Temple of Solomon
Holy Land: Edition X
Welcome to Cosmographia. This post is part of our Holy Land series. For the full map of Cosmographia posts, see here.
Then Solomon said “… I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.”
— 1 Kings 8:12–13
At the far southeastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, a wide coastal plain rises up into a chain of hard limestone mountains. Modernity’s sprawl has chipped away at the forests that once covered these hills, with many now dotted with towns, villages, illegal settlements, and boutique wineries. Roughly at their centre, the topography flattens out into something of a plateau. Here, upon a spur jutting southwards from the high plain, lies perhaps the most famous city in all the world: Jerusalem.
To speak of Jerusalem is to speak of holiness; a place too loaded with spiritual significance to measure in ordinary geopolitical metrics like economics, security, or strategic position. A crude yardstick, but perhaps the only one available to us, might be to consider the number of people who consider this city a site of supreme religious importance: a number which easily totals to more than half of the world’s eight billion people.
We could speak of Jerusalem’s shrines, temples, churches, mosques, and holy relics as we try to explain its special place in the hearts and minds of so many, but in truth these are but earthly concerns. The Holy City is just that because it has emerged from the deep recesses of world history as the most important site on earth for communion between God and Man. Beneath the modern metropolis of some one million souls, lies more than just terra rossa soil, undug ruins, and ancient waterways. The foundations of this city are not its limestone bedrock, but the layers upon layers of sanctity that have only intensified with age. For the longer the city has been venerated, the more feverishly the fires of its reverence have burned.
So, let us return to the beginning of this story. Let us peel back the spiritual strata and have a look back to the very earliest days of Jerusalem’s holiness, when the veneration first began some 3000 years ago.