14

Byzantine Jerusalem, A.D. 324-638

For more than two centuries after the destruction of the Temple, Jerusalem was governed by pagan rulers who attached no extraordinary religious significance to the Holy City. But in the fourth century after Christ all of that changed. By 311 Constantine the Great (311-337) had emerged as coruler of the vast Roman Empire. His influence on Christianity was felt beginning in 313 when he issued his Edict of Milan, granting Christianity favored status among the religions of the empire. In 324 Constantine became master of the entire empire and thus all of Palestine as well. He chose to reside in the eastern part of his empire and built a new capital he named Constantinople after himself. The new city was built on the site of a former Greek outpost known as Byzantium on the Bosphorus Strait, a thousand miles east of Rome. The Roman Empire continued, but it acquired a decidedly Greek flavor with the name Byzantine. These events were not inconsequential for Jerusalem. Churchmen and Christian governors began to make new plans for the Holy City.

At the Council of Nicaea, convened by Emperor Constantine in 325, Makarios, bishop of Jerusalem, reported on the status of Christian holy sites in the city. He immediately obtained permission to remove the Roman Temple of Aphrodite (Venus) from the site that tradition maintained was that of the Holy Sepulchre. He also encouraged the emperor's mother, Helena, to visit the Christian holy places, 1 which she did in 326, at the age of seventy-nine. At the same time, new discoveries were made, traditions about the locations of certain events were firmly linked to specific geographical locations, and new traditions were promoted. In short, Jerusalem was transformed, in both status and appearance, and the Byzantine period of the city's history began.

The Byzantine phase of Jerusalem's history shaped Christianity's understanding of the city's history and spiritual significance. Christianity began then to view Jerusalem itself as a shrine of preeminent holiness, marking the spiritual center of the cosmos. 2 Ironically, "Christian Jerusalem" really began in the Byzantine period rather than at the time of Christ. Jerusalem of the fourth through the seventh centuries was seen as the New Jerusalem of prophecy—and Christians believed it was to be their exclusive possession. 3 In their worldview, Jerusalem was a Jewish city or a pagan city before the Byzantine period. Nevertheless, Robert Wilken notes:

As the generations passed and Palestine became a Christian country—indeed, the Christian country par excellence—a slow turning took place in Christian attitudes toward the land. What transpired in Jerusalem and Judea has no parallel elsewhere in Christian memory or experience. No other city, not even Rome, has the same place in Christian affection and imagination. What happened to Christians during the fourth to seventh centuries has parallels to the experiences of the Israelites centuries earlier. Christians began to think of Jerusalem as their city, indeed as the Christian city, and Palestine as a place set apart. 4

Constantine's and Helena's Jerusalem

After the Council of Nicaea, Constantine became more than just a political leader. He began to be accepted as a divinely appointed director of both spiritual and secular life. Contemporary writers referred to him as a thirteenth apostle, which laid the foundation for the practice of Caesaropapism in the Byzantine Empire (in which the ruler is both caesar and pope, head of state and head of the church). The emperor appointed clergymen and defined dogma, settled theological disputes, and used the wealth of the state to serve the church (and vice versa). Once Jerusalem came firmly under the control of Constantine, the city's Christianization accelerated. No longer Aelia Capitolina, Jerusalem had become an important capital of Christian faith. Greatly influenced by his mother's Christian conviction and her visit to Palestine, the emperor began to build and endow splendid Christian churches in Constantinople, Rome, Asia Minor, and Jerusalem. He also consecrated sites in Palestine associated with Christ's birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. 5

Constantine ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be built in place of the demolished Temple of Aphrodite. This structure was one of the first major changes in the landscape of Byzantine Jerusalem. The builders of the church used some of the remains of the pagan temple, which are still visible today. 6 The significance of the spot on which the church was built, at least for Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christians, lies in their belief that the church was constructed over both the Rock of Crucifixion (Golgotha) and the very tomb where Jesus was laid to rest on the third day before his resurrection. An eyewitness to the building excavations, Eusebius, the fourth-century historian and bishop of Caesarea, records: "At once the work was carried out, and, as layer after layer of the subsoil came into our view, the venerable and most holy memorial of the Savior's resurrection, beyond all our hopes, came into view." 7 According to a tradition dating from 351, Helena found fragments of the actual cross of crucifixion in a cave or cistern adjacent to the Rock of Crucifixion during her tour of Jerusalem in 326. Unfortunately, the late provenance of the tradition makes it problematic.

