(插耶路撒冷的美美的图)
[Jerusalem is the shrine of three faiths, Judaism Christianity and Islam.
[It’s a place of exquisite beauty but also of ugly vulgarity,.
[for some, this is the center of the world and the home of God himself.
[but for others, Jerusalem is the best argument against religion.
（插武装冲突的图）
[Jerusalem’s holiness has made it the most fought over city in history.
[Over the centuries, Jews, Christians and Muslims have competed viciously to commandeer the history and holiness of this place .
(插争斗的壁画)
[but as the competition has intensified, so has the holiness.
[All three religions have shared origins in the Old Testament, and all have laid claim to Jerusalem.
[For many, the history of the city is more a matter of faith than fact.
[But I believe you can piece together Jerusalem fractured history.
[And that’s the story I’m going to tell.1’24’’
[It’s a story of empires won and lost, of power and identity, above all, it’s a story of man’s search for holiness,
(插荒凉的耶路撒冷自然环境图片)
[So how did this craggy, remote, obscure little stronghold become the holy city，the prime place on earth for god to meet man.
1.[In the bronze age ，around 3200 BC，people lived in these hills，they existed in small square houses，they herded sheep，and they buried their dead in the caves that have been found around Jerusalem.
2.[Over the next 1000 years, this island known as Canaan, became part of a province ruled by the Pharaohs in Egypt. On the fertile plains of the Mediterranean coast. There were already several thriving cities. But inland the hill country was a backwater.
3.[Before Jerusalem expanded in modern times, east and west. The ancient city was founded on two mountains, mount Moriah and mount Zion. But is all really started, down there on that dry ridge , the Ophel.
The Ophel hill, was there the Canaanite settlers first began to build, their settlement was named Urusalem, which some believe means “founded by Salem”, the pagan god of the evening star.
This small arid little hillside may seem a strange place to build a city. It’s far from the trade routes, it’s distant from the Mediterranean, but it did have two distinct advantages.
First its steep ravines make it almost impregnable, and, crucially ,it had a spring.
It was this combination that attracted the first settlers, to build on the ophel hill.
The earliest known Canaanite structures are the foundations of two stone towers.
They were only discovered in the 1990s by archaeologist Ronnie Reich.
Why did they need this fortification here? it’s to protect the water ,the spring and the approach to the spring, and since this is the only spring in a very large radius here around, this was their lifeline, the spring itself.
Did the spring, along with the towers around it have the holy qualities that it later assumed?
It’s the only spring in velocity which points to the east, to the sun if you come in the morning, the sun rays hit the water, today it’s full with tourists but you can see it. and we can believe that there was a sanctity attributed to the spring in early days already.
The sprig is the first link to the holiness, in this city.
Long before Christians, long before islam, long even before the Israelites captured Jerusalem, this was already a holy place.
4[But for someone the history of Jerusalem really comes alive in 1350 BC. where for the first time, in the Amarna letters, we hear the voice of a real human Jerusalemite.
Inscribed in delicate cuneiform characters, these letters were sent by the Canaanite king of Jerusalem, abdi heba, to the pharaoh of Egypt, pleading for archers to help defend the city from attack. alas no more is heard of abdi heba. We don’t know if the pharaoh came to his help, or if he has got his archers, and no more is heard of Jerusalem either for several centuries.
All we know is that this small provincial town not only survived the attack, but carried on growing with several new building clinging to the slops on the ophel hill.
5[If you are looking for a reason of why this unremarkable bronze age settlement became the universal city, it's because of the story told by a book of unique and global prestige, the bible.
the bible has been studied and revered by millions of believers over thousands of years.
it's made Jerusalem the most famous city in the world.
many of the stories told in the bible originated in the oral traditions of the Hebrew people.
they were often only put down in writing hundreds of years after they were supposed to have happened.
to some believers , the bible is the fruit of divine revelation, fundamentally infallible in every detail.
but for the historian, it's a troublesome, complex and subtle source.
some of it is undeniably factually correct.
some of it is mythological,
some of it is poetry of soaring beauty and much of it is absolutely mysterious to all of us.
the bible isn't only a mystical and sacred text, it also forms a chronicle of Jerusalem's history and a hymn to its holiness.
it's not always reliable, but it can be useful when you can check it against other sources.
the first reference to Jerusalem is in the book of genesis, which recounts how the patriarch Abraham visited what was then a Canaanite city, ruled by a Canaanite priest.
it says, king melchizedek of Salem welcomed him with bread and wine, and he was a priest of god most high.
the bible goes on to tell us that centuries later, Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt to take over the promised land Canaan.
the book of Joshua tells how they occupied Canaan in a serious of battles and massacres.
there isn't much archaeological evidence of a violent conquest.
there are hardly any ruined cities or mass graves.
but there is evidence of pastoral settlers building new villages in this countryside.
09:54
6[the Israelites brought with them a new religion.
they believe in just one god, yahweh.
and the first of the ten commandments was to reject the pagan gods of old.
Israelites may have been united by their gaith, but politically they were divided.
there were 12distinct tribes lined up two warring factions.
the northern tribes known as israel and the southern tribes of judah.
uniting these warring tribes would take a visionary and charismatic warrior king.
david.
just as the american founding fathers chose washington dc as their captial to bridge the gap between north and south,
david chose jerusalem as his neutral new captial.
this strategic decision transformed a remote fortress into a capital city.
after david's death, god chose his son to finish his career.
Solomon.
7 [when solomon died after a reign of 40 years, the kingdom split up.
the 10 northern tribes, unhappy at the exorbitant taxation, broke away to form the kingdom of israel and jerusalem remained the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah.
with the jews divided, jerusalem became vulnerable.
in the 8th century bc, the voracious empire of assyria was expanding from its base in modern-day iraq.
when the assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of israel, the jews of jerusalem knew they were next.
as the assyrians approached jerusalem, the king of judah received a warning from his prophet isaiah.
isaiah prophesied that an anointed king would appear and bring peace.
he imagined a mystical new jerusalem that would exist in a perfect state of peace and harmony.
and in this astonishing vision, he would ultimately help inspire a new-world religion and transform jerusalem into the universal city.
he was the first but not the last, to see two jerusalem.
one heavenly, one earthly.
700years later, his prophecy would become central to the teaching to jesus.