Some cities were imagined, designed and created wholly or partially in a way that forever provided shape for their histories and identities, governments and religions as well as for the economies of their citizens. An example is the great city of Jerusalem. Whatever they were or however they developed later in time, the details of their foundation, along the momentous and monumental contractions that redesigned or redefined various sectors within them make them case studies in the historical processes that surround cities as well as their regional and continental effects. The paper attempts to identify the evolution of Jerusalem into a ‘holy’ city in accordance with Tweed’s definition of religious space as differentiated, kinetic and interrelated as well as its evolution according to biblical passages.
Archeological excavation indicates that Jerusalem had already been inhibited by the fourth millennium B.C.E. Tradition has it that, long before Solomon extended his temple to the gods of Israel on Mt. Moriah, Abraham offered his son Isaac to God. The occasion followed by the biblical account of the selection of Jerusalem by King David as the religious, political capital and administrative, marks the transformation of Jerusalem into a spiritual center that is left a strong and powerful symbol in the imagination of countless cultures and one of the world’s most contested cities (Alexander 17).
The physical development of Jerusalem has not often followed the anticipated history. As is obvious of various other regions, Jerusalem emerged as among the major urban and fortifies centers in the Middle Bronze Age BCE.Even though sometimes stated in the fourteenth century B.C.E United Monarchy, which is considered in the Bible as a magnificent holy city built by Solomon, are not often talked about due to the ongoing debate. Only a few centuries later, in the late eighth and seventh-century B.C.E, does the archeological evidence correspond to the literary descriptions of Jerusalem as a major cultic, administrative and a political center.
The later ebbs and flows of Jerusalem’s past indicate the region's tumultuous history and occupation by various individuals and empires, all whom their marks were left in the city. The city as the Judean spiritual and physical capital weathered various conquests, which include the destruction at the hands of Babylonians. Herod the Great’s magnificent city and temple, considered one of the architectural marvels of the Roman world, had been razed to the ground of Titus (Allies 3). At the beginning of 130 CE, Hadrian rebuilt the city, and provided it with a different item known as Aeila Capitolina and removed the remaining Jews from it. Several centuries later, Byzantine Jerusalem developed into a spiritual capital for all Christians. By the late seventh century CE, the city fell to Arab conquerors and evolved into one of Islam’s holiest sites.
In Israelite society, significant changes in the socio–political realm such as the introduction of kinship and the move to statehood are bound to have profound reverberations through the whole of society producing major structural transformations. The centralization of military, economic, political and religious power entailed in the introduction of kinship produces shifts and strains in the relationship between the various groups throughout society. The Royal be aura curacy with its political and religious specialists were responsible for maintaining or enforcing the relationship between the center, ruling royal elite, and the peripheries of the Israel society.
The transition from segmented egalitarian structures to a defined stratified society with the king are the center drawing upon the wealth of regional and inter-regional trade and resources of village communities produced structural transformation which was bound to lead to opposition and conflict. By the tenth century B.C.E, Israel experienced a radical change in its social system. Israel’s previous stateless society gave way to a monarch peasant society. Especially, this social change brought changes in cultic activity. The heart of the cultic changes during the consolidation of the monarch peasant’s society was the constructing of the Royal Temple, whose structure and function were extensively borrowed from Canaanite city-state.
Like all the cultic activity in the ancient Near East, the Israelites Temple cult also had a fetishism to establish its authority as an apparatus of economic stratification. 1 Kings 8:5 indicates that “King Sollomon and the congregation of Israel were with him before the ark and they sacrificed sheep and oxen.” All Israel sacrificed the pastoral products before the ark of Yahweh. Instead of providing an ideological support for the revolution peasant, however, the ark was swallowed up in the Royal Temple and became the “fetish” of the material and social domination of the Davidic dynasty (Cairns 4). However, it is critical to note that, in its pre-exilic form, the Ark appears to have been a simple wooden chest that contained Israel’s written covenant with Yahweh. Because Yahweh’s presence was believed to accompany this Ark, the chest was highly valued in times of war and accompanied the Israelites during military campaigns.
After its conciliation, the Israelite state developed two major problems for suppressing the tribal cult practices. First, by absorbing the surplus from the population, the ruling class gradually disposed of an important source of private family sacrifice. Second the continuing political centralization of the urban ruling class insured that cultic practice would restrict as much as possible the Temple cult.