The site where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built was at that time called the "Martyrium," and so the church was called by that name as well. 8 Eusebius left us a fairly detailed description of the edifice. It consisted of four main sections: the atrium, an internal courtyard entered via the Cardo, or main street, of Jerusalem; the basilica, or large prayer hall, entered through one of three entrances from the atrium; the Triforum, or "Holy Garden," a large colonnaded courtyard housing what was believed to be the Rock of Golgotha (by then cut down to a large cube); and the rotunda, a large circular structure covered by a golden dome in Byzantine style, under which the supposed tomb of Jesus lay and which was the focal point of the entire structure. 9 The question of whether the Church of the Holy Sepulchre preserves the site of Jesus' crucifixion continues to be debated, and there are compelling reasons to look elsewhere for it.

The facade of the church in Byzantine times faced east and pointed out to the Cardo (the main entrance today is on the south side). The design of the building was deliberate. Worshippers moved through the four sections of the building, from the atrium to the rotunda, in similitude of the stages of the Savior's passion and thus, by extension, through gradations of sanctity. The church was planned and built by the architects Zenobius and Eusthatius of Constantinople 10 and was consecrated on 14 September 335, though the rotunda was probably not finished until sometime after 340. This event was also the occasion of a church council at Jerusalem. One scholar noted: "This council took place ten years after the first Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, the scene of a major controversy regarding the divine and human aspects of Jesus Christ and which led to the split in the Christian world. As a consequence of the Jerusalem Council, the Christian world was reunified and the holiness of Jerusalem was considered to have increased by virtue of the fact that it induced a spirit of peace among all Christians." 11

Other churches in Palestine were constructed during Constantine's lifetime. But according to Eusebius, the emperor's building program was really directed by his mother, Helena. 12 She was interested in all the traditional sites that were venerated for their association with Christ's ministry. In particular she focused her attention on three caves linked to the "key mysteries of the faith." These included the birth cave in Bethlehem, the rock-cut tomb near Golgotha, and the cave on the Mount of Olives associated with the Ascension. 13 Helena ordered churches to be built over these caves. As we have already noted, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built over the traditional site of Golgotha. The first church in Bethlehem, an octagonal chapel situated directly above the cave of the Nativity, was dedicated by Helena on 31 May 339. According to the apocryphal work The Acts of John, a cave on the Mount of Olives was the place where Jesus taught his disciples during his forty-day postresurrection ministry. By 333, Helena had apparently directed the construction of a church over this cave, for a new basilica was seen that year by an early European Christian pilgrim to the Holy Land, a person early medieval documents call the Bordeaux Pilgrim. This church in Byzantine times was called "Eleona" (from Greek elaion, meaning "of olives"). It was destroyed in 614 by the Persians. Nevertheless, "the memory of Jesus' teaching remained, but there was a significant shift in its content. It tended to become the place where he taught the disciples the Our Father [the 'Lord's Prayer']." Today, the Church of the Pater Noster (Latin for "Our Father") occupies the ground. 14

In addition to his impressive building program, Constantine encouraged pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Constantine recognized that Christians wanted to, in the words of Origen, "trace the footsteps of Jesus." 15 And pilgrims did travel to Jerusalem from many different countries, espousing different doctrinal views: Ethiopians, Armenians, Copts, Syrians, and, above all, Greek Orthodox, who became the dominant Christian power in the city. 16 An inscription in the Armenian chapel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre displaying the words "O Lord we have come," together with a crude picture of a boat, indicates that the traveler to Jerusalem had come some distance. 17

