I " Z * Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
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Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem
in the Bible and Beyond
Ioana Zamfir*
The biblical image of Jerusalem is constructed from a diversity of themes, which
capture various dimensions of the holy city. The article presents the most recurrent
and significant literary themes used in the Bible for referring to Jerusalem, organized
on three levels: the concrete, the humane and the divine. The image of Jerusalem
accumulates references to its geographical dimension, as a territorial border and center
of the world, to its political and social dimension, as a capital city and military defense,
and to its spiritual dimension, as a reference point in the relation between humans and
God. These biblical themes stood as reference points in later developments of Jerusalem’s
image in the Christian tradition and in European representations of the holy city.
Keywords: Jerusalem, Bible, literary themes, holy, center, God, people
1. Introduction
For millennia, Jerusalem was, and still remains, one of the main sacred places
for Judaism and Christianity, thus favoring the perception of the city from
a multitude of perspectives. For a long time, the city stood as the home of
the People of Israel, an image which was adopted as well in the Christian
tradition, together with the feeling of belonging, though with various ad-
aptations and appropriations. Jerusalem became, for Christian Europe, a
spiritual center situated in a distant land. The development of Christian
sites, Christian practices such as pilgrimage, or political and military actions,
such as crusades, contributed to maintaining Jerusalem in the center of the
Christian world, despite its geographical remoteness, while Orthodox litur-
gy symbolically evoked Jerusalem in virtually every church.
But the maintenance of Jerusalem’s centrality, in this context of transi-
tions and transformations, is explainable first and foremost through the key
role that the biblical text continuously played in the European culture and
society, until modern times, conserving the importance of the city for believ-
ers. It is the Bible that fuelled, through the multifaceted picture of Jerusalem
that it provides, a continuous interest and attention for the far away holy city.
*
Ioana Zamfir, Museographer at the National Museum of Maps and Old Books in Bucharest,
Romania, PhD student at the University of Bucharest, Doctoral School of Literary and
Cultural Studies, str. Paul Greceanu, nr 11, bloc 21 A, sc.1, et.1, ap 7, sector 2, Bucharest,
ioana.zamfir@drd.unibuc.ro, ioana.zamfir@muzeulhartilor.ro.
RES 13 (2/2021), p. 160-174 DOI: 10.2478/ress-2021-0019Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
The name Jerusalem appears in 838 verses of the Hebrew Bible and in
143 verses of the New Testament. A total of 981 verses mention literally its
name, while there are also indirect references to the city, or alternative names,
such as Jebus, Zion, the city of David, Ariel – the lion of God, the city of God, the
holy city, the city of David, daughter of Zion, faithful city, the city of righteousness
etc. The overwhelming quantity of appearances of Jerusalem in the Hebrew
Bible is a clear statement of its importance, while their diversity and evocative
power speak about the intensity and complexity of the people’s relation with
their city. In the book of Psalms for example, but not only there, “Jerusalem
is the site of scenes of redemption, joy, and celebration of the proximity to
God and the house of the Lord. But it is also the quintessential locus of loss,
marked by cries over the devastating destruction of the Temple.”1
Transformations in the perception of Jerusalem over the centuries,
along with different cultures and political dominions over the city, never
erased older perspectives, but integrated them and brought new ones to
light, as has been shown in numerous studies on Jerusalem.2 The fruitfulness
of these transformations and the diversity of successive representations of
Jerusalem was not only a product of innovation and creativity but relied as
well on faith and on the already established biblical tradition, which offered
a complex and diverse picture of the holy city.
In this article we bring together some of the literary themes defining
Jerusalem in the Bible, from the basic concrete level to the most spiritualized
ones, discussing as well, towards the second part of the paper, their rever-
beration in the Christian tradition. This paper is meant as a complement
for the study of Renaissance Jerusalem maps, which reflected knowledge of
the Biblical text, while relying as well on a religious perception of Jerusalem,
through an extensive Christian tradition.
2. Biblical themes
2.1. The concrete Jerusalem
Mention of the city in the Bible has, in many examples, the concrete mean-
ing of a place which can be geographically located. The Book of Joshua
contains many topographical references, one of the most noteworthy being
the 18th chapter of the book, where some authors have identified evidence
of an actual literary map of the land of Canaan (Josh. 18:4): “Appoint three
1
Ilana Pardes “Preface,” in Jerusalem on and in Psalms, eds. Ilana Pardes and Ophir Münz-
Manor (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), V.
