Hezekiah and Josiah's Jerusalem

This is going to be a quick blog post. I want to give blood and watch a lecture and get this done in the next two hours. So here we go...

The Assyrians, as badass as they were, did not capture Jerusalem. The Bible says that an angel came from heaven and killed I think 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. The Assyrian records say that King Sennacherib was outside the walls and had Hezekiah trapped like a bird in a cage. But in the list of the conquered cities, Jerusalem is missing. Awesome. So what did this do for the reputation of the city?

The Assyrian failure to conquer Jerusalem was the single greatest catalyst for the snowballing legend of an inviolable Jerusalem. Reason? Jerusalem was already a big deal to the Jews but it was a very backwater kind of town to most of the world. This event probably spread the word of Jerusalem across the Middle East and it became known to other people as the city that withstood the Assyrians. In other words, it helped put Jerusalem on the map for other people, not just Israelites and Judaens, Jews.

This also led to Zion theology which is the idea that the prophecies written about Jerusalem were written after Hezekiah withstood the Assyrain siege.They are all over 2 Kings 21, and they really talk about "for the sake of my servant David." In other words, it backs up the promise that God made to David, that his throne and line will be everlasting. Scholars (can someone tell me who scholar are? Rabbis are scholars, nachon? Not just professors?) argue about the exact chronology of all these events and the dates they were written and assembled and all that.

Three paragraphs. I'm done. Sweet. I'm done ten minutes after class ended. We covered more. I really enjoyed class today.

Hezekiah's Jerusalem

We just got out about ten minutes ago. I hope I can always post immediately after like this. OK, here we go....

I would say the main thing we went over today in class was the badassness of the Assyrian Empire. Basically Judah and Israel split up. Israel was more powerful. But both weren't major players in the whole Middle East so they tried to align themselves with the other guys, like Chris Bosh and um, how about Pau Gasol. (No one ever gives Pau or KG or Ray Allen shit for taking second fiddle and sacrificing for the potential of winning. And ya, I know Pau was traded but he went from Alpha Dog in Memphis to second fiddle in LA.) So, Israel gets buddy buddy with Assyria and Judah gets with Syria. Yes note the difference. The do this to protect themselves from the other major players like Egypt and just because you want to be allies with powerful people, just like today.

So 8th century Assyria is a big deal. They have all the fertile crescent which includes modern day Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. They eventually conquer the northern ten tribes of Israel and those are the lost tribes. The Assyrians were pretty brutal with their treatment. They made public displays, artwork, and really tried to tell people "Hey don't mess with us." So Israel is conquered in 721 BCE by Sennacherib, I think. Then Sennacherib conquers Judah, along with some other places but doesn't sack Jerusalem because Jerusalem isn't really worth sacking. But Jerusalem starts growing. People flee from the North to Jerusalem. Farmers and small town folks come to Jerusalem for protection, because Jerusalem is a walled city and out in the country you have no protection. As a result Jerusalem grows from 8,00 to 40,000, a 400% increase in the 8th century. Thats a lot of people. It also becomes a bigger deal in terms of its power in Judah. It went from being 6% of Judah's population to 30% of the population.

This presents its own problems, just like all cities that undergo change. There is a conflict between rural and urban people. Cosmopolitans from the North and more traditional people from Judah. Changing family structure. New Religious movements. None of this is unique to Jerusalem. Dallas, LA, San Antonio, any city that has changes with its population, size, politics, demographics will undergo change in other areas, as well as social tension. People often dislike immigrants for no other reason than they are foreigners. It happens throughout history. Xenophobia is everywhere.

So, as Jerusalem is changing Hezekiah, the king of Jerusalem, decides he must fortify the city because it is becoming a bigger target for Assyria. So he builds the "Broad Wall' around the city. You can go to Jerusalem and walk through the old city and see where this wall was. It is marked on the ground. He also builds food storages to help withstand a siege. And then there is also Hezekiah's tunnel which helped pump water from the Gihon for the rest of the city. I asked the Professor today where they got all the water to support these people. What I meant was how did the Gihon, which we said could support 2,500 people, support about 40,000 people. Does digging a tunnel produce more water or does it simply make the water more moveable? Did they bring water from the North? Dig wells? I don't know.