These pilgrimages stimulated the development of Jerusalem in all areas. Next to the south end of the Temple Mount, Byzantine Christians built baths and houses, which were later buried beneath three vast structures of the Islamic Umayyads in the eighth century. The picture presented by archaeological investigation is one of relative opulence. 18 The travels of the Bordeaux Pilgrim to Jerusalem in 333 are the first and best-known example of the pilgrimages that occurred, 19 and his observations are an important source of information about Jerusalem during the time of Constantine. He describes several features of the city and its environs, especially the new basilicas at Bethlehem, Mamre, and the Mount of Olives. He also discloses contemporary beliefs about where events of Christ's life took place. He mentions the Temple Mount, including its subterranean structures and water systems; the pinnacle of the Temple, where the Lord was tempted; the House of Caiaphas; the Praetorium in the Tyropoeon Valley, where Jesus was arraigned before Pilate, and the column where Christ was scourged; and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was still under construction. 20

The example of the Bordeaux Pilgrim also shows that Christians continued to visit the site of the Temple, but they did not build any significant structure there. Nothing was stated concretely in Byzantine times about the rationale for such a practice, but the tenth-century historian Eutychius (940) provided the reason for this unspoken policy. He makes it clear that Christians considered the words of Jesus, recorded in Matthew 23:38 and 24:2, to be a curse pronounced upon the Temple area: "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate," and "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." Christians believed he meant nothing other than the Temple. Thus, concludes Eutychius, "On this account the Christians left it [the Temple Mount] desolate, and built no church upon it." 21 Apparently Helena, Constantine, and others were in harmony with this belief.

Many of the holy sites visited today by tourists in Jerusalem, and venerated worldwide by Catholic and Orthodox Christians, owe their memorialization to Constantine and Helena. By the end of the emperor's life, Jerusalem had assumed a predominantly Christian character. The Roman prohibition against Jews entering the city was again strictly enforced (with the exception of the annual visit to the Temple Mount on the ninth of Av), and Jerusalem steadily grew in importance as a Christian center. 22 As laudable as the achievements of Constantine might seem, it still must be remembered that he did not always help Christianity, for he influenced and altered its doctrines. With Constantine, for the first time, the church came under the direction of a political head of state, one who did not even officially accept the faith until the end of his life; and it took a nineteenth-century restoration of divine truths to set aright the course of Christ's original institution. Perhaps, then, it is legitimate to ask, If the doctrines, tenets, and truths of the Christian faith were changed by the Emperor Constantine, how sure can we be of the geographical sites he and Helena chose to immortalize?

Jerusalem in the Later Fourth Century

During the reign of Emperor Julian (361-363), later called the Apostate, there was a short-lived halt to the practice of Christianity in Jerusalem. Though a nephew of Constantine and raised in his uncle's household, Julian considered paganism the authentic religion and attempted to reinstitute it throughout the empire. In addition, he not only favored Judaism but even revoked the ban on Jews in the Holy City and ordered the reconstruction of their Temple in 363. This was in part a deliberate affront to Christians, who viewed the destroyed Temple as fulfillment of Christ's words, as well as validation of the triumph of their cause. 23 On the southern section of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount, recent excavations show a carving made by an excited Jewish pilgrim to the city during that time, an altered version of the Hebrew text of Isaiah 66:14: "And when you see this [the restored Temple?], your heart shall rejoice and their [the Bible reads "your"] bones shall flourish like an herb." 24

The noted Latter-day Saint historian and biographer Andrew Jenson saw in the reign of Emperor Julian an illustration of the inability of humans to interfere with the designs of God. Writing in 1895, Jenson described how the apostles of Jesus asked their master for a sign of his Second Coming and the end of the world. Jesus replied that Jerusalem would "be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). Even Julian the Apostate could not alter this prophecy. In Jenson's words, the Emperor was