2
Lee I. Levine, ed., Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
(New York: Continuum, 1999).
161Ioana Zamfir
men from each tribe. I will send them out to make a survey of the land and
to write a description of it, according to the inheritance of each.”3
As such, along with other land divisions which can be found in the
Book of Joshua, Jerusalem is used as a landmark for spatial orientation. In
the territorial delimitation between the tribes of Israel, the northern border
of the tribe of Judah is defined in relation to the city Jebus, or Jerusalem
(Josh. 15:8): “And the border ran up the Valley of Ben Hinnom along the
southern slope of the Jebusite city, that is, Jerusalem.” Here the city is used
as a boundary in a geographical structuring of a space.
The Bible is the only reference of the Jebusites and of their main city
– Jebus,4 which has been captured by David according to the first Book
of Chronicles (1 Chron.11:4-5): “David and all the Israelites marched to
Jerusalem, that is Jebus, where Jebusites are inhabitants of the land. / And the
inhabitants of Jebus said to David, you will not come hither. Nevertheless,
David captured the fortress of Zion – which is the City of David.”
At a material level, Jerusalem is described in the Bible not only by its
geographic positioning, but also from the point of view of its urban organiza-
tion. Depending on the period in question, the biblical text gives information
concerning the development of the city and building campaigns. Some of the
most recurrent elements are the Temple, the walls of the city, the gates, and
administrative and political centres such as royal palaces. For example, “we
are told that Solomon extended the small town or citadel that he inherited
from his father, known as the «stronghold of Zion» or the «City of David» and
incorporated the Temple Mount in the extended city. There he built a large
royal palace (1 Kings 7:1-12) and a smaller but magnificent temple beside.”5
An important amount of the biblical fragments referring to the ap-
pearance of Jerusalem address the defensive power of the city: its natural
resources and specific architecture, which had an important role in the mil-
itary domain. The main water sources of Jerusalem, such as the Gihon river,
are also present in the biblical text (2 Chron. 33:14): “Afterward he rebuilt
the outer wall of the City of David, west of the Gihon spring in the valley, as
far as the entrance of the Fish Gate and encircling the hill of Ophel.”
3
https://www.biblegateway.com/, accessed March 22, 2021. Same source for all the English
versions of biblical fragments.
4
Trevor Bryce, in consultation with Heather D. Baker, Daniel T. Potts, Jonathan N. Tubb,
Jennifer M. Webb, and Paul Zimansky, The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of
Ancient Western Asia (London, New York: Routledge, 2009), 350.
5
David Ussishkin, “Solomon’s Jerusalem: The Text and the Facts on the Ground,” in
Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology. The First Temple Period, eds. Christopher R. Matthews
and Ann E. Killebrew (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2003), 103.
162Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
The strategic side of the city is mentioned frequently in the Bible.
Yairah Amit argues that the dramatic conflict involving Jerusalem during
the Assyrian conquest led by Sennacherib was crucial for the perception of
Jerusalem as a chosen city and a divine place, more than the unification of
monarchy and the building of the Temple by Solomon in the 10th century.
“It seems to me that it was the historical reality of the latter half of the eighth
century and the seventh century that fixed the place of Jerusalem in the
minds of future generations.”6
This concrete dimension, of a protective city dominated by strategic
heights, surrounded by walls, and defensive valleys, leads us towards the
second level of discussion concerning the biblical image of Jerusalem – the
humane, the collective identity and feeling of belonging developed around
the city of Jerusalem by the people of Israel.
2.2 Jerusalem in human terms
However, not only the fragments describing military encounters express a
strong relationship of the people with the city. The city itself is also described
in human terms, through personifications and metaphors.