Anyways, I'm done for this class. Hope you enjoyed this blog. I really enjoyed this class. It focused more on history and less on the bible and were also getting more into solid, proven history which I enjoy more.

Class from January 2o

Doesn't twenty look cooler written as 2o than 20? I accidentally typed 2o instead of 20 for the title of this post and think I am going to keep it. Anyways.........

Sorry this is from like 4 days ago. I suck. I know. Please accept my apology.

We went over 2 Samuel, why Jerusalem is sacred (kind of a major theme in the class), the temple of Solomon, Solomon in general, and thats pretty much it.

I think its very cool that the description of the Temple of Solomon (from now on Temple 1) matches other temples from the area of similar times. This type of evidence is called comparative evidence. For instance, Tel Arad has pillars standing inside, similar to what is described in I think 1 Kings. Scholars argue about what these pillars were meant for, perhaps phallic symbols like anything else. Perhaps monuments to other deities that Solomon was trying to please. Perhaps just decoration. While Solomon was wise, and not a warrior like his father David, he had many wives from all across the region. Naturally not all these wives were "Jewish." (I think at this point we can call the Israelites/Hebrews/ people of David and Solomon and Judah and Israel Jews. There is debate about this, whether it was with Abraham, at Sinai, during the United Kingdom period, but for the sake of simplicity, Am Yisrael will now be Jews.) They were on the religion of their local places of origin and so Solomon tried to accommodate this, even at the expense of his own relationship with God. I remember learning about the fertility goddess Astarte while on EIE. Astarte, she goes by other names, was the goddess of fertility that many people prayed to and they found statues of her in and around Jerusalem from around the time of Solomon. Once again, not evidence of the existence of Solomon but they statues are some form of historicity to perhaps give some credence to the biblical account.

We also talked about Ain Dara. At Ain Dara, archaeologists discovered large footsteps leading to the main alter. The first slab had two foot prints and the second slab only one. Some think that it could be God walking into his temple. I don't know how this matches the description of Solomon's Temple but it could be evidence of similar concepts regarding the Temple. The Temple was supposed to be the place that God physically resided, like a house. If the footsteps at Ain Dara were supposed to be the footsteps of a deity, then it shows that the people of Ain Dara believed that their God resided in that temple. Again, this shows similarities between Solomon's Temple and the other places of worship in the region.

Last thing- 2 Samuel 7 is apparently the most important verse in the bible for messianism, In 2 Samuel, God promises that his throne will last forever. Of course, it doesn't and Temple is destroyed and the Jews are exiled and all that. So why did God lie? Or did he? And how do people reconcile these broken promises? Well, 2 Samuel has been a basis for messianism, and some people look to as evidence that Jesus is in the line of David.

OK, I'm done. I hope you enjoyed this.

Joey

Class from the 18th

Sorry I'm late posting this. I should have done it right after class but it definitely slipped my mind on Wednesday. But it was such a pretty day out and I was super tired and hungry so I just didn't get around to it.

So on Tuesday we began talking about the ark of the covenant. I have always been really confused on what exactly the ark of the covenant was. It is the box which holds the ten commandments fragments and possibly the instructions to the Temple of Solomon. Does it actually exist? Maybe, my guess is probably not. Did it ever exist? Maybe, maybe maybe maybe. But it would be pretty freaking sweet if it did. Like damn, thats the really fun stuff. When we find archaeological evidence for biblical stuff, thats the cool stuff. Like Tel Dan. I think if we found the ark of the covenant, that would be like the ultimate find. Anyways, David wanted to build a house to hold the Ark, but God was all like 'nah, its no big deal. Ive been chillin in my ark outside in the desert like the rest of the Jews for a while.' And david was like 'u got it boss.' So David didn't build the temple and instead God waited for Solomon to build it. I don't know if its in the Tanak or in the Midrash, but I believe its because of David's 'blood stained hands.' And God didn't want the builder to have 'blood on his hands."

We also went over some biblical parallels between David and Jesus. I think we have had enough of those and I feel like they aren't part of the history of Jerusalem, at least not in the period we are studying. They can wait till we get to the time of Jesus. But there are a ton. The procession for a king/priest through Jerusalem. Bethlehem. Underdog. Jesus's lineage goes through David. Theres a lot.