No doubt the ‘zebah’ was swallowed up in the wave of development of Israelite statehood. As a result, it is little wonder that the change in Israel’s sacrificial rites was rooted in the transition from the tribal society to the statist society. The royal cult was in fact articulated in the exploitive political economy of the Temple, serving as the ruling class’s control over distributed of material resources. In this tribal context, the cult had been slowly but steadily neutralized by the state and finally restricted to the Royal Temple.
In the prime of his life, thirty years of age, David entered upon his complete inheritance. This was the task God wanted him to handle. “Therefore all the Israel elders went to David to the King at Hebron they anointed David King over Israel. David was thirty years old when he was announced as king and was in power for forty years” 2 Samuel 5-7. He regained forty years in all, including seven and half years in Hebron over Judah and thirty-three years in Jerusalem over the whole land. The fortress of Jerusalem was still in the hands of the Jebusites but was captured early in David reign.
About Tweeds perception of “Interrelated” concerning David’s trust to God, Tweed contends that boundaries of religious beliefs do not exist away from the normal physical or the profane nature. According to him, religious beliefs propelled by the sacred are very much interrelated with the natural and cultural elements of humanity (Tweed 119). Tweed attempts to the relationship between natural and supernatural beliefs that is involved between the two given the case of David and the purpose God gave him to handle.
Religion is based on individuals' convictions, of which good conviction is an essential part firmly associated with religious conviction. Surely, a moral conviction can be free of religious conviction, for ethical quality does not presuppose religion. Tweed considered the ability of religious beliefs to change from time to time “kinetic.” The kingdom of Judah as illustrated in 2 Kings 25, indicates that “he set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palaces as well as the houses of Jerusalem.
The First Temple was burned down as well as the capital city of Jerusalem was destroyed as the people were exiled to Babylonia. Tweed relinquishes the notion of belief altogether for the proposal that “religion are counter influences that involve organizing – cultural flows that strengthen the sense of joy and confront misery by drawing on superhuman human forces for making homes and crossing boundaries” (Tweed 118).
In his explanation, Tweed draws near religious principles of locales with the distinguished descriptions. He plots the word separated in religious domains as that area whose recognition and learning comes through creative ability or sensual conviction. For instance, Christians trust that there is a paradise, which truly they have never been to. Tweed says that religious convictions and recognitions exist inside of a particular space.
The religious spaces are additionally unmistakable starting with one religion then onto the next. Interestingly, these spaces are only limits of convictions and not physical void (Tweed 117). The spaces that offer guidelines on religious convictions and practice are additionally holy. Tweed keeps on acknowledging that the spaces are procedures and not physical and in this manner will undoubtedly change.
The word holy/sacred identifies with that which is an immediate representation of the heavenly or the unprecedented. The reference of sacrosanct has a connection with the god. For instance, the calling of Moses by a voice in the bush that was burning is an extraordinary indication show event of the sacred. Along these lines, the essential definition of sacred is what is about God or the divine beings. The stipulation encompassing sacred practices is that appointment of such hallowed capacities is just achievable through heavenly influence. For instance, a voice from a burning bush may be considered paranormal and consecrated.
The sacred can join individuals in a typical conviction. In Genesis 22 for example, when God tells Abraham “Take your son, whom you love, Isaac and head for the region of Morah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on the mounting I will provide you”. God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God is testing him to see whether he will conform to God’s will. Furthermore, Abraham knows what Isaac does not: that Isaac is the intended sacrifice. The irony involved in the near sacrifice of Isaac includes Abraham’s failure to recognize that God never intended that he should sacrifice Isaac.
Religious conception of space typically distinguishes between two domains: sacred space, whose essential attributes are characterized in expressly religious terms by the general population who perceive and utilize the space, either substantially or typically and secular space, whose primary characteristic are not essentially religious in nature. This distinction does not imply that space has no religious implications.
In fact, because religious systems may be integrated into various realms of resistance, most action and motivations based on religious beliefs are expressed by adherence within the context of or in relation secular space, although with ought necessarily indulging the space itself with a special transcendence or sacred meaning. In conclusion, religious belief and practice, in other words, interact with both sacred and secular space, but in different ways and for different reasons. Therefore, both domains are relevant in understanding how religious systems inform and are informed by the spatial imaginations of their adherents.
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