Jerusalem is a key city throughout the Old and New Testaments. Learn about how Jerusalem turned into a city and why it featured so prominently in Scripture.
The story of the Good Samaritan takes place on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Is the reference to Jerusalem important for understanding the story? To decide that, it helps to know something about Jerusalem.
During the time of Jesus, Jerusalem was a city of approximately 25,000 residents, and Israel was ruled by procurators, or governors, appointed by the Roman Emperor. The governor made his principal place of residence in Caesarea, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and to the north and west of Jerusalem. He would make periodic visits to Jerusalem, but basically the army was left in charge of affairs there.
Jerusalem, however, had once served as the capital of Israel from the time of King David (tenth century B.C.) until the Romans moved the administrative offices to Caesarea. From the Bible’s perspective, the story of Jerusalem is to a great extent the story of King David. But archeological evidence from Jerusalem shows that this site had been occupied perhaps as long as two thousand years before David named it as his capital.
The name “Jerusalem” appears in Egyptian Execration Texts from the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries B.C. The Armana Letters from the fourteenth century mention Urusalim, and Assyrian texts speak of Urusilimmu. The name appears to come from the Hebrew root yrh, “to lay a foundation.” Thus Yerushalayim probably means “the foundation of Shalem,” with Shalem perhaps being the name of a god once worshiped there.
The book of Genesis mentions that Abraham was blessed by Melchizedek, King of Salem (Gen 14.18–20). Long after these texts were written, this mysterious encounter between Abraham and Melchizedek fascinated later Christian scholars, who increasingly came to identify Melchizedek with the Messiah, God’s promised future leader; see, for example, Hebrews 7.1–17.
Salem might also figure into the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac. Genesis 22.1-3 reports that Abraham was commanded by God to offer his son on a mountain in “the land of Moriah,” which is not further identified in Genesis. In 2 Chronicles 3.1, however, the author states that Solomon built the temple “in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah.”
It is almost impossible to use the text in the two passages from Genesis to prove that Abraham had an historical association with the ancient site of Salem. What might be happening in both of these passages is that later generations of court historians during the Davidic period are trying to associate the stories of the ancestors with David’s capital city.
In the stories of the conquest of Canaan at the end of the Exodus from Egypt (Josh 10), the “King of Jerusalem” is mentioned as one of five kings whom Joshua defeated (see also Judg 1.8), but archaeological evidence does not support these claims. It is more likely that the area around Jerusalem came under Israelite control at the time of David himself.
It was David who was firmly associated with the city of Jerusalem in Jewish consciousness—so much so that Jerusalem came to be called “City of David.” David was able to unite the various clans of Israel into a single kingdom during the first half of the tenth century B.C. He ruled during a time when both Egypt to the south and west and Assyria to the north and east were less influential in controlling events in that part of the world. David was thus able to expand Israel’s political and military power during these decades and make it a major political power in the eastern Mediterranean region. He captured the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites and made it the capital of his newly formed kingdom by moving the ark of the covenant there. The ark, which was believed to contain the tablets of the covenant from the time of Moses, had been taken into battle for centuries as a sign of God’s presence with the people against their enemies. Bringing the ark to Jerusalem was David’s first act to establish Jerusalem as a sacred, holy city.
Jerusalem lay on the border between the clans from the north and the clans from the south. David’s choice of this location as capital for the new kingdom was designed to unify all the clans into a single people. He began a large construction project that fortified the city, and he added a royal palace to its existing structures. His son Solomon continued the projects by building the temple as a permanent home for the ark and “the place where Yahweh causes his name to dwell.” See, for example, Solomon’s dedication prayer in 1 Kings 8.27–30 and also Jeremiah’s use of this concept at Jeremiah 7.11–15.
Jerusalem’s location in the rugged high country of Israel meant that it did not lie on major highways connecting the new capital to other major cities. The local roads that ran through the hills often were near hideouts for robbers, and so the details of Jesus’ story are in agreement with what others tell us about the dangers of travel. Jerusalem grew into a large city (and 25,000 people was a large city for that region!) because the temple would draw the faithful to worship during the annual pilgrimages. As we shall see, the stormy political fortunes of Jerusalem and its temple also had a way of keeping builders and artisans busy over the next several centuries.
David’s dream of a united kingdom lasted only seven decades. After the reign of his son Solomon, David’s kingdom split in two, with Jerusalem remaining the capital for the southern kingdom of Judah, which was ruled by David’s descendant. A new capital was built by the northern clans at Shechem, and royal sanctuaries were developed at Dan and Bethel for the new northern kingdom of Israel. The years of the divided kingdom were turbulent, with tensions sometimes heating up between the north and south and with constant political worries over the growing power of Egypt and Assyria. These tensions between “north” and “south” appear in Jesus’ parable, because the Samaritans traced their ancestry back to these northern clans. In 722 B.C., the northern kingdom finally fell to the Assyrian emperor Sargon II. A couple decades later, Sargon’s successor Sennacherib made a southward thrust that brought him to the very walls of Jerusalem. For awhile it appeared as if Assyrian armies might conquer Jerusalem, but Sennacherib’s siege halted at the city’s wall, and the southern kingdom experienced a reprieve for about a century. Then a new Babylonian emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, attacked Jerusalem in 586/587 B.C. and destroyed the temple and the city, taking many people of Judea into exile in Babylon and bringing David’s kingdom finally to an end.