a man who hated the Christian as he hated his bitterest enemy. His greatest desire was to show to the world that Christ was not a prophet, that he was not the Savior of mankind, that his words were no greater, and no more importance need be attached to them than to the words of any other man. In looking over the declarations of the Savior, he saw this prediction: "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled;" and this man, who had at his command the combined wealth of the then civilized world, who had at his command armies which had conquered almost the whole civilized world, issued an edict, promulgated a decree, in which he granted to the Jews the privilege of returning to Jerusalem, building up their city and reconstructing their temple. . . . When the decree was issued by Julian, the Jews went in great multitudes. They carried their treasure with them. They labored cheerfully, believing that the time had come when the words of the prophets would be fulfilled, that the blessings which had been promised to their fathers would be verified. Julian was not content with this. He said: "In order that I may make this thing sure, in order that I may demonstrate that my word is greater than the words of Jesus of Nazareth, I will go up myself." And he went, with his treasures, with his army, and his whole efforts were directed to the accomplishment of this work which he had set out to do. But the times of the Gentiles had not yet come in. Jerusalem was yet to be trodden under foot until that time should arrive, and that temple was destined not then to be built. It was utterly impossible for him to accomplish that work. 25

Before much of anything could be done to rebuild the Temple, a fire broke out among the stores of materials, apparently the result of an earthquake. 26 Subsequently, Julian's death in Persia on 16 June 363 while he was campaigning against the Persians in Mesopotamia and the ascendance of a fervently Christian emperor, Jovian, put an end to the Temple restoration project.

During the reigns of Jovian and his successors, several important Catholic bishops held the holy see in Jerusalem. The first was the great preacher and theologian Cyril. During his tenure as bishop (350-386) Christian pilgrims from Britain, Gaul, Ethiopia, India, Persia, and Italy flocked to Jerusalem. 27 These pilgrims perpetuated all kinds of traditions about where certain events had taken place, and, as a result, commemorative buildings were built. Some of the preserved sites may have been quite accurate, as with the earliest church built at Bethany to identify the place where Lazarus was raised from the dead. That church was destroyed by an earthquake after 390. 28

Monks who had practiced their ascetic ways in other parts of the Roman Empire, in Armenia or Cappadocia, for example, also left their native lands to live in the deserts nearest Jerusalem. Some of these monks saw themselves in the symbolic mold of Abraham, to whom God said "Go . . . to the land that I will show you" (Gen. 12:1; translation from the Hebrew). They called themselves inhabitants of "this holy land," meaning the land surrounding Jerusalem. 29

The arrival of these practitioners of Christianity reflected the increasing tendency of the church to bestow upon the city of Jerusalem and the land around it "the laurels that rightfully belonged to the Temple." 30 Though the land certainly was holy, this transfer of sanctity to sites and buildings within Jerusalem reveals, in the words of Hugh Nibley, "Christian envy of the Temple." 31 That is one reason why the cultural atmosphere of Byzantine Jerusalem developed the way it did. In every ancient culture, temples represented the meeting place of heaven and earth. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem left a gaping hole in the life of the Christian movement after the first century, especially its theology. Thus, "many Christian writers have expressed the conviction that the church possesses no adequate substitute for the Temple." 32 After the first century, Christianity seems always to have been looking for a surrogate to replace the rituals as well as the physical structure of the Temple.

Fifth-Century Jerusalem

Cyril's successor was Bishop John II (386-417). During his episcopate several aristocratic and wealthy families left Rome and settled in Jerusalem, lured by the presence of the holy places. They were led by the famous scholar Hieronymous Sophronius, or St. Jerome (340-420). Among them were two notable women, Melania and Poemenia, whose piety and largesse made the Mount of Olives a gathering place for religious men and women. They endowed and built churches and monasteries in or around Jerusalem, including the Church of the Ascension (378) and the Church of Gethsemane (390). 33

Melania, perhaps the most famous female aristocrat-turned-ascetic, had renounced her husband and children to pursue a monastic life in the East. Such was the pull of the land of Christ's nativity. Like Poemenia she first traveled to Egypt but eventually settled in Jerusalem. There she and her friend Rufinus founded a monastery and hospice on the Mount of Olives. These institutions attracted other well-connected pilgrims who knew they would not only be welcome coworkers in the kingdom but also live at a Christian crossroads where they could hear the latest ecclesiastical gossip. 34 Not to be outdone by Melania and Rufinus, Jerome and a female companion named Paula founded a monastery in Bethlehem near Helena's Church of the Nativity. This establishment fostered tension with the other monastery on the Mount of Olives, a circumstance hardly in harmony with Christ's teachings. 35

