1/11/11 Lecture 3

In today’s lecture we finished up the slides on Jerusalem as Sacred Space. Prof. Cargill originally planned on covering through Canaanite Jerusalem but cut class short so he wouldn’t have to stop in the middle of a topic.

First we recapped the major events of the Jewish Temple. Solomon’s Temple was built about 950 BCE and destroyed 586 BCE. The “2^nd” Temple was rebuilt in 515 BCE and aggrandized by Herod in 20 BCE were he established the Western or Wailing Wall. The “2^nd” Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. The Dome of the Rock was first built in 691 CE.

We then examined the question why a temple? We compared Mesopotamian Ziggurats as places of worship to pyramids as burial sites. Looking through many different examples we see that when a temple is constructed it can be traced back to divine origins. Places for the worship of god are not of human conception but based on god given instructions. We see an example of this when man tried to construct his own holy place with the tower of Babel and God destroyed it.

Jerusalem is made into a sacred place by attracting stories and drawing things to it. It is like when you hear stories about parties at a house, half the stories might be untrue but it still makes a good place to hang out. Prof. Cargill looked at a few examples of how Jerusalem is made sacred in Genesis 2-3 with the Garden of Eden, in Genesis 14 with Melchizedek, and in Genesis 22 with the Binding of Isaac. All of these contain references to Jerusalem geography that pull the story there.

There are also a few key dates for the Dome of the Rock. In 691 CE the dome was completed, this was the “72^nd year of the Moslem era”. In 1099 CE crusaders conquered Jerusalem and converted Dome of the Rock into a church. In 1187 CE Saladin re-concquered Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock.

Gehema is the New Testament word for hell, which comes from Gai Hinnom or the Valley of Hinnom.