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.