For example, addressing the city in a context of conflict had the effect
of inflaming the hearts of the warriors with the spirit of the battle:
Awake, awake, Zion, clothe yourself with strength! Put on your
garments of splendour, Jerusalem, the holy city. The uncircum-
cised and defiled will not enter you again. / Shake off your dust;
rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on
your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive. (Isa. 52:1,2)
The collective sentiment of identification with the fate of the city is visible as
well in other biblical fragments, where Jerusalem is used as a symbol for the
people of Israel and for immutable faith (Ps. 125:1): “Those who trust in the
LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”
As the chosen people, the People of Israel are defined by their relation
with God. The destiny of the city thus reflects the transformations of this
relation. Whether the people approach God or neglect Him has an immedi-
ate impact on the people, but it is visible also on the city. This illustrates in a
rather material plan the spiritual ruin or the spiritual fulfilment of Israel. As
Stephen Cook remarks, the beauty, and the fertility of the female personifi-
cation of Jerusalem is an eschatological theme,7 which stands for the salva-
6
Yairah Amit, “When Did Jerusalem Become a Subject of Polemic?,” in Christopher R.
Matthews and Ann E. Killebrew (eds.) Jerusalem in Bible, 374.
7
Stephen L. Cook, “The Fecundity of Fair Zion: Beauty and Fruitfulness as Spiritual
Fulfillment,” in Boda, Dempsey, and Flesher, Daughter of Zion, 78.
163Ioana Zamfir
tion of the people, resulting from a harmonious relation with God. “Rejoice
greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy
King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding
upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” (Zech. 9:9)
As such, the image of Jerusalem can vary from that of a glorious, pros-
perous city to that of a ruin and these aspects are rendered through parallels
with human destiny. In Isaiah, Jerusalem is seen as a devastated city, which
is paralleled by an image of the wounded, decaying people, that the Lord
will restore:
4
Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,
children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they
have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone
away backward.
21
How is the faithful city become a harlot! it was full of judgment;
righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.
26
And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors
as at the beginning: afterward, thou shalt be called, The city of
righteousness, the faithful city.
27
Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with
righteousness. (Isa. 1:4,21,26,27).
Another image through which the city of Jerusalem and the people of Israel
are associated is the feminine theme of the daughter of Zion or the daughter
of Jerusalem. The association with a feminine figure might be supported by
the fact that cities in the Hebrew language are usually feminine nouns.
The theme of Jerusalem as a female character in the biblical text is also
part of a marriage metaphor, with rhetorical purpose, where God stands for
the husband.8 Some authors approach the feminine image of Jerusalem from
a feminist perspective, transferring to the divine marriage metaphor the ex-
pectations of a human couple, where adultery stands for idolatry.9 Other
authors such as Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, read the relationship of daughter Zion
with God through the key of beauty and life regeneration. Nevertheless,
there is a consensus about the fact that “Daughter Zion, serves as the out-
spoken representative of the people of Judah.”10
8
Jill Middlemas, “Speaking of Speaking: The Form of Zion’s Suffering in Lamentations,” in
Daughter Zion – her portrait her response, eds. Mark J. Boda, Carol J. Dempsey, and LeAnn
Snow Flesher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 41.
9
Barbara Green, “Cognitive Linguistics and the «Idolatry-Is-Adultery» Metaphor of
Jeremiah 2-3,” in ibidem, 11-38.
10
Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, “Isaiah 40-55: A Judahite Reading Drama,” in ibidem, p 56.
164Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
Personified as a female character, Jerusalem can speak about human
suffering, destruction and pain, that God listens to and answers back to,
transforming devastation into hope and prosperity.
Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a
woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and
thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon;
there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem thee
from the hand of thine enemies. (Mic. 4:10)
Again, depending on whether the message is that of a sinful people or a
just people, the feminine figure with which Jerusalem is compared may vary
from a widow, a princess, a mother, or a loose-woman.11
The association of cities with female figures might be, as in the case
of Athensas well, a widespread custom of archaic societies, perceiving the
homeland as related to femininity, the nurturing place of belonging, and an
ideal of purity and splendour, able to instil heroic behaviour.
The personification of Jerusalem reflects the authors’ awareness of the
human aspect of the city, the fact that Jerusalem is mainly made of people,
not just an objective place. It reflects the strong identification of the people
of Israel with their political and spiritual centre, which through personifica-
tion is seen as a generic figure, representative of each of them.
