Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Cities

Jerusalem

Also Known As Jerusalemite
Israel

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Jerusalem is a walled hill city in the Judean highlands holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike, the setting of the First and Second Temples, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Muhammad's Night Journey. Fought over and rebuilt for three thousand years, its Old City still holds four adjoining quarters, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian, each home to living communities and to shrines no other city holds all three of at once.

Facts
Status
UNESCO World Heritage
Inscribed on the World Heritage List and on the List in Danger 1
The Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1981 on the nomination of Jordan, not Israel, and has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1982
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Armenian and Latin are all living liturgical or communal languages of the city's resident religious communities 1
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war and regards the whole city as its capital; that annexation is not recognized under international law, most states maintain embassies elsewhere, and sovereignty over the city remains the central unresolved issue in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations 1
Attributions
Tradition
Judaism, Christianity and Islam 1
Origins
Founded
A Canaanite (Jebusite) hill town on the Ophel ridge above the Gihon spring, named in the fourteenth century BCE Amarna letters; tradition holds King David captured it and made it his capital around 1000 BCE 1
Site
Pilgrimage
Major pilgrimage destination today 1
A major pilgrimage destination for all three Abrahamic faiths, drawn to the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Haram al-Sharif alike
Learn More
A City Conquered and Rebuilt

Jerusalem's recorded history begins as a Bronze Age Canaanite hill town, mentioned in the fourteenth century BCE Amarna letters, standing on a narrow ridge above the Gihon spring, its one reliable water source. Biblical tradition holds that King David captured the Jebusite stronghold around 1000 BCE and made it his capital, and that his son Solomon built the First Temple on the ridge above it, the Temple Mount, to house the Ark of the Covenant. Babylon destroyed that temple in 586 BCE and deported much of the population; a Second Temple rose after the return from exile and stood, rebuilt on a vastly expanded platform by Herod the Great, until Rome destroyed it in 70 CE while crushing the Jewish revolt the historian Josephus records in detail.

The city was rebuilt as the pagan colony Aelia Capitolina after a further Jewish revolt in 135 CE, then reclaimed as a Christian holy city once Constantine's mother Helena identified the site of the crucifixion and burial around 325 CE, marked ever since by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Muslim armies took the city in 638 CE; the Dome of the Rock, completed in 691 CE on the Temple Mount, marks the traditional site of Muhammad's night journey. Crusaders held Jerusalem from 1099 to 1187, after which Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman rule followed in turn until the British Mandate began in 1917. The 1948 and 1967 wars divided and then reunited the city under Israeli control, an annexation of the eastern half not recognized under international law and still the unresolved center of the city's modern politics, with Montefiore's Jerusalem: The Biography tracing the full arc from Jebusite ridge to contested capital.

Four Quarters, Three Faiths

Within its sixteenth century Ottoman walls, the Old City of Jerusalem, barely a square kilometer, is conventionally divided into four quarters: Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian. The division is more a matter of living neighborhood than of tidy border, since the Christian and Muslim quarters in particular interleave shrines belonging to communities that have prayed within a few hundred meters of one another for centuries. The Jewish Quarter, rebuilt after 1967 following its loss in 1948, holds the Western Wall, the retaining wall of Herod's Temple platform and Judaism's holiest accessible prayer site. The Armenian Quarter, the smallest, has hosted a continuous Armenian Christian presence since at least the fourth century, older than the Armenian Apostolic Church's own formal separation from Byzantine Christianity.

The Christian Quarter centers on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, jointly and often contentiously administered under a nineteenth century Ottoman arrangement, the Status Quo, by Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian Apostolic and other communities down to the precise placement of a single ladder left untouched on a window ledge for generations. The Muslim Quarter, the largest, surrounds the Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount platform holding the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina. Beyond the walls, the Mount of Olives holds an ancient Jewish cemetery, the Garden of Gethsemane and Christian churches marking Jesus's final days, while modern Jerusalem has grown into a religiously mixed city of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and small Baha'i and Druze communities whose daily coexistence and periodic conflict both continue in the same streets.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Alexei Lidov's A Byzantine Jerusalem, The Imperial Pharos Chapel as the Holy Sepulchre, an academic article published through Ashgate in 2012, proposes that the Byzantine imperial Pharos Chapel in..."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "II's 587 BCE destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and Cyrus the Great's decree ending the exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon; not the right source for a settled reading of..."

Source Babylonian Captivity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jerusalem directly: "a Jewish prince of first-century Jerusalem betrayed into slavery by his boyhood friend, the Roman tribune Messala, played by Stephen Boyd."

Source Ben-Hur (1959 film) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Lord enthroned amid seraphim in the Jerusalem temple."

