In Their Own Words

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Sacred to three major religions, Jerusalem has served as both a religious and political capital throughout the course of its long, storied history. Here Frank E. Peters discusses the mystery of Jerusalem—both earthly and heavenly.¹ Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Religious Studies at New York University, Peters is an expert in Islamic history and religion, as well as comparative Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

It was probably Paul, who was in Jerusalem to study law early in the first Christian century, who caught the essence of Jerusalem. There were, as he famously described it, two cities, a heavenly Jerusalem and “the city of today” (Galatians 4:25–26). Like the Assyrians and Babylonians of old, Paul was heading somewhere else with his “allegory” of the two Jerusalems, but there is a profound truth there. There are indeed two Jerusalems, the historical city with its banal urban problems of traffic and sewage; its economic problems of supply and demand of trade, commerce, capital and construction; its social problems of too many or too few people, or perhaps just the wrong people; and its political problems of the rulers, present and prospective, and the ruled.

Jerusalem shares all these concerns with other cities of the same size and environment, but there is also the heavenly Jerusalem, which, for all its celestial location, visits on its earthly counterpart a host of earthly problems that are alien to other cities, no matter what their size or location. For some, the heavenly Jerusalem stands on sturdy theological foundations, but for others, for most others, it is the stuff of dreams, the visionary city of Ezekiel or John of Patmos, society perfected, the covenant fulfilled. …

There is no mystery about the origins of Jerusalem’s sanctity. David made it the capital of the still-young Israelite kingdom, but it was quite another act that rendered it holy. David ordered the Ark of the Covenant, the portable chest-throne atop whose mythical cherubim the Presence of the Lord had settled in the trek across Sinai and from which the divine commands issued (Exodus 25:22), to be installed in Jerusalem. At first the ark was merely in a tent, which was its usual housing, but David soon bethought himself of a more splendid domicile. “Here I am dwelling in a house of cedar, while the Ark of God abides in a tent,” the guilty David confided to the prophet Nathan. It was the Lord’s sentiment exactly: “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” was the message he sent back to the king (2 Samuel 7:1–12).

The house was eventually built, though not by David, but his son Solomon.

Sacred to three major religions, Jerusalem has served as both a religious and political capital throughout the course of its long, storied history. Here Frank E. Peters discusses the mystery of Jerusalem—both earthly and heavenly.1 Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Religious Studies at New York University, Peters is an expert in Islamic history and religion, as well as comparative Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It was probably Paul, who was in Jerusalem to study law early in the first Christian century, who caught the essence of Jerusalem. There were, as he famously described it, two cities, […]