2.3. Jerusalem and its connection with divinity
The Hebrew Bible presents Jerusalem as a spiritual centre of the people of
Israel, a place of manifestation and presence of the divine. In various frag-
ments, Jerusalem is called a city chosen by God to be among his people. One
of the images of Jerusalem which evokes the ancient image of God’s demo-
cratic presence in the middle of Israel is Jerusalem as a tent:
Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see
Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken
down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither
shall any of the cords thereof be broken. (Isa. 33:20)
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of
God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. (Ps. 46:4)
The Bible shows God Himself affirming his choice for Jerusalem in several
verses:
But he shall have one tribe for my servant David’s sake, and for
Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes
11
Mary L. Conway, “Daughter Zion: Metaphor and Dialogue in Lamentations,” in ibidem, 105.
165Ioana Zamfir
of Israel. / And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my
servant may have a light always before me in Jerusalem, the city
which I have chosen me to put my name there. (1 Kings 11:32,36).
More specifically, the choice of Jerusalem is described as the decision of God
to put His Name in the city. “And Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned
in Judah. Rehoboam was forty and one years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord did
choose out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there.” (1 Kings 14:21)
Researchers in Name Theology have interpreted this formula as a way to
avoid the limitation of the divine to one place. The formula needs to capture
the divine presence in the city and the impossibility of localizing God at
the same time.12 Deuteronomy is the main place in the Bible where these
aspects are clarified, teaching that “God dwells in Heaven, his «Holy abode»
(26:15) and that he placed, or «caused to dwell» in the sanctuary only his
name – that is, his manifestation or hypostasis, which mediates or represents
his presence to his worshipers on earth.”13
Thus, the spiritual connection between God and Israel goes through-
out all levels of existence, down to the physical, spatial level of the holy city,
perceived by the people as a dwelling place of God.
Even in military conflicts, the warriors are inspired with motivation
and courage by the fact that God is with the city, symbolically, by choosing
the city as His own and concretely, by dwelling in the middle of the city. “Of
course, one distinctive perception and conception of the Old Testament’s
about Jerusalem was that YHWH, its God, was active in what had hap-
pened, was happening, and would happen to the city.”14
Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assem-
bly. (Joel 2:15)
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for
joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own
eyes. (Isa. 52:8)
12
Sandra L. Richter, The Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology. leshakken shemo
sham in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), 53.
13
Jeffrey Tigay, “«To Place His Name There»: Deuteronomy’s Concept of God Placing His
Name in the Temple,” in Now It Happened in Those Days. Studies in Biblical, Assyrian, and
Other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Mordechai Cogan, eds. Amitai
Baruchi-Unna, Tova L. Forti, Shmuel Ahituv, Israel Eph’al, and Jeffrey H. Tigay (Indiana:
Eisenbrauns Inc., 2017), vol. 1, p. 18.
14
Paul Redditt, “Depictions of Exilic and Postexilic Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible, especial-
ly Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,” in Die Stadt im Zwölfprophetenbuch, eds. Aaron Schart
and Jutta Krispenz (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2012), 360.
166Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
This is what the Lord says to me: «As a lion growls, a great lion
over its prey – and though a whole band of shepherds is called
together against it, it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed
by their clamor – so the LORD Almighty will come down to do
battle on Mount Zion and on its heights. (Isa. 31:4)
Moreover, the Name of God received by Moses, according to the Burning
Bush episode, has as well the role of uniting the community and of bringing
it together.
God’s name as given is not a source of evocative power but a re-
minder of God’s permanent presence in the underlying configura-
tion, which is in essence communal. […] Moses’ desire to lead the
Hebrews out of Egypt requires that he conceived the source of the
community’s unity as a subject.15
As such, God’s choice of Jerusalem also gives to this city a special role within
the Jewish religious state. Jerusalem becomes the capital and the only place
allowed for God’s worship, a place of gathering of the Jews and a symbol for
unity. “And when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel
were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to
Jerusalem.” (Ezra 3:1)
In Exod. 25:8, God tells Moses to build for him a holy place to dwell
among the people. The construction of the Tabernacle is thus intimately
related to the reception of God’s name by Moses, and it is at the same time
the prefiguration of Jerusalem’s Temple. Moreover, Jerusalem might also be
interpreted as the destination and the goal for which the people were pre-
pared during forty years in the Desert.16
For ye shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which
the Lord our God giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and dwell
therein. (Deut. 11:31)
But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of
all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall
ye seek, and thither thou shalt come. (Deut. 12:5)
In his prayer at the dedication of the Temple, Solomon reminds us of the fact
that the city was given by God to the ancestors, as promised land, and that
15
Eric Gans, “The Name of God,” in The First Shall Be the Last: Rethinking Antisemitism, eds.
