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        by discovering a water tunnel under the walls and using it to take the
        city by surprise. Warren’s Shaft, part of a Canaanite water system
        discovered by 19th-century archaeologists and open to visitors, might
        be the very tunnel infiltrated by David’s army.
        Perhaps because Jerusalem was in neutral territory not
        allotted to any of the twelve rival tribes of Israel, David made it the
        capital of his newly formed kingdom and brought the most talented
        artisans, dedicated priests, magical poets and musicians, and the most
        formidable soldiers from each of the tribes to live in his city. He
        also brought the Ark of the Covenant, the portable tabernacle
        containing the Tablets of the Law received on Mount Sinai, to the
        Spring of Gihon, just outside the walls of Jerusalem. There the Ark
        rested until it was placed in the Temple, built in approximately 960
        b.c. on Mt. Moriah, the high point at the northern end of the city.
        The Temple (today known as the “First” Temple) was completed
        by David’s son and successor, King Solomon. According to biblical
        tradition, although David bought the land for the Temple and carefully
        assembled its building materials, he was deemed unworthy of
        constructing the Temple because he was a man of war with blood on his
        hands. At the Temple’s dedication, Solomon addressed his God: “... the
        Heavens, even the Heaven of the Heavens, cannot contain Thee; how much
        less this House that I have built? ”
        The site of the Temple eventually became identified as Mt.
        Moriah, on which it stood, where Abraham was called to sacrifice his
        son Isaac. Along with this splendid house of worship, Solomon built a
        royal palace, mansions for his wives, temples for the foreign gods
        worshipped by the princesses he had married, and towers for the defense
        of the capital. Under the wise reign of Solomon, the city flourished as
        the capital of an empire that stretched from Damascus to the Red Sea
        and controlled the trade routes from Egypt to Phoenicia. The Temple and
        royal palace were adorned with gold and ivory from Africa and with
        cedar from Lebanon; the beauties and glories of Jerusalem under Solomon
        have captivated readers of the Bible for almost 3,000 years. But with
        his death the empire collapsed, and the Israelite kingdom was divided
        into two separate, impoverished, often warring nations: Israel, with
        its capital at Shechem in the north, ruled by a series of northern
        dynasties; and the smaller kingdom of Judah, with its capital at
        Jerusalem, from which the Davidic dynasty continued to rule. The Bible
        tells us that the cruelty and impiety of the rulers of both kingdoms
        aroused the fury of the great Prophets.
        In 701 b.c. the Assyrian armies of Sennacherib destroyed
        Israel and moved southward to besiege Jerusalem. Thanks to King
        Hezekiah’s hidden water tunnel, the city narrowly escaped destruction.
        The end of David’s dynasty came in 587 b.c. , when Nebuchadnezzar, King
        of Babylon, invaded Judah to lay siege to Jerusalem. When it fell, the
        Temple and all the buildings were burned. The people of the
        once-glorious city were forced into an exile known as “the Babylonian
        Captivity. ”
        In time, the kingdom of Babylon was overthrown and the
        Israelites were permitted to return to Jerusalem in 539 b.c. The city
        was now under the more tolerant rule of the Persians, but rebuilding
        was slow work. The Second Temple was finished in 515 b.c. , but much of
        the city still lay in ruins.
        Jerusalem submitted peaceably to the rule of the Greeks in
        332 b.c. under Alexander the Great and, subsequently, to his
        Hellenistic successors as well as the Egyptian Ptolomeys and the Syrian
        Seleucids. When Seleucid rulers outlawed Judaism, Jews led by Judah
        Maccabee and his brothers staged a revolution in 167 b.c. and, against
        all odds, restored the primacy of Jewish religious life in Jerusalem.
        The Macabbees cleansed the Temple of Hellenistic idols and the blood of
        pagan sacrifices; the eight-day celebration of Hanukkah (Feast of
        Dedication) commemorates their victory. The Hasmonean dynasty,
        descendants of the Maccabee family, ruled an independent Jewish
        Commonwealth that stretched from the Negev to the Galilee. Jerusalem
        grew, surrounded with a formidable wall and defended by towers beside
        the Jaffa Gate. The Hasmoneans ruled until Pompey’s Roman legions
        arrived in 63 b.c.
        Roman Jerusalem
        After the initial years of Roman administration and
        political infighting, Rome installed Herod (scion of a family from
        Idumea, a Jewish kingdom in the desert) as King of Judea. He reigned
        from 37 to 4 b.c. , during which time he fortified the Hasmonean wall
        and rebuilt the defense towers beside Jaffa Gate, the foundation of
        which still stand. Several palaces were built and a water system
        installed. Herod also completely rebuilt the Temple, making it one of
        the most important religious centers in the Roman Empire. The courtyard
        around the Temple was expanded to accommodate hundreds of thousands of
        pilgrims, and the Temple Mount was shored up by retaining walls made
        with great stone blocks. One of these walls, the Western Wall, is today
        a major reminder of Jerusalem’s greatness under Herod. A massive
        fortress was built overlooking the Temple Mount, which Herod named
        “Antonia” in honor of his Roman friend and benefactor, Mark Antony.
        For all his accomplishments, Herod was nevertheless hated
        by his subjects; he taxed, he tortured, and he ordered the massacre of
        male Jewish infants in an attempt to do away with the heralded Messiah.
        When Jesus was born in about 4 b.c. , Joseph and Mary escaped Herod’s
        paranoia by fleeing into Egypt with the new-born infant. They returned
        to live in the Galilee village of Nazareth, making pilgrimages to
        Jerusalem.
        According to biblical accounts, Jesus spent his life
        ministering in the Galilee Valley. In about a.d. 30 he and his
        followers went for Passover to Jerusalem, which was in unrest at this
        time, dissatisfied with Roman domination. Jesus’s entry into the Temple
        caused a commotion; after the Passover dinner he was arrested by the
        temple priests, who were under direct Roman rule. Jesus was put on
        trial quickly and condemned to crucifixion, a Roman form of execution
        for political and religious dissidents as well as for common criminals.
        In a province rife with rebellion and retaliation, the execution in
        Jerusalem of yet another religious leader from the Galilee did not by
        itself have an immediate effect on history.
        After Jesus’s crucifixion, harsh Roman rule continued until
        a.d. 66, when the Jews rebelled. For four years Jewish zealots fought
        against the might of Rome. At the end, the Roman general Titus laid
        siege to Jerusalem in a.d. 70, finally attacking its starved and
        weakened defenders. Those who didn’t escape were executed or sold into
        slavery. The Holy City and the Temple were destroyed. The last of the
        zealots held out for another three years at Masada (see page 76). Half
        a million civilians died in the Galilee and Judea as a result of this
        first revolt against Rome, a number unequaled in ancient warfare.
        Christian and Islamic Jerusalem
        For 60 years Jerusalem lay in ruins, until the Roman
        Emperor Hadrian ordered the city rebuilt as a Roman town dedicated to
        Jupiter. In outrage, the Jews began a second revolt against Rome, led
        by Simon bar Kochba. The ruins of Jerusalem were briefly liberated,
        but, in the end, Jewish resistance to Rome was defeated with great loss
        of life. The planned new Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, was built over
        the ruins of Herodian Jerusalem, and Jews were barred from residing
        there for all time. Jerusalem’s physical existence as a spiritual city
        seemed finished, but its spiritual power for Jews, and for the
        struggling new Christian religion, remained. For the next two centuries
        Aelia Capitolina enjoyed an innocuous history.