During the early fifth century the prestige of Jerusalem increased significantly within the church. One new structure of the period that accorded greater status to the city was the Basilica of Holy Zion, erected in 390 by Bishop John. Built on the site where the Church of the Apostles had stood since 347, and possessing especially large and impressive dimensions, the Basilica of Holy Zion was called the "Mother of all Churches." For a time, it housed the remains of St. Stephen, the early Christian martyr. 36

As a result of Jerusalem's increasing prestige in the Christian world, Juvenal, who was appointed bishop of Jerusalem in 428, assumed the authority and standing of patriarch in the church hierarchy, though he was not authorized by church leaders to do so. He put forward his claims at the Council of Ephesus, but they were rejected. Then, in 451, owing to his leadership and maneuvering, he was officially appointed to that office, and Jerusalem was elevated to the status of Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church—meaning that it was officially regarded as one of five centers of church leadership along with Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. As patriarch, Juvenal gained authority over all the churches of Palestine and Arabia. 37

Eudokia's Jerusalem

In 438, the wife of Emperor Theodosius II, Empress Eudokia, visited Jerusalem for the first time. She became enamored of the city, and when in 444 she had a falling out with her family (in particular the Emperor's sister, Pulcheria) she was exiled to Jerusalem, where she lived until her death in 460. She ruled Palestine on account of her rank. 38 More than any other individual except Helena, Eudokia changed the face of Jerusalem in the Byzantine period.

Under Eudokia, Jews were again allowed to live legally in Jerusalem. She spent lavish sums to build churches and restore other city structures. She built the episcopal palace on the northwest side of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She funded a new church built on the site of the house of Caiaphas, the high priest, another at the traditional site of Pentecost (where the Holy Spirit visited the apostles, as described in Acts 2), and a church overhanging the Pool of Siloam dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Her last act was building a basilica outside the north gate of Jerusalem (today's Damascus Gate), called St. Stephen's. The edifice was completed in 460, and the martyr's remains and relics were transferred there from the basilica on Mount Zion. Eudokia was also buried there. 39

Eudokia's name is especially associated with the construction of a southern wall around Jerusalem, which enclosed the City of David, the Tyropoeon Valley, and the Western Hill, which was called Mount Zion. (This wall was excavated in 1896.) Eudokia viewed her participation in the construction of the wall as fulfillment of Psalms 51:18: "Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem." The Greek word for good pleasure is eudokia. 40

Toward the end of Eudokia's life in Jerusalem, she became embroiled in a theological dispute that divided Christianity. The Monophysite Controversy—a wrenching conflict over the nature of Christ's person—gained Eudokia's support. The Monophysites claimed that Christ contained within his person a single, wholly divine nature. At the other end of the theological spectrum were the Nestorians, theologians who saw Christ as two distinct persons, human and divine. Centered in Alexandria, the Monophysites won supporters in Armenia, Egypt, and Syria, and caused the formation of separate churches that persist today. The Egyptian Monophysites called themselves Copts, and the Syrian Monophysites became the Jacobites. A Monophysite monk named Theodosius was appointed bishop of Jerusalem, and Juvenal returned as patriarch only with the help of a Byzantine army. 41

In 451 a majority of orthodox bishops convened the Council of Chalcedon and declared Monophysites as well as Nestorians to be heretics. The orthodox position was a compromise: Christ was both perfect God and perfect man. His two natures, though different, were inseparably combined in the single person of Jesus Christ. Eudokia looked at the confusion in the church, sought advice from a holy man named Simeon Stylites (who lived on top of a pillar near Antioch), and finally was reconciled with the orthodox position. 42

Though Eudokia was by far the most important and influential person of fifth-century Jerusalem, another fascinating personality was active in the Holy City during the later years of the century. Known as Peter the Iberian, he is noteworthy not only because he founded a monastery near David's Tower (at today's Jaffa Gate) but also because his biography gives much information about the physical appearance of Jerusalem, including the many churches built during the fourth and fifth centuries. We find in his biography first-time references to churches erected on the ruins of the Praetorium (where the "trial" of Jesus took place) and a church built on the dam that divided the two Sheep's Pools. 43