The crisis of the exile for Jewish faith is hard to overestimate. The prophet Nathan had announced to David that his descendants would always occupy the throne in Jerusalem (see 2 Sam 7). Related as it was also to David’s desire to build the temple in Jerusalem, the prophecy twisted together three important themes: David’s eternal dynasty, the temple as God’s house, and the importance of Jerusalem as the holy city of Yahweh. When the Babylonian army destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and brought David’s royal line to an end, it also created a crisis of faith for the followers of “Yahweh religion.” God had seemed to go back on the promise made to David. How could God be trusted?
The exile of the Judean clans in Babylon lasted for nearly fifty years. These decades were crucial for the creation of Jewish religion and consciousness as the exiles, far away from home, remembered the glories of Jerusalem and its temple. Rather than abandon their faith in Yahweh, exilic theologians made remarkable leaps of consciousness. Some of the followers of Yahweh religion began to think more about the international implications of their faith. They came to see themselves as a people who had received a divine vocation to be a blessing to all nations, and their God was identified increasingly as a universal deity whose sovereignty extended to all peoples. Sacred space, which had shaped the stories about Abraham receiving land from God and which had been central to identifying the temple on Mount Zion as holy, was now transformed into an understanding of sacred time. The customs and practices associated with the Sabbath became a way for exiles to experience holiness away from Jerusalem. Additional shifts of thinking were required regarding the monarchy. Obviously David’s royal line had now come to an end, but Nathan’s prophecy about “descendants of David” occupying the throne was phrased in such a way as to leave the future open to the possibility that one day a descendant of David, a meshiach or “anointed one,” could reinstate the monarchy. This line of thinking, which had been augmented already during the period of the monarchy by prophetic dreams of an ideal king who would rule in a perfected kingdom of God, would become a source for the new messianic thinking that became so important in the story of Jesus.
When the exile ended in 538 B.C. and the exiles returned home again, they found that their former homeland was now populated by other people who had claimed this land as their own and that their former glorious capital still lay in ruins. According to 2 Chronicles 36.22–23, the Persian Emperor Cyrus, who returned the exiles to their homeland, explicitly ordered the people to rebuild the temple. The prophet Second Isaiah identified Cyrus as “Yahweh’s anointed” (meshiach; see Isa 45.1). The temple was rebuilt over a period of several decades. The project was first led by Sheshbazzar (about 538 B.C.), later by Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and later still by Haggai and Zechariah (520–515 B.C.). Ezra 4 tells us how the local inhabitants of the land offered to assist with the building of the new temple during the time of Zerubbabel, but their offer was rejected. According to Ezra, this rejection precipitated a further interference not only with the rebuilding of the temple but also with the reconstruction of Jerusalem. The text is not clear on this matter, but one possibility is that these “people of the land” were thought of as Samaritans. We do know that Samaritan and Jewish antagonism continued to increase, and that the Samaritans eventually built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, perhaps around 330 B.C.
The Davidic monarchy was never re-established during the years following the exile, but priests played a more and more important role in the governing of the restored Israel, and the priest became the “anointed one.” In the second century B.C. a particularly bitter series of events eventually led to a revolution. When Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a Syrian king who had control of the region, tried to obliterate Jewish religion, he proclaimed himself the incarnation of the Greek god Zeus and placed his statue in the most holy place in the temple, where he sacrificed pigs. The authority of the high priesthood was severely damaged when first Jason and then Meneleus bought their office from Antiochus. The persecution and death of faithful Jewish persons who refused to worship and kiss Antiochus’ image eventually led to a revolt led by Judas Maccabeus and his family. Judas’ priestly family, the Hasmoneans, introduced a dynasty that ruled during a period of conflict, with tensions arising both from within the family as well as from external enemies. During the later years of this era, the Romans, led by General Pompey, were eventually able to take Jerusalem in 63 B.C. A period of partial self-rule followed, with a Jewish council making local decisions. But authority was in the hands of Roman-appointed governors, and the family of Herod ruled as “puppet-kings” under close cooperation with the Romans in Caesarea.
Throughout this period, Jewish history takes place within the greater Greek culture of the eastern Mediterranean. The memory of Antiochus’ enforced policies left a negative association in the minds of some people, and this distrust of foreigners was later transferred to the Romans. We can find that distrust most clearly in the community at Qumran which left us the Dead Sea Scrolls. On the other hand, Jewish theologians such as Philo were able to “translate” Jewish theology into the thought-world of Mediterranean culture. This tension between Jewish thought and the broader cultural world was nothing new and dates back all the way to David and before.
What difference does it make that the story of the Good Samaritan takes place on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho? The priest and Levite are tied to the life of the temple, and therefore also to the life of Jerusalem. The Samaritan, on the other hand, is an “outsider” from the Jewish perspective: a man who did not recognize Jerusalem and its temple as holy, and whose ancestors’ offers of assistance were rejected by the Jewish builders of the temple. Jesus’ story contains not only a condemnation of “Jerusalem piety” but also offers a radical alternative in the behavior of a “boundary person,” a Samaritan. The story, then, takes place on the “road out of Jerusalem” in a double sense. And we also know that Jesus himself will travel the road to Jerusalem where he will be rejected and crucified as a would-be Messiah. Jesus’ own words about Jerusalem seem always to hover close to this story: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Luke 13.34–35).
In his second volume (The Acts of the Apostles), Luke will tell how the story about Jesus’ death and resurrection eventually traveled all the way from Jerusalem to the heart of the empire at Rome. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple in A.D. 70 meant for Luke and other Christians that a new day was now dawning. The New Testament would suggest that Jesus was the “new temple” of God and that Christians were built into a new community awaiting a “new Jerusalem.” In this way, too, Luke’s story is part of a path that leads “away from Jerusalem,” away from the temple and toward a new future.