Then we also talked about how the Hebrew Bible is fairly consistent with other religions and mythologies of the Near East, which makes a lot of sense. Judaism is a middle eastern religion, even though we think of it not in the middle east for the majority of its history, and certainly for the last 1900 years.

Um, ya, I didn't take too much notes on Tuesday so that's it for this class.

Hope you enjoyed!

Joey

From a couple days ago

Last time in class, we went over Canaanite Jerusalem, which we said was pre-1000BCE and David's Jerusalem.

I really don't enjoy prehistoric history very much. Never really have. So I am going to skip to Joshua We went over the discrepancies in the Book of Joshua and how/if Joshua conquered Jerusalem. In some parts of the book it says that Joshua defeated the whole land and killed all the Jebusites and in other parts it says that the Jebusites and the Israelites coexisted in Jerusalem. Obviously some part of this story is false, if not the whole part. How could Joshua kill all the Jebusties and then live in Jerusalem with them? Some people look at this as evidence that the Bible was man written. I personally think "How could the Jews, after wandering in the desert for 40 years and with no military experience, conquer a city?" From a historical/practical/somethingical perspective that question must be asked.

The existence of David is controversial. Professor Cargil mentioned the archaeological digging under the neighborhood of Silwan. This is controversial for many reasons. Silwan is an Arab neighborhood. The existence of David, among other things, would provide more evidence of the ancient Jew's connection to Jerusalem, though at this point, I think Jews and Jerusalem are undeniably connected through history. When the professor mentioned Tel Dan though, I thought "Damn, that is fucking awesome." Like that is the coolest thing ever. Mentions of the house of David in ancient records. Its so cool.

The other big thing we went over was the origins of the Israelites from a historical perspective. Blah Blah Blah

I hate that I am only writing two paragraphs and change but I am sick and UCLA is on tv. Not my best blog post. I apologize. Tuesday's will be better. Until next time.

Joey

Sacred space, time, Jerusalem, and all that continued...

OK, so I just got out of my third history of Jerusalem class about 15 minutes ago. We continued with the same concepts of sacred time and space.

The first idea on sacred space that we touched on was how sacred space is often divinely inspired. Babel, the temple, Babylonian ziggurats, these are all examples of structures that have some sort of divine inspiration or instruction. Another example could be Noah's ark, which god instructed Moses to build with specific dimensions and a specific purpose. A lot of the same information was repeated, that Jerusalem is sacred, that it attracts different stories and myths, that it is a holy city for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (which will now be referred to as JCI in this blog because typing all three out is a waste of time. I hope no one gets offended by that.)

This class did focus more on specifically which myths and stories Jerusalem attracts and how it acts as an axis mundi. If I hadn't already studied Judaism and Jerusalem a little bit, I would probably get confused between all the references to Moriah, Jerusalem, and Zion. For any student who is reading this blog, know that they are all more or less the same. Mount Moriah = Temple Mount = most sacred, and contested, part of Jerusalem = Mount Zion. And we are really only talking about the Old City so far in class. Myths/stories covered today in class that are traced back to Jerusalem include the Garden of Eden, the Akedah, the burial of Adam, and obviously the Temples. Also, the construction of the Hell idea is traced back to Jerusalem. I had heard this idea mentioned but never explicitly explained. Basically the Hinnon Valley is the valley inn Jerusalem that goes around the southwest. In it, ancient Canaanite Kings were said to have sacrificed their children. After that ended, people dumped all their trash. It smelled like shit. fire, below, all this culminated in the idea of hell. Gai hinnon in Hebrew became gahennia in Greek which means hell.

I'm going to skip putting my two cents in about the Hebrew name for God.

The concept of sacred time was started today also. The sabbath is one of the most important parts of Judaism. It is major. I forgot where its from but the quote goes something like this, "the Jewish people have kept the sabbath and the sabbath has kept the Jewish people." Maybe a prayer. Jews consecrate one day out of the week for rest, but also for respect to God. the sabbath is the day of spiritual renewal, similar to how Eliade speaks of the New year. Jews celebrate a new year but every week go through a renewal, through the sabbath. My guess is I'll probably expand on this more in my paper, which is I need to start thinking more about.