Sixth-Century Jerusalem

Jerusalem reached its peak during the Byzantine period under the Emperor Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565. Justinian is known for his monumental building projects throughout the empire, and in this regard there is reason to believe that he saw himself in the mold of the great Israelite kings. His greatest architectural triumph was the Church of the Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople, one of the largest Christian churches in the world. At its dedication, Justinian is reported to have exclaimed: "Glory to God who has judged me worthy of accomplishing such a work as this. O Solomon, I have outdone thee!" 44 Justinian was encouraged in his projects by his brilliant and beautiful wife, the former prostitute Theodora.

Little wonder, then, that Jerusalem at the time of Justinian was truly a city of churches. A pilgrim named Theodosius, who traveled from the Byzantine capital to Jerusalem, counted twenty-four churches on the Mount of Olives alone. In 529 a Samaritan revolt devastated parts of Jerusalem. Justinian rebuilt the destroyed churches and added a magnificent basilica, the Nea ("new one"), within the Holy City. Consecrated in 543, the Nea Church was one of the most splendid in the empire. Its official name was "The New Church of St. Mary, Mother of God." It was destroyed by the Muslims in the eighth or ninth century. 45

The Nea Church was discovered in excavations of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City after 1967. Most of the church was in the southern sector of the Jewish Quarter and a small part outside the present-day southern wall of the Old City. Before archaeological investigation was possible, it was known from the writings of Procopius, a biographer and historian who lived during Justinian's time, that the Nea was actually a complex of buildings covering a large area. In addition to the church there was a monastery, hostel, hospital, and library. 46

This stage of the city's development is also shown in another valuable source, the Madaba Map, a sixth-century creation discovered in a church in the town of Madaba, east of the Jordan River. This mosaic map depicts the land of Palestine, its towns and cities, with Jerusalem represented in a scale of approximately 1:1600. 47 It furnishes us with many significant details of the Holy City. Justinian's two most impressive projects completed in Jerusalem are portrayed in the map: the Nea and the Cardo. Inside the north gate (today's Damascus Gate) is shown a semicircular plaza with a column in its center (still commemorated in the Arabic name of the north gate—Bab al-'Amud, "Gate of the Column"). Extending southward from the plaza are the two colonnaded streets forming the Cardo. The western branch of the Cardo passed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and continued on to Zion Gate by way of the Nea Church. The other branch of the Cardo passed a public bath and ended at an inner city gate. The Temple Mount at this time was a wasteland, with only a few scattered buildings. 48

Early Seventh-Century Jerusalem

The end of Jerusalem's Byzantine period began with the conquest of the city by the Persians in 614 and was finished with the Muslim conquest of 638. Various groups of Persians had been attacking Roman interests since 41 B.C., but in A.D. 224 warriors known as the Sassanians conquered the Parthians and created a powerful new Sassanid Persian Empire. Border disputes between Rome and the Persians became commonplace until the year 611, when they reached a climax. Led by King Chosroes II (590-628), the Persian forces carried out an invasion that destroyed three centuries of Christian building in the Holy Land. The reputation of Jerusalem played an important role in this invasion. 49

The Holy City by that time had become famous for its numerous treasures and accumulated wealth from contributions made by pilgrims and Byzantine officials throughout the empire. Thus, conquering Jerusalem became an important objective for the Persians, who wished to enrich their royal treasury. A post-Byzantine source proposes that another motive of Rome's eastern antagonists was their desire to overthrow Christian sovereignty and prove the inferior status of Christianity. Whatever the motive or combination of motives, the conquest of Jerusalem began in 614 without any bloodshed. Some of the inhabitants of the city opened the gates to the Persian commander, Shahr Baraz, who left only a garrison to control the city. After a brief period of quiet, the Jerusalemites revolted against the garrison, wiping them out. Shahr Baraz returned and laid siege to Jerusalem for twenty-one days. As the Persian forces mounted their assaults, the Patriarch Zacharias, who saw in the attacks punishment from God for the immorality prevalent in the city, advised surrender. The people refused to listen to him, and the army of Shahr Baraz finally entered Jerusalem, at once bathing its streets with the blood of those who could not fight back—old men, women, and children. Churches were destroyed, and crucifixes trodden under foot. Some thirty-three thousand inhabitants were slaughtered. 50