Adam Katz and Eric Gans (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2015), 160.
16
“This passage anticipates that the goal will be to find the «place that YHWH will choose».
This place will be the place that will bear YHWH’s name; it will become the site upon which
to build a temple fit for YHWH.” James D. Nogalski, “Jerusalem, Samaria, and Bethel in the
Book of the Twelve,” in Schart, Krispenz Die Stadt, 253.
167Ioana Zamfir
Jerusalem had been chosen as the place where the Temple of God is to be
built. “…they return to you with all their heart and being and pray unto thee
toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou
hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name” (1 Kings 8:48).
Jerusalem is related thus with the idea of heritage and continuity.
The fact that the Temple is in Jerusalem, which means that the Name
of God is there, causes both the city and the mountain on which the Temple
is built to be considered holy.
“…the rest of the people also cast lots, to bring one of ten to dwell
in Jerusalem the holy city, and nine parts to dwell in other cities.”
(Neh. 11:1)
“O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let
thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem,
thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of
our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all
that are about us.” (Dan. 9:16)
As such, Jerusalem is also called the city of truth or the city of God. “Thus
saith the Lord; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of
the Lord of hosts the holy mountain.” (Zech. 8:3).
The expression “Lord of hosts” refers to the angelic armies of heaven
and implicitly to the sovereignty of God. So even in its dimension of politi-
cal and military centre, Jerusalem’s true leader is God. As such the victory of
the city and its acknowledgement as a centre of power, is in fact a recognition
of God’s almightiness. “The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come
bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves
down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee; The city of the Lord,
The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.” (Isa. 60:14)
As we have seen, the Old Testamentary fragments analysed so far re-
sult in a very personal, emotional, or poetical image of Jerusalem. The city
is not simply a place, but it is intimately connected to life, more precisely
to humanity, and the spirit of life is present in the vast majority of the ref-
erences to Jerusalem. First there is the personification, Jerusalem compared
to a woman. Secondly, there is the association of the city with the people.
Thirdly, Jerusalem is seen as the dwelling place of God, the ultimate genera-
tor of life and of all creation.
The evocations of the city denote love, profound emotions, and per-
sonal attachment to Jerusalem. This is transposed as well in how the relation
between God and Jerusalem is constructed. Not only is the city chosen by
God, but it is also related to God’s mercy. Just as God stops the sacrifice of
168Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
Isaac by his father Avraham, he also prevents the destruction of Jerusalem
by plague: “When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the
LORD relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was af-
flicting the people, «Enough! Withdraw your hand.» The angel of the LORD
was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” (2 Sam. 24:16)
There is also a soteriological level connected to the significance of
Jerusalem. “The earthly Jerusalem was related in a positive or negative way
to the coming eschatological Jerusalem predicted in the prophetic texts.”17
Through various parallelisms Jerusalem implied several unseen, sacred di-
mensions. The holy of holies had been associated with the garden of Eden.
The mountain of God and the Temple were seen as footstools of God, so
Jerusalem was an axis mundi, reminding us of the existence of a superior, ide-
al level, belonging to God and the heavens. “The Lord is in his holy Temple;
the Lord is on his heavenly throne.” (Ps. 11:4)
The plural form of the Hebrew name for Jerusalem – Yerushalayim,
allows as well the appearance of other literary themes and interpretations.
As such, the image of Jerusalem above, mentioned in Paul’s letter to the
Galatians (Gal. 4:26), may derive from the opportunities given by this plu-
ral form of the word.18 Other mystical images of Jerusalem come from the
Old Testament, such as the New Jerusalem in Ezekiel, or heavenly Jerusalem,
from the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible. This powerful prophetic
theme also inspired numerous Christian allegorists in their interpretations,
where the Heavenly Jerusalem stood for the Christian Church.19
3. Christian perspectives on Jerusalem:
3.1 Jerusalem’s holiness and physicality
The Christian texts, starting with the New Testament and continuing with
a rich and diverse exegetical literature, inherited and assumed an image
of Jerusalem defined by the Old Testamentary characteristics of the city.
Jerusalem continued to be evoked on the same three levels of materiality,
humanity, and divinity, though the themes acquired, along the centuries,
new layers of interpretation.
