somewhat mysteriously upon this mountain fortress in the hands of the Jebusites. So, David storms the fortress and makes it his new capital. Because, you see, this town was in neutral territory. It didn’t belong to any of the tribes, and therefore was likely to be acceptable to all the tribes. And to make a statement about who David was, he didn’t belong to any of the tribes. He belonged to all the tribes. So, you see what I mean when I say that Jerusalem enters the scene of history by dint of violence. David, storms the fortress, takes it, and gets rid of the locals and makes it his capital.
Now, really it was just a kind of a ridge. It was called the City of David, but it was no city such as we might think of a city. It was more like a fortress on a kind of a triangular ridge falling away at two sides. It was only on the third side up to the north, that there was flat ground. And that will become important in the later history of Jerusalem.
David also knows that, again, this is the shrewd politician. That he needs God’s blessing for this new capital. So, what does he do? He brings the Ark of the Covenant from where it was into the City of David. Let’s call it now Jerusalem. Which is the new name that it acquires. In Hebrew, Yerushalayim.
So, by bringing the Ark into the new capital, David is saying, this isn’t just my decision, it’s God’s decision, it has God’s blessing. So, he claims the sanction of God not only for his capital, but also for his reign. Upon him as king, The Anointed One.
It was only, however, under David’s son that the temple is built. So, David rules for about forty years, it’s a long reign. Whatever a year meant in the Bible, we don’t know. But he reigns for a long time, and Jerusalem remains basically a fortress, a royal fortress, rather than a city throughout that time. In part because David was too busy fighting battles.
He was lucky in the sense that it was an unusual time in that part of the world, the biblical world, because normally either Egypt or one of the Mesopotamian empires was strong and the other was weak. But through the long reign of David, both Egypt and the empires of Mesopotamia to the east, were weak. So, David again saw his opportunity and created a mini empire. Because the great imperial powers surrounding him were comparatively weak.
So, he was the warrior king. He was the politician king. And the city remained basically a fortress, a royal fortress. Things change, however, when in 960 or thereabouts, David is succeeded by his youngest son Solomon. Now, this is not the time to explore in any detail the story of how Solomon, as the youngest son, came to assume the throne. It should have been one of his older brothers, Adonijah, Absalom, and so on.
But it is Solomon. Enough to say here that Solomon ascends the throne up to his knees in blood. So that again you see that Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the city of peace, is also the city of blood. Solomon’s name in Hebrew, ‘Shlomo’, does in fact refer obviously to the word ‘Shalom’, man of peace. But that was not the story of how Solomon came to ascend the throne over his brothers. Not without the connivance of his mother, Bathsheba.
But again, the recognition seemed to be that Solomon, not only by Bathsheba, but also by some of the royal advisors and David’s priest Zadok. They clearly made the judgment that Solomon was the best equipped to be king in succession to his father. But it was a bloody accession to the throne.
Now, Solomon is a very different character from his father. He too reigns a very long time in Jerusalem. But he begins to turn Jerusalem into something like a serious city, in the terms of the ancient world. One of the things he does, and this is fateful, is he builds the temple. He builds a palace, and he builds a temple. And this was always central to the ideology which eventually came to surround the city of Jerusalem.
The Psalm says, Jerusalem is built as a city, strongly compact. Now, it’s very hard to know what exactly it means to say it’s strongly compact. But one suggestion, which I find attractive, is that it means Jerusalem is built as a city where palace and temple are one. So again, this was the place where God had made his house, and the place where the king had made his house. And this was at least a political, it wasn’t just a theological claim, it was also a political claim, an attempt to sacralise the monarchy with its capital in Jerusalem.
So, Solomon builds a magnificent temple, and he’s not a man for the battlefield. He, in fact, he begins to look more and more like an Egyptian pharaoh. Among his wives, there was even one of the daughters of Pharaoh, in the ancient world at this time, because royal daughters were a pawn of royal diplomacy. It was good to have a few daughters that you could use as diplomatic bargaining chips, as it were. And the question was always in the ancient world, shall we marry our enemies? This was seen as a way of overcoming long standing rivalries. So, one of the wives of King Solomon was in fact one of the many daughters of the Pharaoh of Egypt.
Now, Solomon dies in about 920, BC again. And with his death there comes a time of real crisis, certainly for Jerusalem. Because the son of Solomon, who is to succeed his father as king of the twelve tribes, the united kingdom, is a man known as Rehoboam. Now, towards the end of his reign, his very long reign. The ten tribes of the north had become very discontent with the rule of Solomon. They felt that they were being treated very unjustly. And they came to Rehoboam and they said, if you treat us the way your father did in the late years of his reign, then we are no longer interested in a united kingdom. We will take our leave, and we will go our own way.
