Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/417

 JERUSALEM

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JERUSALEM

cording to tradition, Jesus went out from the city to the place of His crucifixion. North of the column and slightly to the east, at a distance of 100 feet, is to be seen a rocky scarp which extends about 250 feet to- wards the north. Near here the wall descended east- ward into Kl Wad, where it came to the Fish Gate (II Par., xx.xiii, 14; II Esd., iii, 3; xii, 38). This gate opened on the road by which the TjTian fishermen came from Jaffa (cf, IIEsd., xiii, 16). The w^all then crossed Mount Bezetha, and the Tower of Hananeel (Jer., x.xxi, 38; II Esd., iii, 1 ; xii, 38) must be located on the ridge which descended from the Hill of Jere- mias to Mount Moria, and which was the vulnerable point of the Holy City. On this same ridge there was another tower, or stronghold, as early as the period of the kings of Juda; Nehemias, who restored it, named it Birah, an .\ramaic word derived from the Assyrian biratu, " palace ", or " fortress of the temple " (in D.V., "tower of the house"; II Esd., ii, 8). This tower (see I Mach., xiii, 53; etc.) bore, in the time of Josephus, the hellenized name of Baris. Under the Hasmonean dynasty, the whole rock on which this tower stood was removed on all sides, to a depth of 30 feet on the south, and of 15 feet on the north, the length of the excavation being 350 feet from east to west. On the north, where there is a deep cistern, the mountain was levelled away to a distance of 160 feet (cf. I Mach., xiii, 53). Herod caused the reservoir to be vaulted over, and built the fortress of Antonia on the rock of Baris and on the southern esplanade (Bell. Jud., V, v, 8). It was in this building that Pontius Pilate had his praetorium, where Jesus was condemned to death. In sa3'ing that the second wall "went up to the Antonia", Josephus does not indicate where it ended, but only its direction. He him.self does not place the Antonia at the end of the wall of Ezechias; on the contrary, he says that the Romans coukl ap- proach it only after they had become masters of the city as far as the first wall (Bell. Jud., V, ix). From the Tower of Hananeel the wall was prolonged to the Sheep (or Flock) Gate (II Esd., iii, 1, 31; xii, 38), near the Probatic Pool, with the five porches, and the other great reservoirs, necessarily, within the walls.

Third Wall. — From a. d. 41 to 44 Herod Agrippa I undertook to build the third wall, which also began at the Tower of Hippicus and crossed the Camp of the Assyrians to the north, as far as the octagonal Tower of Psephinus (Antiq. Jud., XIX, vii, 2; Bell. Jud., V, iv, 3). Traces of this tower were found at the north- west corner of the city, at the place where the Qasr Djalodd, or Tower of Goliath, was erected in the twelfth century. Thence Agrippa's wall took an east- erly direction, towards the Towers of the Women, opposite the sepulchre of Helen of Adiabene, which is situated 2000 feet to the north. The Towers of the Women, some traces of which have been found, pro- tected the gate which corresponded to the Fish Gate. It still stands, as to a considerable part of its height, though sunken into the ground, below the actual Gate of Damascus, or Bab el Amoud. Thence the wall passed over the royal grottoes (Bell. Jud., V, iv, 3) to cross the ridge of Bezetha. The stone of this lofty hill is of excellent quality, and coukl be transported in immense blocks as far as the Temple by means of inclined planes. This is why, as early as the time of Solomon, the hill was used as a quarry, as is shown by the figure of a Phoenician cherub cut in the wall of one of the royal grottoes. Already perforated with nu- merous caverns, the hill was cut in two under Agrippa I, and the cut served as a ditch for the new city wall. Thus it was that the summit became a separate hill, called, since the sixteenth century, the Hill of Jere- mias. It again served as a qviarry in the period of the Crusatles and its present aspect has been taken on since the time of Christ. From the royal grottoes, the wall continued eastwards as far as the height above t'edron, and then turned south to rejoin the second

city wall. The lino of the tliiril wa.ll has with slight modifications been kept in that of the actual city.

