1.
Judaean Mountains
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The Judaean Mountains, or Judaean Hills, is a mountain range in Israel and the West Bank where Jerusalem and several other biblical cities are located. The mountains reach a height of 1,026 metres, the Judean Mountains can be separated to a number of sub-regions, including the Mount Hebron ridge, the Jerusalem ridge and the Judean slopes. These mountains formed the heartland of the Kingdom of Judah, where the earliest Jewish settlements emerged, the range runs in a north south direction from Galilee to the Negev with an average height of 900 metres. The Judaean mountains encompass Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah, the range forms a natural division between the Shephelah coastal plains to the west and the Jordan Rift Valley to the east. The northern section, in the Ramallah area, is known as Samarian Hills. The Judaean Mountains were heavily forested in antiquity, the range is mostly composed of terra rossa soils over hard limestones. The Judaean Mountains are the expression of a series of monoclinic folds which trend north-northwest through Israel. The folding is the expression of the Syrian Arc belt of anticlinal folding that began in the Late Cretaceous Period in northeast Africa. The Syrian Arc extends east-northeast across the Sinai, turns north-northeast through Israel, the Israeli segment parallels the Dead Sea Transform which lies just to the east. In prehistoric times, animals no longer found in the Levant region were found here, including elephants, rhinoceri, giraffes, in ancient times the Judean mountains were the allotment of the Tribe of Judah and the heartland of the former Kingdom of Judah. An Israel Railways line runs from Beit Shemesh along the Brook of Sorek, media related to Judaean Mountains at Wikimedia Commons Pictures Judaean Mountains & Jerusalem Symbolism and Landscape, The Etzion Bloc in the Judaean Mountains, Yossi Katz and John C
2.
Bible
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The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. Many different authors contributed to the Bible, what is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups, a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, the New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect. Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups and this concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching. With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the book of all time. It has estimated sales of 100 million copies, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West. The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin. Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra holy book, while biblia in Greek and it gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. Latin biblia sacra holy books translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, the word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of paper or scroll and came to be used as the ordinary word for book. It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, Egyptian papyrus, possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece, the Greek ta biblia was an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books. Christian use of the term can be traced to c.223 CE, bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in oral traditions. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, the oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin Bible is the Codex Amiatinus and he states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that, Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, the period of transmission is short, less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Marks Gospel. This means that there was time for oral traditions to assume fixed form
3.
Israelites
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The Israelites were a Semitic-speaking people of the ancient Near East, who inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. The ancient Israelites are considered to be an outgrowth of the indigenous Canaanite populations that inhabited the Southern Levant, Syria, ancient Israel. In the period of the monarchy it was only used to refer to the inhabitants of the northern kingdom. The Israelites were also known as the Hebrews and the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah, particularly the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and partially Levi. The word Jews is found in 2 Kings, Chronicles, and in passages in the Book of Jeremiah, the Book of Zechariah. The Kingdom of Israel, often called the Northern Kingdom of Israel, contained all the tribes except for the tribes of Judah, following its conquest by Assyria, these ten tribes were allegedly dispersed and lost to history, and they are henceforth known as the Ten Lost Tribes. Jewish tradition holds that Samaria was so named because the mountainous terrain was used to keep Guard for incoming enemy attacks. According to Samaritan tradition, however, the Samaritan ethnonym is not derived from the region of Samaria, thus, according to Samaritan tradition, the region was named Samaria after them, not vice versa. In Modern Hebrew, the Samaritans are called Shomronim, while in Samaritan Hebrew they call themselves Shamerim, in Judaism, an Israelite is, broadly speaking, a lay member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group, as opposed to the priestly orders of Kohanim and Levites. In texts of Jewish law such as the Mishnah and Gemara, the term יהודי, meaning Jew, is rarely used, Samaritans commonly refer to themselves and to Jews collectively as Israelites, and they describe themselves as the Israelite Samaritans. The name Israel first appears in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 32,29, the Hebrew Bible etymologizes the name as from yisra to prevail over or to struggle/wrestle with, and el, God, the divine. The name Israel first appears in non-biblical sources c.1209 BCE, the inscription is very brief and says simply, Israel is laid waste and his seed is not. The inscription refers to a people, not to an individual or a nation-state, in modern Hebrew, bnei yisrael can denote the Jewish people at any time in history, it is typically used to emphasize Jewish religious identity. From the period of the Mishna the term Yisrael acquired a narrower meaning of Jews of legitimate birth other than Levites. In modern Hebrew this contrasts with the term Yisraeli, a citizen of the modern State of Israel, the term Hebrew has Eber as an eponymous ancestor. It is used synonymously with Israelites, or as a term for historical speakers of the Hebrew language in general. Today, Jews and Samaritans both recognize each other as communities with an authentic Israelite origin, the terms Jews and Samaritans largely replaced the title Children of Israel as the commonly used ethnonym for each respective community. The name Yahweh, the god of the later Israelites, may indicate connections with the region of Mount Seir in Edom, the Canaanites were also the first people, as far as is known, to have used an alphabet
4.