Source Book of Isaiah (Encyclopaedia Britannica)The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This source names Jerusalem directly: "extensively on Second Temple period Jerusalem, wrote this article for Biblical Archaeology Review reading and discussing the Aramaic inscriptions on a set of ossuaries, bone boxes, bearing the name..."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "conferences followed (Cairo 1926, Jerusalem 1931, and one in 1924)."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "kept on this date in fourth century Jerusalem, and the candle blessing that gives the feast its English name was added in Rome by around the seventh century."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in Jerusalem under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate in either 30 or 33 CE."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "were Jewish residents with ties to Jerusalem; the tradition that Peter himself founded the Roman church around 30 to 33 CE is a later tradition rather than a verified fact, and is named honestly as..."

Source Tacitus, Annals, Book XVPublius Cornelius Tacitus

This source names Jerusalem directly: "the Ark of the Covenant, brought from Jerusalem by Menelik I, and a single monk is appointed for life as its sole keeper with no outside access permitted."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a specialist in Jewish musicians and early Hebrew music historiography."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Commemorations at Jerusalem trace to at least the fifth century, and the feast was extended across the Byzantine Empire under Emperor Maurice around the turn of the seventh century."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Dormition in fifth and sixth century Jerusalem commemorations of the end of Mary's earthly life."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "rule and the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple that Hanukkah commemorates, included in the Catholic and Orthodox biblical canons as deuterocanonical books though excluded from the Jewish and..."

Source First and Second MaccabeesAnonymous

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Per Bilde's Flavius Josephus Between Jerusalem and Rome, His Life, His Works, and Their Importance, published by JSOT Press in 1988, is a scholarly study of the first century Jewish historian..."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "soul's final destiny and the heavenly Jerusalem."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "He commanded troops at the sieges of Nicaea, Antioch and Jerusalem, and after Jerusalem's fall on 15 July 1099 was chosen to rule the newly conquered territory."

Source God's War: A New History of the CrusadesChristopher Tyerman

He took the city by siege with Roman help in 37 BCE and gave it the temple, walls and palaces that defined it until 70 CE.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "both the Holy of Holies and the New Jerusalem are described in scripture as cubes."

Source TimaeusPlato
Hezekiah, Figures

He fortified it against Sennacherib and cut the tunnel from the Gihon spring to the pool of Siloam to secure its water under siege.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "The pilgrim Egeria's account of fourth century Jerusalem gives the earliest record of the week kept as a structured sequence of daily observances at different holy sites."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Setting of Josephus's account of the siege.

Isaiah 6:1-3, Passages

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Isaiah's call vision in the Jerusalem temple."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "farthest mosque, later identified with Jerusalem."

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Israeli news reporting on the Jerusalem District Court's September 20, 2018 ruling against Kol Barama, quoting the court's findings directly."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "resting on his hand, while the city of Jerusalem burns behind him in the distance."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "is a sweeping single volume history of Jerusalem from antiquity to the present, tracing the city through its successive religious and political custodians."

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Jesus, Figures

Jerusalem is the setting of Jesus's final teaching, trial, crucifixion and, in Christian belief, resurrection.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Josiah, Figures

He made its temple the sole lawful sanctuary, burning the vessels of the other cults in the fields of the Kidron outside the walls.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "of Babylon deported the population of Jerusalem in two major waves, first around 7,000 people after the 597 BCE siege, then a larger deportation after he destroyed the city and its Temple in 587 BCE..."

Source Babylonian Captivity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jerusalem directly: "exile, permitting Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple there."

Source Babylonian Captivity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Ketoret, Incense

This source names Jerusalem directly: "the Israelite Tabernacle and later the Jerusalem Temple, traditionally reckoned as a blend of eleven spices, among them frankincense, stacte, onycha and galbanum, ground fine and burned daily on a..."

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
King David, Figures

Tradition holds that King David conquered the Jebusite city and made it his capital.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

This source names Jerusalem directly: "foundation caring for sick pilgrims in Jerusalem before the First Crusade and was reorganised in the early twelfth century into a military-religious order, taking up arms alongside its original..."

Source God's War: A New History of the CrusadesChristopher Tyerman

This source names Jerusalem directly: "On September 20, 2018 the Jerusalem District Court ruled the station's total and deliberate exclusion of women "damages dignity and self-worth, deepens perceptions of female inferiority and prevents..."

Madaba, Cities

This source names Jerusalem directly: "depiction of the Holy Land, showing Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Jordan River and dozens of biblical sites in intricate, labelled detail."

Source The Catholic EncyclopediaCharles George Herbermann et al. (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Joseph Smith identified for the New Jerusalem, and Mormon settlers who moved there in the 1830s were driven out by violence that culminated in Governor Lilburn Boggs's 1838 extermination order, one..."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)

The Mount of Olives, just east of the Old City walls, holds an ancient Jewish cemetery and Christian sites of Jesus's final days.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Muhammad, Figures

Muhammad's Night Journey (Isra) is traditionally understood to have brought him to Jerusalem before his Ascension.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Its origin traces to the dedication of a church in Jerusalem, near the traditional site of Mary's family home, around the fifth or sixth century."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Two silver amulets found at Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem carry a version of it and date to the seventh century BCE, which makes them the oldest known fragments of biblical text by several centuries."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "an arson attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem earlier that year."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Holy Week with Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, an event all four Gospels record."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Jerusalem surrendered in 638 on terms, and the arrangements made for its Christian community became a model case in later law.