17
Antti Laato, “Understanding the Spiritual Meaning of Jerusalem. A Religious Historical
and Theological Overview,” in Understanding the Spiritual Meaning of Jerusalem in Three
Abrahamic Religions, ed. Antti Laato (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2019), 27.
18
Madeea Axinciuc, “De te voi uita, Ierusalime...”, https://atelier.liternet.ro/articol/9123/
Madeea-Axinciuc/De-te-voi-uita-Ierusalime.html, accessed March 22, 2021.
19
Ann R. Meyer, Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem (Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 2003), 20.
169Ioana Zamfir
Concerning the divine dimension of Jerusalem, the New Testament
relies heavily on the older tradition and on the Old Testament text, assuming
as known facts the image and role of Jerusalem for the Jewish culture. For
example, in one of Jesus’ sermons, Jerusalem is mentioned as the footstool
of the Lord: “But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is
God’s throne: / Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem;
for it is the city of the great King.” (Matt. 5:34-35)
Jerusalem is also called the holy city in the New Testament: “Then the
devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the
temple.” (Matt. 4:5) However, in the New Testament, Jerusalem is men-
tioned mainly as a spatial coordinate of the Gospels. On a material level,
the New Testament frequently mentions elements of the urban reality of the
time, streets, buildings, access routes in the city.
The historical events which led to the destruction of the Temple forced
a massive reconfiguration in the relationship of believers (both Jews and
Christians) to the physical Jerusalem. This tragic event has been incorporat-
ed in Christianity as a rupture with the old tradition. As such, Jerusalem and
its Temple mediated holiness were re-evaluated. On the one hand the link
between men and God was no longer directly related to a place (the Temple
of Jerusalem) because this mediation role was now attributed to Jesus.
Several verses from the prophets referring to Jerusalem, the Temple,
and the presence of God’s Name in the city have been interpreted by Christian
thinkers in a messianic key as referring to Jesus. “Medieval Christian in-
terpreters regularly engaged in Christological interpretation. In the book
of Jeremiah, medieval Christian exegetes found prophecies pertaining to
Christ’s incarnation, ministry, and crucifixion.”20 A well known example is
the affirmation of Jesus referring to the destruction and reconstruction of the
Temple in three days, which has been read by Christian theologians as refer-
ring in fact to Jesus’ death and resurrection. So, the Temple was understood
in Christianity as a prefiguration of Christ.
As such, Christianity reconstructed Jerusalem into an intricate net-
work of symbols and interpretations. Jerusalem was even more conceptual-
ized and recreated selectively as a symbol and mystical reality, based on those
elements which were relevant for the Christian belief and ritual. Sometimes,
Jerusalem no longer required being accessed physically, since it was “univer-
salized and spiritualized.”21
20
Joy A. Schroeder, “Medieval Christian Interpretation of the Book of Jeremiah,” in The
Book of Jeremiah Composition, Reception, and Interpretation, eds. Jack R. Lundbom, Craig A.
Evans, and Bradford A. Anderson (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018), 433.
21
Serafim Seppälä, “Liturgical Representations of Jerusalem in Eastern Christian Traditions,”
in Laato, Understanding, 140.
170Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
One of the ways in which the Christian religion gave a place and even
a sacred dimension to Jerusalem was the Orthodox liturgy. Almost every
element of Orthodox ritual and places of worship have their roots in the
Old Testamentary references regarding the Temple in Jerusalem and the reli-
gious practice performed there. For example, the structure of the Orthodox
church, which is made up of three rooms, the existence of the altar as the
Holy of Holies, the table and the Eucharist as the manna, the curtains, the
priest’s vestments.22 “In this way, a church becomes Jerusalem in its own
right: what is spiritually essential in the concrete Jerusalem is not absent
from the Church, which in turn opens a connection between the holy city
and Christian sanctuaries.”23
Moreover, Jerusalem’s mystical dimension is implied by every liturgy
performed in the church. In Orthodoxy, this sacred service from which the
Eucharist results, is considered to have several levels of meaning and to take
place at several levels of reality. Apart from the earthly, visible liturgy, the
ritual is considered to be doubled by a heavenly liturgy, performed by angels.
