Jerusalem existed in the Egyptian curse prayer of the 19th century BC and the Yamana clay tablets of the 14th century BC. As the holiest city in the world, it is also a holy site for Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The Temple Mount and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem are the holiest places in Judaism; the Dome of the Rock is the third holy place in Islam after Mecca and Medina. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, considered the place where Jesus was re-killed, buried, and resurrected to heaven, is an incomparable holy place in the hearts of Christians.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam appear in historical order, with the three religions coming from the same source (ancient Judaism) and then separating. The three religions believe in one God, and then call them different names, Judaism is called "Yahweh", Christianity is called "Jehovah", and Islam is called "Allah". Judaism believes in the Old Testament as determined by God and His "chosen people." Christianity recognizes the status of the Old Testament, but also believes in the New Testament as made by Jehovah and Jesus. Islam, on the basis of recognition of the above two covenants, considers the Quran to be the last and most complete text of the Allah.
Three One Stone
Legend has it that God tested Abraham, the progenitor of the Jews, by taking his only son, Isaac, to Mount Moriah and offering sacrifices on a rock 17.7 meters long, 13.5 meters wide, and 1.2 meters above the ground. When the loyal Alabham was about to raise his sword to kill his child, God sent messengers to stop him and ordered him to replace him with a ram. This story is extremely important in the history of Judaism, where the rock has always been regarded as the "holy stone."
More than a thousand years after Judaism, the stone is believed to have been made of clay by God to form the birthplace of Adam, the first human ancestor. Christians around the world aspire to worship this stone, but this "sacred stone" is now stored in Islamic mosques and is the stepping stone for the Prophet Muhammad's "night walk" to ascend to the night.
Legend has it that in the 9th year of the founding of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad overheard the archangel Gabriel summoning him, and Muhammad followed him on a flying horse, flew to Jerusalem, stepped on a boulder and ascended to the ninth heaven, listened to the blessings and revelations of Allah God, and then flew back to Mecca that night.
Jerusalem and the Jews
Jerusalem is taken from two Hebrew words "ir", meaning city and "shalom", meaning peace, Jerusalem embodies the noblest desire of mankind, that is, peace for all mankind. The earliest inhabitants were the Yebs (a semitic tribe) who settled here since 3000 BC. The land of Canaanite was the link between Egypt and West Asia, the world's most important trade route, and the meeting place of ancient civilizations.
The Hebrews originally lived near the Sumerian Empire of your, but later migrated to the Canaanite area. Fleeing to Egypt due to famine, he was favored by the Egyptian dynasty established by the Hyksos and lived for about four hundred years. After the Sixos were expelled from Egypt by the Nubian revolt, the Hebrews declined in status and became slaves of the Egyptians. Around the 13th century BC, the Hebrew leader Moses stepped forward and led his people back to Canaan, the "Promised Land", to be free. On the way back, the Hebrews strengthened their national consciousness and established Judaism on the basis of monotheistic ideas. Another 200 years later, in the 11th century B.C., David of the tribe of Judah (the child of Goliath who killed Goliath with a stone in his hand in the Bible) unified the small people near Israel and established the ancient kingdom of Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital.
Around 965 BC, Solomon, the son of David, built the "First Temple" on Mount Zion with rocks and cedar from Tyre, which became the center of Hebrew sacrifice. Four hundred years later, the temple was destroyed and the kingdom was divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. Israel in the north was conquered by Assyria, and Judah in the south was unable to escape the blades of the Babylonians, the walls were torn down, the temple was looted, and about 10,000 people were reduced to slavery (mostly soldiers and craftsmen). In 586 BC, Solomon's Temple was razed to the ground by a fire. It was the Persians who "drew their swords to help" and conquered Neo-Babylon, allowing not only the Jews to return to their homeland, but also allowing them to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, the "Second Temple." Persia, iran, which is now tense with Israel, was the "benefactor" who helped Israel.
After the decline of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great conquered the area (after Alexander's death, it was ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt and the Seleucid dynasty centered on Syria). The Jews were monotheistic and forbidden idolatry, while Greece was a traditional polytheistic, idolatrous nation, with Greek altars, arenas, and theaters that interfered with Jews in terms of religious beliefs and lifestyles. Intensified by Antiochus IV's ban on Judaism and the persecution of the Jewish people, the Jewish people staged the "Makabi Revolt" in 165 BC.
The Roman Empire replaced Greece with world domination, and the Jews revolted again in 66 AD due to their dissatisfaction with tyranny and blasphemy against Judaism. Initially the Romans were defeated, but the Roman Empire was a military power after all, and the Jews were not their opponents at all. In 70 A.D., when the Romans approached the city of Jerusalem, the entire city was surrounded by Roman troops, and no one could enter or leave the city, and the city ran out of food and famine broke out. Soon, the Romans broke through the walls of Jerusalem, ransacked the city, and burned down the Second Temple, leaving only the western wall. For thousands of years, when Jews from all over the world returned to Jerusalem, they would come to this stone wall and pray in a low voice and cry about the sufferings of exile, hence the name "Wailing Wall."
In 130 AD, 60 years after the destruction of the Second Temple, the Roman Emperor Hadrian announced the reconstruction of Jerusalem, and in order to sever the city's ties with the Jews, he renamed it Aelia Capitolina and planned to build a pagan altar here, renamed Syria Palestina, meaning "the land of the Phyllis".
As a result of the provocative actions of the Roman Emperor, hundreds of thousands of Jewish warriors revolted in 132 AD. As usual, the Jews had some early victories. In 135 AD, the Roman army quelled a three-year-long uprising, declaring a ban on Jews living in the Holy City. At this point, the Jews completely lost their homeland and entered the "Great Diaspora" that lasted for 1800 years. According to ancient historical records, about 580,000 people were killed, and many others were sold to slave markets. The Jews were scattered all over the world, still attached to their homeland, but by then Jerusalem was no longer theirs.
