Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Where is Jerusalem?

The Chumash (five books of Moses,) written four centuries before the time of David, emphasizes the centrality of the then-future capital of Jerusalem, but never gives a specific location though it could easily have done so i.e., at the spring of Gihon, headwaters of the Kidron River, in the shadow of the Mount of Olives, etc.  Its location on the border between Yehuda (Judah, David’s home tribe) and Binyamin (Benjamin, the tribe of the previous King Saul) is almost an homage to the house of Shaul, although this idea is not made explicit in the text.  It seems a very earthly and contemporary consideration for locating the divine and timeless, “Eternal capital of the Jewish People.”  Perhaps the idea of “Jerusalem” was known since the time of the Chumash, but David selected its final temporal location. Or am I just a heretic? J

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