At third level of meaning, transgressing all spatial and temporal limitations,
the liturgy implies a re-enactment of the life of Christ from the entrance in
Jerusalem, to the crucifixion, and resurrection. The Church becomes thus,
an equivalent with the holy land.24
As such, Jerusalem could be virtually accessed in every church, and
Christians could be present in Jerusalem, through the sacred ritual. As a
centre of the community and of religious life, the Church recreated sym-
bolically the connection of the believers with Jerusalem as a spiritual centre,
and a place of belonging. The equivalence of Jerusalem with the Church and
the Church community may as well be seen as a continuation of the human
aspect of the Old Testamentary Jerusalem and its significance for the people.
On the other hand, physical Jerusalem continued to play a central part
in Christian Europe. The earthly location of Jerusalem regained importance
in Christian society after the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
under the supervision of Macarius, bishop of Aelia Capitolina. After meeting
Constantine at the council in Nicaea, the bishop Macarius received approval
to construct in Jerusalem a church dedicated to the death and resurrection of
Christ, a church that would give visibility and prestige to the city – The Church
22
Ann Conway-Jones, Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian
Contexts (Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2014), 161.
23
Seppälä, “Liturgical,” 144.
24
For information on the origin of the concept of the holy land see: Julie Ann Smith, “«My
Lord›s Native Land»: Mapping the Christian Holy Land,” Church History 76, no. 1 (March,
2007): 1-31.
171Ioana Zamfir
of the Holy Sepulchre.25 Thus Jerusalem became the centre of Christian pil-
grimage – a place of commemoration. The crusades as well prove to be a con-
stant interest of the European powers for the location of the holy city.
Moreover, in his article, Seppälä explains the importance given by
Christians to Jerusalem, through a wider principle of Christianity – the in-
carnation and the transfiguration of matter. This was a fundamental thesis of
Christianity which led to the idea that the material substance could function
as a vessel for holiness, justifying in this way the veneration of icons, relics
and spaces, such as Jerusalem. Also, the places related to the embodiment of
Christ started to be considered holy, and the practice of pilgrimage extended
to Jerusalem. Thus, physical Jerusalem remained a major centre of interest,
historically speaking, but its holiness derived only through its opening to-
wards immateriality, similar to an icon.
3.2. Jerusalem’s centrality
The establishment of Jerusalem is not described by a founding myth, such
as is the case with other Mesopotamian civilizations and urban centres.26
As we have seen, the holiness of the city derives from points of intersection
between the earthly and the divine domains, but not in the form of a divine
establishment of the city. Neither is Jerusalem’s foundation related to a hero,
as is the case of most Greek cities. Although, in the first centuries, when the
Christian sect was entering Europe and was blending more and more with
the Greek cultural background, there were several attempts to find in the
name of the city a connection with a local hero, such as Solomon.
The Semitic name of the city Jerusalem contained the potential for a
Greek translation as Hierosolyma, as a contracted form of ἱερὸν Σολομῶνος
(the Temple of Solomon) – a fake etymology which would nevertheless ex-
plain to the Greek public, in familiar terms, the essential aspects of Jerusalem.
“Greek and Roman audiences had the impression of a city sanctified by a
tomb, memorial, or temple and founded by a famous people, the Solymoi, or a
famous king, Solomon.”27 Other etymologies for the name Jerusalem propose
a link with Shalem – peace: “possession of peace” or “foundation of peace.”28
25
Jerome Murphy‐O’Connor, “The Authenticity of the Holy Sepulchre,” in Keys to Jerusalem:
Collected Essays, ed. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2012).
26
Thomas M Bolin, “The making of the Holy City: on the foundations of Jerusalem in
the Hebrew Bible,” in Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition, ed. Thomas L Thompson
(London, New York: T&T Clark International, 2003).
27
Lukas Bormann, “Jerusalem as Seen by Ancient Historians and in Luke-Acts,” in Laato,
Understanding, 105.
28
https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4923-david-city-of, accessed March 22, 2021.
172Jerusalem in Motion. Images of Jerusalem in the Bible and Beyond
But even if Jerusalem did not benefit from a foundational myth, the
fact that it was built on a sacred mountain, situated Jerusalem in a sacred
geography, in a place which, according to Mircea Eliade, would be consid-
ered the centre of the world. The conception of Jerusalem as the navel of
the world, which must have signified initially a symbolic role of mediation
between the terrestrial and divine realms, between sacred and profane, ex-
tended in time and started to be understood as a geographical affirmation,
especially by Christian authors.