Tradition-laden accounts of these events claim that the Jews opened the city gates and then participated with the Persians in the slaughter of Christians at the Mamilla Pool. Such traditions indicate the hatred that existed between Jew and Christian at that time. Many Christians who were not killed were sold into slavery, and prisoners who were thought likely to be useful to the Persians were carried away captive to Ctesiphon, the Persian capital. Among them was the Patriarch Zacharias, who went carrying the relic of the "true" or Holy Cross found by Helena and kept in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 51

One hardly needs to be reminded of the tremendous irony of these events compared with those of A.D. 70. This time it was the Christians who were massacred and enslaved and their sacred symbols plundered. This time it was the beloved and holy Jerusalem of the Christians that was left devastated and ruined, once again "trodden down of the Gentiles," a shadow of its former glory—and Christians wept over it. A poem written by Sophronius, later patriarch of Jerusalem, lamented the fall of the city in 614:

Holy City of God
Home of the most valiant saints
Great Jerusalem
What kind of lament should I offer you?
Children of the blessed Christians
Come to mourn high crested Jerusalem
In the face of such tragedy
The flow of my tears is too brief
The dirge of my heart
Too measured before such suffering. 52

The sack of Jerusalem caused theologians to confront an arresting and uncomfortable question, one that made honest Christian thinkers down through the centuries ponder their traditional attitudes toward the Jews and their own relationship to them: If expulsion from Jerusalem was proof of divine rejection of the Jews, did the principle not hold true for their Christian successors? 53

The Persians ruled Jerusalem for only fifteen years. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610-641) set out in 622 to drive the invaders from his empire. Following a series of victories, he signed a peace treaty with the Persian king, stipulating that the Persians withdraw from the territories of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Cross be returned to the Christians in Jerusalem. The emperor arrived in the Holy City by way of the Golden Gate at the head of a triumphal procession, carrying the Cross over the Temple platform and back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on 21 March 631. The remains of the Cross did not stay in Jerusalem, however, but were sent to Constantinople by Heraclius in 633. In the meantime, the monk Modestus restored some of Jerusalem's destroyed churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 54

Though the Christians could claim technically that they did not stay beaten, their Holy City was only a shadow of its former self. Hardly any Christian monument surviving the Persian siege failed to show the cracks and scars of the devastation. Likewise, both Byzantines and Persians were so exhausted that the whole of Palestine fell to the Arab advance, despite desperate battles by the Christians. Moreover, the fate of Jerusalem in the seventh century caused theologians to rethink their beliefs about Byzantine Jerusalem. Perhaps it was not the New Jerusalem of prophecy. Indeed, they forged an eschatology that centered on a heavenly Jerusalem. And for a time the ancient promise to Abraham that his descendants—whom the Christians believed they were—would possess the land of Canaan was divorced from the fate of the earthly city of Jerusalem. Yet the idea of a holy people tangibly possessing the Holy Land—especially the Holy City—in this life and on this earth did not disappear forever. It reappeared four hundred years later in Christian Europe. 55

Notes

^1. Avi-Yonah, Jerusalem, 43.

^2. Nibley, Mormonism and Early Christianity, 323.

^3. Of course this is not scriptural. The promise given to Abraham was that his posterity (no qualifier) would inherit the land when they hearkened to the voice of the Lord. Nibley has written: "From Origen's time to the present, churchmen of all sects have been one in insisting that the New Jerusalem is for Christians only, since the Jewish city can never rise again. In the absence of scriptural support for this claim various stock arguments are used." Mormonism and Early Christianity, 325.

^4. Wilken, Land Called Holy, xiv.

^5. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 70. For the churches built by Constantine, as well as his life as it relates to the rise of Christianity, see Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, 88, 153-54, 176-78, 192.

^6. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 70.

^7. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 3.28 as quoted in Murphy-O'Connor, Holy Land, 50.

