Between the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif and the Holy Sepulchre: Archaeological Involvement in Jerusalem's Holy Places

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Gideon Avni ◽  
Jon Seligman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
Temple Mount ◽  
The Temple

Archaeological involvement in the holy places of Jerusalem has become a focus of professional and public concern during recent years. The two sacred areas of the Temple Mount and the Holy Sepulchre combine their role as historical and architectural monuments of supreme importance with their daily use as central religious sites. The connection between scholars, mainly archaeologists and architects, who studied these monuments, and the local religious authorities in charge of the holy sites has accompanied research on Jerusalem since the mid-nineteenth century. The main issues to be analyzed in this paper are related to the ways archaeologists and other scholars are involved with the major holy sites of Jerusalem: how the 'owners' of the Temple Mount and the Holy Sepulchre viewed these scholars and their research; to what degree they were prepared to cooperate with them; what their motives were for doing so and how archaeologists and other researchers operated and adhered to scholarly interests in such complex sites. The Jerusalem case study is used to investigate the larger scope of interrelations between the academic world and the religious 'owners' of holy sites in other locations.

Between Mount Moriah and the Holy Sepulchre: The Changing Traditions of the Temple Mount in the Central Middle Ages

Traditio ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 175-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Schein
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Sudden Change ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
Temple Mount ◽  
The Temple

One of the most surprising but least known results of the Crusaders' conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 was a sudden change of the place assigned to the Temple Mount in the ‘holy geography’ of Jerusalem. The Mount became almost overnight, because of the number of holy traditions concentrated there, one of the most important centres of sanctity in Jerusalem, and therefore one of the most conspicuous holy places on the path of the pilgrims in the Crusader capital.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple Mount/Haram esh-Sharif (Jerusalem)

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-156
Author(s):  
Yuval Jobani ◽  
Nahshon Perez
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
The Status ◽  
Model Section ◽  
Temple Mount ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Church

Chapter 5 explores two contested sacred sites—the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Haram esh-Sharif/Temple Mount—and two models of governance of contested sacred sites—status quo and closure. Section A describes the status quo at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to facilitate, in section B, a critical discussion of the structure, justifications, advantages, and disadvantages of the status quo model. Section C describes the Temple Mount/Haram esh-Sharif case study with an emphasis on the period of 1967 to the present. Section D defines, explores, and criticizes closure as a model of governance for contested sacred sites.

The Rabbinic Polemic against Sanctification of Sites

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eyal Ben Eliyahu
Keyword(s):  
Religious Group ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
High Mountains ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
Memorial Sites ◽  
Temple Mount ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Land Of Israel

AbstractThe attribution of holiness to various sites in antiquity was confined neither to a particular ethnic or religious group, nor to one particular geographical locale, but was rather practiced by a wide range of groups vis-à-vis many locations. Contrary to these views, the rabbis made a very clear and sharp statement regarding the sanctity of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and negated the idea of the existence of holy places outside Jerusalem. The rabbis struggled against the sanctity of the biblical “holy mountain,” as well as against sites that could have been regarded as holy on the basis of the biblical narrative. The discovery of this polemic illuminates and offers an explanation for many surprising passages in early rabbinic literature that belittle high mountains and biblical “memorial sites” in the Land of Israel. The examples, drawn from the various strata of early rabbinic literature, demonstrate surprising rabbinic consensus on this issue.

Gender and the (In)divisibility of Contested Sacred Places: The Case of Women for the Temple

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (04) ◽  
pp. 812-839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lihi Ben Shitrit
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Interaction ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Temple Mount ◽  
The Temple

Abstract Contested sacred sites, over which different religious groups assert claims to exclusivity, have drawn scholarly attention to the spatial interaction between religion and politics. However, the gendered dimensions of inter-communal religious-political disputes over sacred space, and women's roles in these site-specific conflicts, have been largely neglected. Using a case study of Orthodox Jewish women's activism for access to Temple Mount al-Haram al-Sharif, this article demonstrates how attention to gender and to women's engagement in inter-communal conflict over sacred places can illuminate unique intra-communal processes that aim to make a contested sacred site increasingly indivisible for parties to the conflict.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

A Pleasing Odour for Yahweh

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Anne Katrine De Hemmer Gudme
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The West ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Crucial Part

This article investigates the importance of smell in the sacrificial cults of the ancient Mediterranean, using the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim and the Hebrew Bible as a case-study. The material shows that smell was an important factor in delineating sacred space in the ancient world and that the sense of smell was a crucial part of the conceptualization of the meeting between the human and the divine.  In the Hebrew Bible, the temple cult is pervaded by smell. There is the sacred oil laced with spices and aromatics with which the sanctuary and the priests are anointed. There is the fragrant and luxurious incense, which is burnt every day in front of Yahweh and finally there are the sacrifices and offerings that are burnt on the altar as ‘gifts of fire’ and as ‘pleasing odors’ to Yahweh. The gifts that are given to Yahweh are explicitly described as pleasing to the deity’s sense of smell. On Mount Gerizim, which is close to present-day Nablus on the west bank, there once stood a temple dedicated to the god Yahweh, whom we also know from the Hebrew Bible. The temple was in use from the Persian to the Hellenistic period (ca. 450 – 110 BCE) and during this time thousands of animals (mostly goats, sheep, pigeons and cows) were slaughtered and burnt on the altar as gifts to Yahweh. The worshippers who came to the sanctuary – and we know some of them by name because they left inscriptions commemorating their visit to the temple – would have experienced an overwhelming combination of smells: the smell of spicy herbs baked by the sun that is carried by the wind, the smell of humans standing close together and the smell of animals, of dung and blood, and behind it all as a backdrop of scent the constant smell of the sacrificial smoke that rises to the sky.

More than a “Petty Chief”: Understanding Fijian Chiefship through the Entrance Ceremony and Local History

1969 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-226
Author(s):  
Hao-Li Lin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Local History

The diverse nature of Fiji’s chiefship and how its supremacy was strengthened by colonialism have already been closely examined. However, few studies have focused on village chiefs, who have limited authority and are at the lower end of regional chiefly hierarchies. Using both historical and ethnographic materials from a Fijian village, I argue here that its “petty chief,” as the role was called by nineteenth-century Westerners, is a powerful linkage to a past of stability represented by the chiefly title. This is particularly important for communities that have experienced historical turbulence. In this case study, it was mainly the measles crisis that caused population decline. The linkage is materialised by a standardised entrance ceremony in which the chiefly title is routinely acknowledged by foreign visitors through offerings (i-sevusevu) and thus elevated to a symbol that holds the community together. I also argue that the entrance ceremony that we observe today may have been prompted by Western contact. Through the analysis of the ceremony and local history, this study shows that the power of “petty chiefs” should be understood not solely by the structure of hierarchy, but also by their significance to historically turbulent communities.

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