Mount Moriah Essay

To Christians, the city of Jerusalem has big part in the life of Jesus. It is the place where Jesus was brought as a child and presented at the Temple and to attend festivals. Jerusalem is the place where Jesus stayed and completed his reign. It is also the place where He rose from His grave.

Now enters the city, New Jerusalem (21:1-22:5), the symbol of hope. Instead of presenting another worldly power, John brings God’s power to earth, an enormous city which only the worthy can access. Unlike the beast’s (Rome’s) wealth, New Jerusalem contains a bounty of wealth for all those worthy, everything from shelter found in the high walls built with strong foundations to food provided year-round from the tree of life, and yes even jewels are present in God’s city which knows no night. Just in case the community loses its sight on how they might arrive at such a divine city, God’s throne rests at the center of New

The rights to Jerusalem have been heavily debated for centuries. It is the cause of much animosity between the three major monotheistic religions. Since the beginning, the Christians, Muslims and Jews have all claimed that Jerusalem belongs to them due to their religious texts. According to the Bible, Jerusalem is where Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross and crucified for his crimes, blasphemy against Judaism and for treason against Rome. Jerusalem and the area surrounding it are heavily embedded in Christianity and Judaism. Jerusalem is sacred to the Jews because the First Temple, at the site known as the Temple Mount today, was built by King Solomon, and Mount Moriah is where Abraham almost sacrificed his son and

Religious spaces, characterized by Thomas Tweed, are “differentiated,” “interrelated,” and “kinetic.” As a sacred city with spiritual significance in three major religions, Jerusalem is depicted thoroughly in the Hebrew Bible and illustrated as one of the spaces Tweed defines. The Bible emphasizes that Jerusalem was chosen by God and honored by Israelites, which differentiates it as a special, singular space; the description of Solomon’s Temple shows that the Holy City was interrelated to economic power and involved in the judgment of civil cases. Moreover, the conquest, development and destruction of Jerusalem illustrate the city as a kinetic space, reflecting the unsettled history of the Iron Age. These characteristics all make Jerusalem a religious and political center from the ancient Near East time to present day, guiding the footsteps of believers around the world.

1. In what ways is the Holy Land an important site for all three monotheistic faiths? For Christians is the city were Jesus was crucified & where He also rose from the death. For Muslims is the place where Mohammad ascended to the heavens to meet God. For Jews, King David had named it and it was where Solomon had built the temple & also the Wailing Wall is in this city.

Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica 2. Jerusalem was a place that Jesus spent a lot of his

If all revolves around Jerusalem to many religions, that is the right place to be dominating. What’s more, it is the only place on Earth that mirrors Christ so it is basically

Jerusalem is the main reason why The First Crusade ever happened. It is an extremely important place of worship for multiple religions, including Christianity and Islam. Christianity puts great importance in Jerusalem because shortly after birth Jesus was taken to this city. Jesus also had his last supper here, and was crucified and buried right outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is also significant to Christians because it is the site of various saints or profits like Abraham, Solomon, David, Zachary and others (“The Importance of”). But Jerusalem is also valuable to Muslims for multiple reasons too, so much so that the Arabic translation is even “The Noble, Sacred Place.” Jerusalem was even the first Qiblah, the direction Muslims turn towards in prayer, meaning that they would turn to face Jerusalem when praying. It was also the location that Muhammad, messenger and prophet of God, took Muhammad from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to the Furthest Mosque (Al-Aqsa) in Jerusalem. He was then “taken up to the heavens to be shown the signs of God” (Dodge). The Prophet met with previous prophets and led them in a prayer. The entire journey lasted only a few hours (Dodge). It becomes obvious why the Christians and Muslims would go to such great lengths to possess this once city.

Architecture comes with many significant meanings, including religious significance. The Pantheon, built from 118 to 125 CE in Rome, Italy, was a temple made to worship the Roman gods and goddesses. This temple is one of the most important buildings both in history and architecture, influencing many other monuments with its form, such as The Dome of the Rock. The Dome of the Rock, built from 687 to 692 CE, was the first great Islamic building. Located in Jerusalem, it is a shrine still very significant to many religions, such as Judaism and Christianity, today. Though not resembling each other in appearance, these buildings are extremely similar, in terms of religious meaning. The Pantheon and the Dome of the Rock, through their own distinctive form and similar location backgrounds, illuminate religion as the most important factor in each society, as these monuments symbolize a sense of unification throughout the city.

Tweed states in his article “Space” that religious spaces are “differentiated”, “kinetic” and “interrelated”. In other words, they are intangible locales, only sensorially experienced, that stand out in some ways, that are able to be shaped by the natural and cultural influences, and thus that are not perfectly sacred and detached from secular objects. Correspondingly in the Hebrew Bible, the city Jerusalem is indeed portrayed as such a special, changing and holy but also worldly religious space that God was present in the city and He unprecedentedly approved King David’s supplication of building a temple for Him, that it could still undergo a period of desolation given the high recognition and thus the prosperity it once owned, and that some cultural impacts from a certain locale could be found on the First Temple in the city.

Of course, with different cultures and religions in different countries, many sacred spaces have varying visual forms and purposes; a circle of freestanding stones may not look similar to the Lotus Temple in India, but they may share some form of spiritual tranquility. The Pantheon, however, is a building that has no clear purpose as a sacred space, although it is rumored to have been a temple due to the style of the decorations. One thing for certain was the fact that it had been built in order to have some link to the divinities and the sky, hence Pantheon meaning “honor all gods” in Greek. The dome of the Pantheon had been built with near perfect hemispherical geometry, something that human beings consider divine-tier and something that they strive for when creating sacred space: the perfect geometry. Rudolf Wittkower argues that “natural creations, such as the proportions and symmetry of the human frame, the relationships between planets or the intervals of musical harmony, seemed to follow geometric ratios, and that if the products of architecture were to possess the same conceptual integrity they too should be designed using perfect figures, symmetry and harmonic mathematical proportions” (2009,

     Concerning the actual Temple, one must be reminded that King David’s original intentions were to create a memorial against the Canaanite deities and paganism. However, when Solomon was given responsibility of the construction, he seemed to have forgotten this. Some of the symbolism on the alter was derived from Phoenicia, and can be traced back to older Canaanite symbols from Mesopotamia. A serious spiritual weakness was starting to materialize in the Temple during this time. “Its elaborate organization and its heavy indebtedness to Syro-Phoenician religious architecture and practice. The danger of syncretism became very great- so great that the following centuries were characterized by bitter intermittent conflict between religious assimilators and religious separatists”(Albright 150). In other

Moses: The Holy Land is an important site for the Jews because it is their promised homeland. Jews from all over the world come to Israel to worship in their many synagogues.

After the temple was completed, Zechariah gave several prophecies about Israel’s future. It vividly describes the first and second coming of our lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This book contains more about the person, work, and glory of Christ than any other minor prophets combined. Israel’s king would come, but his people would reject him. They would later repent and be restored to God. The king is going to come again for the Judgment, we pray that when he comes again that we have been faithful and he will find us pure in his sight. The building of the temple is important here. Our bodies are our temple and we must continue to work on them until Christ comes again to claim us, the Church the people of

The sermon on the mount shows us Jesus 's ethical teachings on how a person should live his or life, the distinction from the law, and this has a reaction from the society. Jesus ' Sermon on the mount has had a huge impact on the Christian religion and somewhat shaped the religion in a sense. It has been a reference point for Christian ideals on the right way to live your life. It was a well constructed, alluring sermon that must have captivated the minds of the people.