Christians and Muslims
In 316 AD, Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, found the crucifixion of Jesus and the burial ground where Jesus was buried, and built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, for Christian pilgrimage. Bethlehem also built a Church of the Nativity.
In 337 AD, Constantine was baptized on his deathbed, and Christianity became a highly influential religion in the Roman Empire and even in the peoples of Europe. The Mount of Olives, the Garden of Giusmani, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, etc., which are often found in the New Testament, all took place in Jerusalem, and Christians blamed the Jews for Jesus' death.
In the 7th century, Muhammad founded Islam, and according to the Quran, Muhammad himself "walked nocturnal ascent" in Jerusalem to perform miracles, so Jerusalem became one of the holy places for Muslims. This is followed by the Hadith, also known as the Prophet's "Hades" or "Sunnah", i.e. Muhammad's words and deeds, which are the Prophet's verbal instructions and demonstrations of behavior toward Muslims. With the rise of the Arab states, Jerusalem was occupied by muslims and became the master of Jerusalem.
Both Christians and Muslims were powerful, and the Jews were in decline and reluctantly surrendered Jerusalem. In the 11th century, christians and Muslims fought a great war that lasted for more than two hundred years: the Crusades. Every Christian who participated in the crusades would have a papal-certified cross mark, known as the Crusaders. The Crusaders went on eight massive crusades, except that the main target of the fourth and eighth expeditions was not Jerusalem, and the remaining six were directed at the holy city. In 1099, the Crusaders won the First Crusade, established the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and created the bloody massacre of Jerusalem in history, killing some 50,000 or 60,000 Muslim and Jewish civilians.
The Canaanites defeated the natives, the Phyllis drove out the Canaanites, the Hebrews defeated the Phyllis, and then the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Arabs, and Franks took turns until 1187, when Saladin the Kurdish recaptured lost Jerusalem on behalf of or on behalf of the Arabs.
Europeans were busy with renaissance voyages, the Industrial Revolution and colonial expansion; and the Muslims were in many civil wars, and no one cared much about Jerusalem. The Jews were driven around by the nations, and their lives were not very good, and they always planned to establish their own state in Jerusalem and return to their homeland. During World War I, when the war between Britain and Germany was deadlocked, the British took a fancy to the Zionist forces and were ready to use their strength to defeat Germany, while also promising to help the Jews establish a state in Jerusalem.
In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which supported the establishment of a national homeland for Jews in Palestine. At this point, the Muslims living in this area were dissatisfied, and the Jews moved in one after another and caused various frictions. In 1947, the United Nations adopted a resolution deciding to establish two States in Palestine: a Palestinian State belonging to the Arabs and a Jewish State, while Jerusalem became an international city to which no one belonged. The Jews were so happy that Israel was founded in May of the following year, and the Arabs stopped doing it, always feeling that the land was their own. So the Arab coalition marched into the nascent Israel, the first Middle East war.
After a total of five wars in the Middle East, after the general ledger, the Arabs actually controlled fewer areas than the United Nations had allocated to them. Specific to Jerusalem, after the Six-Day War, Jerusalem was divided into east and west areas, West Jerusalem belonged to Israel and has now been built into a modern city; East Jerusalem was effectively controlled by the Israeli army, but most of the area outside the old city was mainly inhabited by Arabs. The Jewish diocese is located in the southeast, the Muslim quarter is in the northeast, the Christian district is in the northwest, and the Armenian diocese is in the southwest, each accounting for a quarter. There are seven disciplines in the four districts, of which the Christian and Armenian dioceses are both Christian, but the dogma is different.
Today's Israeli population is 75 per cent Jewish, 20 per cent Arab and the rest other ethnic groups. 20-25 per cent of the seats in parliament are also occupied by Arabs. Even in the remaining 75 percent of the Jewish seats, there are political groups that are divided into secular, orthodox, ultra-orthodox, and Likud political groups that have different positions on the Palestinian-Israeli issue.
In the Jewish scriptures, God completed the work of creating the world in six days and began to rest on the seventh day. The Jews call Saturday the Shabbat. To be precise, the Jewish Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday and ends at sunset on Saturday night. To make it easier for everyone to celebrate the Sabbath, Israel has designated Fridays and Saturdays as official holidays. By Friday afternoon, most shops were closed, taxis were no longer soliciting, all public transport was out of service, and even shuttles between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were stopped and not opened for tourists.
Jewish families begin preparing a sumptuous dinner and the next day's food on Friday afternoons (because it is not possible to make a fire by the Sabbath), then bathe and change clothes, and the whole family goes to the synagogue to pray. From Saturday until 8 p.m., almost no restaurants or cafes are open, not even Chinese restaurants. Orthodox Jews demonstrated in the streets on Saturdays, shouting "Shabbat" at all those who rode around and still opened shops as a sign of anger at their interruption of Sabbath traditions.
In the holy city of Jerusalem, religion seems to be everywhere, covering from birth to death. Walking down the street, you can identify different people by their clothing, and men who insist on wearing long black suit jackets and trousers and big hats no matter how hot they are are undoubtedly ultra-Orthodox, while those who wear white accessories similar to tassels on their pants and wear small round hats with Jewish symbols on their heads are generally Conservative. Different denominations have their own areas of residence, secular residents have their own communities, and usually well water does not violate river water.
What is Jerusalem? Seemingly all-encompassing, everything is nothing but nothing. Centuries after century, Jews, Christians and Muslims have fought to the death here to dominate the history and sacredness of this place, but with endless battles, they all returned empty-handed. Jerusalem, like sand in the palm of your hand, is held more tightly, and the faster it is lost.