Rehoboam, foolishly perhaps, rashly certainly, said, I am the king, you will not tell me what to do. I will tell you what to do. And here again, he sounds not like one of his brothers, but more like, the Pharaoh of Egypt. At that point, the tribal leaders of the ten tribes of the north say to Rehoboam, well, if that’s the case, we’re finished with the united kingdom, we’re out. So, you end up with a split. The ten tribes of the north go their own way and become what is called the northern kingdom. Often, it’s called Israel. Or sometimes ‘Samaria’, in Hebrew ‘Shomron’.
So, the ten tribes of the north, and you’re left with the two tribes of the south, Judah and Benjamin. And Jerusalem becomes now the capital only of that small southern kingdom. And as it becomes politically less important, it becomes religiously more important. The capital of the northern kingdom was in the city of Samaria, Shomron.
So, ten tribes to the north, Judah and Benjamin alone in Jerusalem and the south. Now that arrangement lasts for about 200 years. Because what happens in 720 is again crisis. Just by the way, they say of Jerusalem that if you survey its history from day one, as it were, until now, it has been seventeen times destroyed and eighteen times rebuilt. Now that is important to keep in mind. So, when I speak of these crises, certainly from now on, we will be talking about destructions of the city.
So, in 720, the Assyrian Empire is on the move, and they have a war machine, an army, the like of which, for efficiency and ferocity, the ancient world had never seen. And as part of their imperial conquests, their eye falls upon the northern kingdom. Which was always more exposed. But it was bigger and wealthier and more culturally cosmopolitan. The south had become a more religious phenomenon. So, Assyria in 720 destroys the northern kingdom. They wage war and they win the war. And with that you have the fall of the north in 720 to the Assyrian army.
What happens then is that a whole bunch of refugees flee from the north down to the south. Now among them were some of the prophets and other religious figures who brought with them the sacred texts of the north, down to the south. So, with this flood of refugees from the northern kingdom to Jerusalem and the southern kingdom. You find this extraordinarily creative amalgam of northern traditions which looked to the figure of Moses, preeminently. With southern traditions which look preeminently to the figure of Abraham. And you can see this going on in the Bible. And you find that typically northern prophets, like Hosea, their voice, as it were, comes south.
Now, even the words that were used for prophet were different in the north and the south. In the north, the word for ‘prophet’, ‘navi’ means someone who speaks for God, a spokesperson. The word for ‘prophet’ in the south was ‘hozeh’, which means someone who sees, a seer. Vision, not audition. But then you get this amalgamation, and you can see this in the prophetic texts in the Old Testament. Where you get the prophet as speaker and as seer. So, there’s this great amalgam of northern and southern traditions, Moses and Abraham and so on. But it’s one of the more creative moments in the formation of the Scripture. So that, again, the catastrophe of the fall of the north religiously becomes extraordinarily creative.
Now, at about the same time, and again with Assyria on the march. They come south. And their eye falls upon Jerusalem with its great temple, which they say on its mountain fastness, with the sun upon it looked like a snow capped mountain. The Temple of Solomon must have been an extraordinary sight. So, Assyria thinks they may as well finish the job. They’ve done with the north, let’s do with the south. This is some years later. But these imperial expeditions often went on for years and years and years.
Now, at this time, and faced with this threat, the prophet Isaiah, well known to us, who was in Jerusalem at this time, he’s a southern prophet. So, he is based in Jerusalem. He speaks about the inviolability of Zion. What he means is that God has made his home in Jerusalem, and therefore the city is inviolable, unconquerable. Now, that sense of inviolability prevailed, at least in the mind of the people and the rulers. They thought they were inviolable. But extraordinarily, this doctrine was vindicated. Because in 701 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib and his army were besieging Jerusalem and mysteriously they withdrew.
Now there are various accounts of what happened. One is that there was a massive disease in the Assyrian camp. Another was that the king Sennacherib, had to return to his capital because of a political crisis there. Who knows? But whyever it happened, we mightn’t know, but we do know that the army withdrew and returned to Assyria. And the prophet Isaiah, with his doctrine of the inviolability of Zion, seems to be vindicated, that the city is unconquerable. Why? Because God protects the city which He has made His home.
Now, there is much more to the story to come, and we’ll see eventually just how shaky this doctrine of the inviolability of Jerusalem becomes. So, at this point, Jerusalem is intact. So too is the southern kingdom. But there’s much more of the story to come as we move from the eighth century, the seven hundreds BC, into the six hundreds, and then the five hundreds. That’s when we strike true drama.