Robinson. Biblical Researches in Palestine, I (3 vols., 2nd ed., London, 1S56); Tobler, Topographic von Jerusalem (2 vols., Berlin, 1S53) ; B.^rclat, The Cilv of the Great King. As It Was. As It Is. and As It Is To Be {Philadelphi.<i. 1856); Wilson, Tht Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem (2 vols., Southampton, 1866); Wilson and Warren. The Recovery of Jerusalem (London, 1871); Warren, Umierground Jerusalem (London, 1876): Wil- son AND Warren, Survey of Western Palestine: J erusalem (Lon- don, 1884); GuERlN, Jerusalem (Pans, 1889); Lagrange. Topo- graphie de Jerusalem, in Revue Biblique (Paris. 1892), 17-;J8; Bliss and Dickies, Excavations at Jerusalem (London, 1898); Meistermann, Xa Villede David (Paris, 190.5).

Barnaba.9 Meisterm.vnn.

II. From a. d. 71 to a. d. 1099.— (1) To the Time of Cnnslanline. {7 IS IS) .—SNhen Titus took Jerusalem (.\pril-September, a. d. 70) he ordered his soldiers to destroy the city (Josephus, "De bello Jud.", VI, ix). they spared only the three great tow-ers at the north of Herod's palace (Hip- picus, Phasael, Mariamne) and the western wall. Few Jews remained. The Roman Tenth Legion held the upper town and Herod's castle as a for- tress; Josephus says that Titus handed the fields around to his soldiers (" Vita ", 76, ed. Dindorf, Paris, 1865, p. 832). The presence of these heathens would naturally repel Jews, though in this period there was no law against their presence in Jerusalem. The Jewish Rabl)is gathered together at Jabne (or Jamnia, now Jebna) in the plain, north-west of the city, two hours from Ramleh. Meanwhile the Christian community had fled to Pella in Peraea, east of the Jordan (south-east of Jenin), before the beginning of the siege. ■The Christians were still almost entirely converts from Judaism (Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl.", IV, v). After the destruction they came back and congre- gaterl in the house of John Mark and his mother Mary, where they had met before (Acts, xii, 12 sq.). It was apparently in this house that was the Upper Room, the scene of the Last Supper and of the assembly on Whit-Sunday. Epiphanius (d. 403) says that when the Emperor Hadrian came to Jerusalem in 130 he found the Temple and the whole city destroyed save for a few houses, among them the one where the Apostles had received the Holy Ghost. This house, says Epiphanius, is "in that part of Sion which was spared when the city was destroyed " — therefore in the upper part ("De mens, etpond.", cap. xiv, P. G., XLIII). From the time of Cyril of Jerusalem, who speaks of "the upper Church of the Apostles, where the Holy Ghost came down upon them" (Catech., ii, 6; P. (j., XXXIII), there are abundant witnesses of the place. A great basilica was built over the spot in the fourth century; the crusaders built another church when the older one had been destroyed by Hakim in 1010. It is the famous Ccenaculum or Cenacle — now a Moslem shrine — near the Gate of David, and supposed to beDavid'stomb (Nebi Daud).

During the first Christian centuries the church at this place was the centre of Christianity in Jerusalem, "Holy and glorious Sion, mother of all churches" (Intercession in "St. James' Liturgy", ed. Brightman, p. 54). Certainly no spot in Christendom can be more venerable than the place of the Last Supper, which became the first Christian church. The con- stant use of the name Sion for the Ccenaculum has led to considerable discussion as to the topography of Jerusalem. Many writers conclude that it is on Mount Sion, which would therefore be the south- west hill of the city (Meistermann, "Nouveau Guide de Terre Sainte", Paris, 1907, p. 121, plan). Others (Baedeker, " Palastina u. Syrien",6th ed., 1904, p. 27) oppose this tradition on the strength of the passages in the Old Testament that clearly distinguish Sion from Jerusalem and state that the Lord dwells in Sion and that the king's palace is there (Is., x, 12; viii, 18; Joel, iii, 21; etc.). So Sion would be the hill on the west, the place of the Teni]ile and David's palace.