“Thus saith the Lord God; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst
of the nations and countries that are round about her.” (Ezek. 5:5) This pas-
sage is considered one of the literary sources for representing Jerusalem as
the geographical centre of the Earth in subsequent representations. However,
the Hebrew term used here does not necessarily involve the idea of centre as
opposed to periphery. It is used in many places in the Bible with the sense of
being among other people. Here too, the term is followed by nations ( ).
Another possible source, which is much more explicitly geographic,
has been suggested by Philip Alexander,29 as the book of Jubilees, considered
to have been written around 150 BC and popular in the Middle Ages. “And
he knew that the Garden of Eden is the holy of holies, and the dwelling of
the Lord, and Mount Sinai the centre of the desert, and Mount Zion – the
centre of the navel of the earth: these three were created as holy places facing
each other.”30 This description is clearly referring to a much more concrete
localization than being in the middle of the nations, and at the same time it
denotes a much more mythologizing claim.
As Philip Alexander argues, such texts which placed Jerusalem in the
middle of the world were most likely political statements, and reactions to
domination from the Hellenistic and later Roman powers. The association
with the idea of omphalos, was also a reaction to another important spiritual
centre – Delphi,31 and was meant to affirm the value of Jerusalem in more
familiar terms for the Greco-Roman world.
In medieval authors, Golgotha and Jerusalem, regarded as geographic
centres of the world, are constant references, both in writing and in car-
tographic representations and pilgrimage texts. The centrality of Jerusalem
is also obvious in the medieval circular maps such as Hereford or Ebstorf,
29
Philip Alexander, “Jerusalem as the omphalos of the world – On the history of a geograph-
ical concept,” in Levine, Jerusalem.
30
Book of Jubilees, trans. R. H. Charles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), 72.
31
Jennifer Finn, “The Center of the Earth in Ancient Thought,” Journal of Ancient Near
Eastern History 4, no. 1-2 (2017): 177-209.
173Ioana Zamfir
which reflect “the role that the Christian Bible had in forging a distinctly
medieval geographical consciousness.”32
Other authors affirm as well that the Crusades had an important role
in reaffirming and consolidating this image of Jerusalem as a spiritual cen-
tre but at the same time in giving a clear testimony on how far away from
Europe the city was located. From this point of view, Jerusalem was Europe’s
centre and periphery at the same time.33
In medieval pilgrimage literature, space was oriented according to
Jerusalem, and every stop on the way was evaluated by the traveller in rela-
tion to the holy city. Through the relics housed in other cities visited along
the way to Jerusalem, each place was a reminder of the main destination.
4. Conclusion
The analysis of the Old Testament fragments referring to Jerusalem pointed
out several aspects of the city, which is presented on three levels: material,
human and religious. On the material level, we have emphasised the geo-
graphical dimension and the urban structure of the city, on the human level,
we have pointed out the strategic military role of the city as well as a percep-
tion of Jerusalem as a common heritage, representative for the people and
attesting the continuity of dwelling and unity of the people. We have also
emphasised the personifications of Jerusalem in several themes such as the
daughter of Zion. The religious level is characterized by the fact that Jerusalem
is chosen by God, a city of truth, and a place of divine presence among peo-
ple. Although the image Jerusalem suffers many changes along the transition
into the European religious culture, the city keeps its three levels of meaning:
– an important physical place, as a pilgrimage destination, political
objective and centre of the world,
– a symbol for the Christian community, as evoked by the Orthodox
liturgy and
– a holy city, as a witness to biblical events, in a religious reading in which
the sacred can transgress matter and make it holy, similar to an icon.
As such, the image of Jerusalem through the history of culture and religion is
a concept in motion, which proves both the importance of tradition and the
inexhaustible resources for reinterpretation of this sacred place.
32
Richard Raiswell, “Geography is Better than Divinity: The Bible and Medieval
Geographical Thought,” Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 45 (au-
tumn/automne 2010): 207-34.
33
Folker Reichert, “Navel Of The World, But Only The Center Or Europe And Peripherals?
Jerusalem in the World View and Perception of the late Middle Ages,” Zeitschrift für
Historische Forschung 38, no. 4 (2011): 559-84.
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