The Centrality of Jerusalem: Historical Perspectives

Written by M. Poorthius and C. Safrai (eds) Reviewed By Markus Bockmuehl

The papers gathered here by Marcel Poorthius and Chana Safrai represent the proceedings of a joint Dutch-Israeli conference (with some other participants) on the subject of Jerusalem, which was held at Bar Ilan University in 1993. The usual ‘grab-bag’ effect of such volumes is in this case only partly mitigated by Poorthuis’s opening survey of the different contributions (pp. 1–6) and Safrai’s concluding retrospect (pp. 217–28). The overall impression is not helped by the fact that this publication has been edited, and for the most part written, by scholars for whom English is a second language.

In spite of all that, however, the stated concern of the subject does surface in all its chapters: namely, the notion of the holiness and centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish and Christian tradition. Klaus Seybold discusses Jerusalem in Psalm 76, suggesting the reading ‘to Moriah’ in v. 12. Panc Beetjes studies the city in Chronicles, highlighting the programmatic importance of the identification of God as ‘the God of Jerusalem’ (2 Ch. 32:19), which similarly occurs in a sixth-century BC inscription from Khirbet Beit Lei. Joshua Schwartz argues that the term ‘birah’ in Rabbinic literature designates a fortress that existed on the Temple Mount prior to the Antonia. Albert I. Baumgarten offers a social-scientific perspective on the increasing urbanization of Jerusalem in the Hasmonaean period, suggesting that it promoted the formation of Jewish sects. Zeev Safrai considers that Josephus misrepresents the nature of the Jerusalem aristocracy: many of the élite in fact resided in the countryside of Judaea and Galilee, which helps to explain the rapid recovery of indigenous leadership in Judaea after 70. Lawrence H. Schiffman covers the Dead Sea Scrolls, stressing the co-existence in these documents of a fierce and relentless critique of Jerusalem and Temple along with the hope for an exalted eschatological restoration of both (an important consideration for those wishing to understand the NT’s criticism of the Temple). Hanan Eshel’s treatment of the so-called Joshua Apocryphon (4Q522) suggests that it is a composite work written outside Qumran. Shmuel Safrai points out the halakhic extension of many of the regulations concerning the sanctity of the Temple to the whole city of Jerusalem (further developed when the city itself lay in ruins), but notes that this innovation was resisted at Qumran. Examining the perspective of Hellenistic diaspora Judaism, Daniel R. Schwartz provocatively suggests that for Jews abroad it tended to be the city of Jerusalem rather than the Temple that held pride of place. Bart Koet’s essay on Paul’s shaving of his hair (Acts 18:18) points out that his supererogatory Nazarite vow also gives the Lucan Paul a strong orientation towards Jerusalem and the Temple. The patristic reaction to Julian the Apostate’s attempt to rebuild the Temple is the subject of Martin Parmentier’s essay; he suggests that among Christian writers Julian’s failure reinforced the demise of apocalyptic interpretations of Jesus’ Temple prophecy in favour of the historicizing, strictly supersessionist understanding. Carrying on from this theme, Hagi Amitzur discusses Justinian’s Nea Church, deliberately built to surpass and transcend Solomon’s Temple. In the Middle Ages, Bernard of Clairvaux believed that while monks did not need the earthly Jerusalem, its physical reality nevertheless was of immense symbolic and even sacramental value for lay people, enabling them to come in contact with the true heavenly reality (so Peter Raedts). Discussing Crusader views of Jerusalem in the same period, Yvonne Friedman considers how Christian perspectives on Jerusalem changed with the Moslem reconquest of the city, from its literal political importance to its spiritual role as a centre of penitence. In her concluding ‘retrospect’, Chana Safrai draws on insights from sociology and geography in discussing the notion of a ‘central’ place, especially as it applies to the role of Jerusalem.

This work, like a number of others, is intended to coincide with the celebration of Jerusalem’s 3.000-year anniversary. In contrast to both the Zionist and the starkly Origenist theologies reflected in some of the current efforts, Poorthuis wisely sets out the balanced theological vision which motivates this volume: the picture of ‘Judaism attached to Temple and city over against a critical and cosmopolitan Christianity, should be strongly challenged. There was never a lack of critical voices within Judaism, whereas in Christianity a massive re-sanctification of Jerusalem occurred from the Constantinian era on well into the Middle Ages. Both religions should avoid the traps of the two extremes of an idolatry of the soil and of a spirituality divorced from any place whatsoever …’ (p. 2).

In a volume of ‘historical perspectives’, the absence of papers on the place of Jerusalem in Islam seems doubly regrettable, for both academic and political reasons. Nevertheless, and despite certain problems of form and coherence, this volume does represent a wealth of balanced insight into the Jewish and Christian views of the Holy City. While the contributions are inevitably of varying quality, these studies are a valuable and timely resource for a Christian theology of the Land and of Jerusalem.


Markus Bockmuehl

Cambridge University