Jerusalem skyline features the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine first completed in 691. It sits on the Temple Mount.
What makes Jerusalem unique? In an absorbing day of illustrated lectures, Jodi Magness, an archaeologist who is an expert on Jerusalem, traces how a poor, isolated mountain town became sacred to billions of followers of the three Abrahamic faiths worldwide. She looks at Jerusalem at its key moments in its long history, including the time of David and Solomon; the reign of Herod the Great and Jesus’s final days; the explosion of early Christian pilgrimage beginning with Constantine; and the transformation of the city under Islam.
9:30–10:45 a.m. Biblical Jerusalem
After becoming familiar with Jerusalem’s topography, survey the history and archaeology of the city from its beginning 5,000 years ago to its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. A special focus is given to the period when Jerusalem was under Israelite rule (David and Solomon and their successors).
11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus
Review Jerusalem’s history from the reign of Herod the Great (40–4 B.C.) and his successors to the Roman destruction in 70 A.D. Examine Herod’s reconstruction of the Second Temple and the city’s appearance at the time of Jesus.
12:15–1:30 p.m. Lunch (participants provide their own.)
1:30–2:45 p.m. Aelia Capitolina (Roman Jerusalem)
After the second Jewish Revolt (Bar Kokhba Revolt) ended in 135 A.D., the emperor Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan Roman city called Aelia Capitolina and dedicated a temple or shrine on the Temple Mount to the city’s new patron deity—Capitoline Jupiter. The Roman layout that Hadrian gave Jerusalem is still preserved in the street grid of the Old City today.
3–4:15 p.m. Byzantine and Early Islamic Jerusalem
After Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 A.D., Jerusalem became one of the most important cities in the Roman Empire, as masses of pilgrims arrived to visit holy sites associated with Jesus and the Bible. Magness explores the early churches in Jerusalem, with special attention to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was built by Constantine to enshrine the spots where Jesus reportedly was crucified and buried. The day concludes with an examination of Jerusalem’s transformation under Muslim rule in the 7th and 8th centuries.
Magness is the Kenan distinguished professor for teaching excellence in early Judaism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