Qalunya
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Qalunya was a Palestinian Arab village located 6 kilometers west of Jerusalem. Prior to the destruction in 1948, with the exception of 166 dunams, Qalunyas land was privately owned,3,594 dunams were owned by Arabs. Qalunya stood on a slope, facing southwest, Wadi Qalunya passed through its eastern edge. The village lay on the Jerusalem-Jaffa highway, and a dirt path linked it to its neighboring villages, Qalunya was located near the Jewish town of Motza. Qalunya is identified with the Canaanite town of Mozah, its name was stamped on pottery handles in Tall al-Nasba. During First and Second Temple periods Mozah was a Jewish village known for its willows that were used at the Temple of Jerusalem, after A. D.71 Vespasian settled 800 Roman soldiers in the town, which became a Roman settlement known as Colonia Amosa or Colonia Emmaus. The word colonia produced the Byzantine name, Koloneia, for the site, the status of the site in the early Islamic period has not been established, but the name was preserved in Crusader times as Qalonie or Qalunia and in Arabic as Qalunya. Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali reported that in 1192 it was a village near Jerusalem and it has also been suggested that Qalunya was Emmaus. The site is the distance from Jerusalem to match the story told in the New Testament. The village where Vespasian settled the 800 veterans was known as Emmaus at that time, the new military colony completely eclipsed the title town and its name was lost to history. During the Byzantine period the name Emmaus was not in use so the Byzantine Christians did not know of it, the tradition of Emmaus was attached to Emmaus-Nicopolis instead. In 1596, Qalunya was a village in the Ottoman Empire, nahiya of Jerusalem under the liwa of Jerusalem and it paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and olives, as well as on goats, beehives and molasses. In 1883, the Palestine Exploration Funds Survey of Western Palestine described Qalunya as being a village perched on the slope of a hill,300 feet above a valley. Travelers reported that it had a modern restaurant, the villagers tended orange and lemon trees that were planted around a spring in the valley. To the west of the restaurant were ruins, possible of Byzantine origin, in the 1890s, Jews purchased some of Qalunyas farmlands, and established the village of Motza, the first Jewish settlement outside Jerusalem. During the 1929 Palestine riots, several residents of Qalunya attacked a house in Motza belonging to the Maklef family, killing the father, mother, son. Three children survived by escaping out a window, one, Mordechai Maklef. The attackers included the police officer and armed man in the area
5.
Nabi Rubin
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Al-Nabi Rubin was a Palestinian village in central Palestine, located 14.5 kilometers west of Ramla, just northeast of Yibna and 18 kilometers south of Jaffa. The village was situated on the banks of Wadi al-Sarar, known in Hebrew as Sorek Stream. Nabi Rubin is named after a shrine in the village, believed by Muslims to be the tomb of Reuben and it was captured by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the inhabitants were expelled. Nabi Rubin was a place of trade between Crusaders and Muslims prior to it being inhabited, in 1184, it held a fair where Arab merchants from Damascus traded slaves, Persian and Kurdish-bred horses, weapons, and blades from Yemen and India, with Christians from Acre. This trade continued until wars between the Mamluks and Crusaders commenced in the 13th century, the Mamluk governor of Jerusalem built a mosque and shrine there in the early 15th century. Islamic judge Mujir ad-Din wrote in 1495 it is a tomb of our Reuben, thereon crystallizing in local Muslim tradition that the site is the place of Reuben, son of Jacob. Despite popular belief, the tomb may possibly be that of an Arab sheikh, walid Khalidi writes that it is believed that the shrine for al-Nabi Rubin was built in the same place where a Canaanite temple had once stood, and that the mawsim itself was pagan in origin. The Nabi Rubin mawsim was one of two prominent mawsims for Old Testament prophets in Palestine—the other being dedicated to Nabi Musa near Jericho, the site comprised a mosque, a minaret, and a maqam, as well as at least nine wells dispersed in the sand dunes nearby. The oldest part of the present structure is the maqam, which, a cross-vaulted room to the east was built slightly later, possibly in the 16th century. The rest of the complex was built in the later Ottoman period, since at least the 17th century, Muslims from Jaffa, Ramla, Lydda, and the towns and villages surrounding these cities, flocked to Nabi Rubin to celebrate the mawsim. In 1816, an English traveler, Charles Leonard Irby, visited the Sheik Rubin´s tomb, surrounded by a square wall and he also describes that people paid vows at the shrine and celebrated festivals there. Up to 30,000 people made the pilgrimage annually throughout the month of August, temporary coffeehouses, restaurants, and stalls selling food and other merchandise were set up, and people sang popular songs, — both religious and nationalist — and danced the traditional dabka. Sufi