I am sure I could type more but I don't like this keyboard. So on this note, good bye. I am excited to start Canaanite Jerusalem, even though its definitely not my favorite part of history.

Welcome to the blog!!

Hello all!!

My name is Joey Blatt, and for those who don't know why this blog has been created, it is for my history of Jerusalem class with Professor Cargill. I am super excited about the class and look forward to learning more about Jerusalem, keeping up with this blog, and everything about it.

First an introduction. (because like everyone I like talking about myself and so you will know who I actually am) I want everyone who is reading this blog from the class to have no questions about where I am coming from. So, I am a first year at UCLA. I am Jewish and have some knowledge about Israel and Jerusalem. During my junior year, I lived in Israel studying Jewish history, so I expect much of this class to be fairly familiar. Funny note: the only other blog I've ever written was about my time in Israel and here I am making another blog about a similar thing.

Second, I am writing this blog in a colloquial, simple, way. I do not intend for it to be technical. I am not trying to hide my bias. What goes in this blog will be my reactions, thoughts, and ideas about what happened in lecture. I will try to keep it focused on the lectures and the material but if I stray and write about oh, I don't know, his comment on shwarma and how it really is best off the street and Professor Cargill mispronounced it as "swarm," then I apologize but at least hopefully you the reader will find it somewhat enjoyable (Maybe swarma is the arabic pronunciation?)

Now to the material- Today in lecture we talked about sacred space, Jerusalem's geography, the importance of water, its central location, and mentioned a few key events with the Temple Mount. I think Jerusalem's sacredness as a place is a unique part of this world that has transcended through time and space. (whoa, technical) We've stressed how it is important to the three faiths but often people with little spiritual connections at all can feel it's power. To paraphrase what Neil Armstrong once said about being in the Old City, "I am more excited to be here in Jerusalem than to walk on the moon." Jerusalem is a big fucking deal, in other words, spiritually, politically,historically, through architecture, culturally, in any way. It is where Abraham is believed to have almost sacrificed Isaac, where Solomon built his Temple, where the second temple was rebuilt, where Mohammed ascended to heaven, where Jesus walk and did other things (don't really know what he did in Jerusalem other than get greeted with palms), and where many cultures have built cities and prospered. Sacred, no doubt. To someone who has studied western religion, even slightly, it almost goes without saying. But ya, everyone should get it by now, Jerusalem = sacred.

I really like how Professor Cargill stressed the importance of water with Jerusalem. Having studied this part of history before I know something about the Gihon spring and all that. But even today water is incredibly important in the middle east. My Jewish History teacher in Israel, David (pronounced with an Israeli accent like Da-veed. I didn't make that known in my last blog and readers read it the American way while I wrote it the Hebrew way.), said that the next war in the middle east will be fought not over religion or oil, but over water. It is important and contributes to the uniqueness of Jerusalem, both in terms of holiness and geographically, as Cargill pointed out. Israel is not a land of great rivers or bays, but of natural springs. Rain is extremely important. A little dinky spring, like the Gihon can form the basis for a much larger city, example A being Jerusalem.

Last thing I will touch on is the idea that Jerusalem is a magnet pulling towards it legends, ideas, myths, stories, and everything in between. There is so much description in the bible and in other ancient texts that is difficult to attribute to a specific location. But Jerusalem, with broad geographic features, and a long history is an easy place to attribute all these things to. It's an idea that I haven't heard before but makes total sense. It's been around for thousands of years, is a spiritual home to many religions, blah blah blah, and makes for an easy bowl to dump descriptions to.

I think I have wrote enough for this one post. I look forward to writing more. Congratulations if you read the whole thing, even though it could be much longer. I going to try and not just regurgitate the information from lecture.

And you are encouraged to leave comments!!!!! I know what you are thinking write now. "Hey that was alright. Oh look a comment. I'm not going to leave one. It might be awkward or weird or I don't know Joey." Well guess what, all comments are welcomed. They let the blogger know that someone actually read them and even if they aren't totally positive, I will still appreciate them greatly.

Now I'm actually done.

Joey