The high priesthood at Jerusalem was bought and sold under Seleucid rule, and the city was refounded as a Greek polis before the revolt.

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, a royal order of chivalry constituted by Queen Victoria in 1888 and tracing its own descent to the medieval Hospitaller tradition of caring for..."

Source St John Ambulance (The Priory of England and the Islands of the Order of St John): Charity Commission Filed Accounts, Year Ended 31 December 2024The Priory of England and the Islands of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem (trading as St John Ambulance)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "An ophthalmic care charity founded in Jerusalem in 1882 as a wholly owned corporate subsidiary of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, providing free and low-cost eye..."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "the Torah commanded appearance at the Jerusalem Temple."

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "and Jordan before passing through Jerusalem and ending at Abraham's traditional tomb at Hebron."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Jerusalem directly: "tracing its journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem and the unresolved question of what happened to its missing sections."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "including Bana Ba Isiraele, Hosana and Jerusalem, alongside Sione Moria Thabakgone, which names the church's holy city of Moria directly."

Source The Best Of Z.C.C. (Apple Music and Spotify release listing, 2017)No individual author or compiler is credited; the copyright line on both platforms reads "TopCrew Music under exclusive license to Next Music."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "in 1990 in the Peace Forest, Jerusalem, including the ossuary inscribed with the name Caiaphas."

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the Christian Quarter, marks the traditional site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

Rome destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE while suppressing the First Jewish-Roman War.

John's own narrative places the miracle near Passover: John 6:4 notes the feast was close at hand as the crowd gathered around Jesus, tying the episode to the same pilgrimage calendar that draws people toward Jerusalem and to the Eucharistic overtones the discourse that follows develops. The feeding itself takes place beside the Sea of Galilee, not in Jerusalem; what this edge records is that calendrical and thematic link, not a claim about where the event physically happened.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

The First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, beginning nearly a century of Crusader rule.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

The First Temple, built by Solomon on the ridge above the City of David, stood on what became the Temple Mount.

This source names Jerusalem directly: "scholar and archaeologist based in Jerusalem for decades, and this guide works from direct, sustained engagement with the excavated remains at each site it covers across Israel, Palestine and the..."

Source The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological GuideJerome Murphy-O'Connor

This source names Jerusalem directly: "First Crusade's July 1099 massacre at Jerusalem, weighing each source's reliability rather than repeating the highest surviving figure."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "GAFCON's own page presenting the Jerusalem Declaration, issued at the Global Anglican Future Conference held in Jerusalem from 22 to 29 June 2008."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "own account of the aftermath of the Jerusalem Temple's destruction in 70 CE, including his description of the triumph of Vespasian and Titus in Rome, in which the golden table and the menorah of the..."

Source The Jewish War (Bellum Judaicum), Book VIIFlavius Josephus (trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library)

The Night Journey and Ascension of Muhammad is traditionally located at Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

The Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif, the walled platform holding the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, is the religious center of the Old City.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

This source names Jerusalem directly: "the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, drawing on Biddle's own detailed survey of the structure, its Crusader era and later reconstructions, and the surviving physical and documentary..."

Source The Tomb of ChristMartin Biddle

This source names Jerusalem directly: "fund a waqf complex she had built in Jerusalem from 1552: a mosque, a fifty five room pilgrim hospice, an inn for travelers, and a public soup kitchen intended to feed the city's poor twice a day."

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

The Western Wall, the retaining wall of Herod's Temple platform, is Judaism's holiest accessible prayer site, in the Jewish Quarter.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Anglican Future Conference held in Jerusalem the year before, whose Jerusalem Declaration called for a new orthodox province in North America."

Source Anglican Church in North America (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jerusalem directly: "role regarding Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem."

Source Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of JordanState of Israel and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

The Dome of the Rock was completed at Jerusalem in 691 or 692, and its inscriptions address Christians directly on the status of Jesus.

Contained In

Israel, Countries

Jerusalem lies within the modern state of Israel; sovereignty over its eastern half is contested and not internationally recognized as annexed.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

Sacred To

Jerusalem is the site of the crucifixion, burial and traditional resurrection of Jesus.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Islam, Religions

Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif is the traditional site of Muhammad's Night Journey and Ascension, Islam's third holiest site.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Judaism, Religions

Jerusalem is the site of the First and Second Temples and the direction of Jewish prayer worldwide.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

Spread Events Here

Sources
1. Jerusalem: The Biography
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works, and Their Importance
Per Bilde, JSOT Press, 1988
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