^8. Asali, Jerusalem in History, 94.

^9. See the excellent diagram and description in Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 71.

^10. Avi-Yonah, Jerusalem, 43.

^11. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 70.

^12. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 3.41.

^13. See the excellent summary in Murphy-O'Connor, Holy Land, 128-29.

^14. Murphy-O'Connor, Holy Land, 128-29. See also Wilken, Land Called Holy, 109.

^15. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 108.

^16. Ben-Arieh and Sapir, A Collection of Papers, 13-14.

^17. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 70. See also Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage.

^18. See the detailed information on Byzantine residential quarters recovered by archaeologists in Ben-Dov, Shadow of the Temple, 243-59.

^19. According to historians, there is no firsthand account of an actual Christian pilgrim's journey to Jerusalem until that of the Latin-speaking traveler of Bordeaux, who arrived four years before Constantine's death. See Wilken, Land Called Holy, 109.

^20. See Wilken, Land Called Holy, 109-10; Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 70.

^21. In Finegan, Archeology of the New Testament, 199.

^22. Asali, Jerusalem in History, 94-95.

^23. Mark 13:2 reads: "And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down."

^24. Ben-Dov, Ophel Archaeological Garden, 13. Ben-Dov attaches eschatological significance to this inscription in light of Julian's reforms: "From the fourth century onward, we found, chapter 66 of Isaiah was interpreted as a reference to the End of Days, the resurrection of the dead, and the national resurrection of the Jewish people with the reconstruction of the Temple. What could be a more promising realization of that vision than the Julian era, a time when it seemed that the interpretation of the verses from Isaiah were actually coming true before one's eyes? . . . In the Bible the wording reads: 'And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb,' while the version on the wall reads 'their bones.' The explanation seems quite logical: 'And when ye see this' refers to the people who will behold the inscription, whereas 'their bones' are those of the dead about to be resurrected." Ben-Dov, Shadow of the Temple, 219.

^25. Jenson, Collected Discourses, vol. 5, 20 Jan. 1895. Though we cannot embrace all of Jenson's statements without critical examination of his historical understanding, his interpretive comments are valuable in light of scripture. His main point is that fulfillment of Jerusalem's prophetic future as decreed by God cannot be altered by human effort, no matter how mighty humans may think they are.

^26. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 70.

^27. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 101-25.

^28. Murphy-O'Connor, Holy Land, 137.

^29. Wilken, Land Called Holy, xiv-xv.

^30. Nibley, When the Lights Went Out, 55.

^31. Nibley, When the Lights Went Out, 55.

^32. Nibley, When the Lights Went Out, 56.

^33. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 70.

^34. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 152-53.

^35. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage, 174. Numerous scriptures tell us to shun contention. When disciples complained to Jesus about others performing similar tasks, for example, he taught that feelings of rivalry are not appropriate and that sincere and authorized fellow laborers are not rivals in the kingdom.

^36. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 71.

^37. Asali, Jerusalem in History, 98. See also Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 71, though his dates are in error.

^38. Asali, Jerusalem in History, 98.

^39. Asali, Jerusalem in History, 98.

^40. Asali, Jerusalem in History, 98. See also Avi-Yonah, Jerusalem, 45.

^41. Goldschmidt, Concise History of the Middle East, 20.

^42. Asali, Jerusalem in History, 99.

^43. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 73-74.

^44. Hollister, Medieval Europe, 36.

^45. Avi-Yonah, Jerusalem, 45; Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 74-75. Ben-Dov, Shadow of the Temple, 233-41. An especially good discussion of the Nea Church is in Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem, 229-35.

^46. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 75.

^47. Bahat, Carta's Historical Atlas of Jerusalem, 36.

^48. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem, 211-29.

^49. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem, 211-29; see also Asali, Jerusalem in History, 100-101; Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 78-79.

^50. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 78-79.

^51. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 78-79; see also Avi-Yonah, Jerusalem, 47.

^52. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 227-28.

^53. Nibley, Mormonism and Early Christianity, 325.

^54. Murphy-O'Connor, Holy Land, 50.

^55. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 245-46.