dervishes held dhikr sessions, and pilgrims also watched horse races, magic shows and listened to sermons from imams, in 1933, during the Nabi Rubin celebrations, Arabs went on strike and rioted against British Mandatory rule. The first Palestinian film, a 1935 documentary, was presented at the Nabi Rubin festivals. The village of Nabi Rubin was first settled by members of the Abu Sawayrih tribe who are descendants of the al-Maliha Bedouin tribe who used dwell in the Sinai Peninsula. An Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that Nabi Rubin had 44 houses and it also noted that there was a tomb there, and that it was a pilgrimage site. In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Nabi Rubin, tribal area had a population of 120, in 1946, a boys school was started, with an enrollment of 56 pupils. The villages land area, most of which was covered by dunes, was the second largest in the district after that of Yibna
6.
Grape
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A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus Vitis. Grapes can be fresh as table grapes or they can be used for making wine, jam, juice, jelly, grape seed extract, raisins, vinegar. Grapes are a type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of the grape began 6, 000–8,000 years ago in the Near East. Yeast, one of the earliest domesticated microorganisms, occurs naturally on the skins of grapes, the earliest archeological evidence for a dominant position of wine-making in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago in Georgia. The oldest known winery was found in Armenia, dating to around 4000 BC, by the 9th century AD the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. Thus it has proposed that Syrah red wine is named after Shiraz. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record the cultivation of grapes, and history attests to the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians. The growing of grapes would later spread to regions in Europe, as well as North Africa. Vitis vinifera cultivars were imported for that purpose, Grapes are a type of fruit that grow in clusters of 15 to 300, and can be crimson, black, dark blue, yellow, green, orange, and pink. White grapes are actually green in color, and are derived from the purple grape. Mutations in two genes of white grapes turn off production of anthocyanins, which are responsible for the color of purple grapes. Anthocyanins and other pigment chemicals of the family of polyphenols in purple grapes are responsible for the varying shades of purple in red wines. Grapes are typically an ellipsoid shape resembling a prolate spheroid, most grapes come from cultivars of Vitis vinifera, the European grapevine native to the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Vitis riparia, a vine of North America, is sometimes used for winemaking. It is native to the entire Eastern U. S. Vitis rotundifolia, the muscadines, used for jams and wine, are native to the Southeastern United States from Delaware to the Gulf of Mexico. Vitis amurensis is the most important Asian species, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization,75,866 square kilometers of the world are dedicated to grapes. Approximately 71% of world production is used for wine, 27% as fresh fruit
7.
Wine
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Wine is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes. These grapes are generally Vitis vinifera, or a hybrid with Vitis labrusca or Vitis rupestris, grapes are fermented without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, water, or other nutrients. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol, different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different styles of wine. These variations result from the interactions between the biochemical development of the grape, the reactions involved in fermentation, the terroir. Many countries enact legal appellations intended to define styles and qualities of wine and these typically restrict the geographical origin and permitted varieties of grapes, as well as other aspects of wine production. There are also made from fermenting other fruits or cereals. Wines made from other than grapes include rice wine and various fruit wines such as those made from plums or cherries. Some well known examples are hard cider from apples, perry from pears, pomegranate wine, Wine has been produced for thousands of years. The earliest known traces of wine from Georgia in Eurasia where 8000-year-old wine jars were found and in Iran with 7, the earliest known winery is the 6, 100-year-old Areni-1 winery Armenia. Wine reached the Balkans by 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace, throughout history, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects, which are evident after the normal serving size of five ounces. Wine has long played an important role in religion, the earliest chemically attested grape wine was discovered at Hajji Firuz in the northwestern Zagros Mountains dating back to 5400 BC. The earliest evidence of a fermented drink was found in Georgia, where wine residue inside ceramic jars dates from 6000 BC. The earliest evidence of a production facility is the Areni-1 winery in Armenia and is at least 6100 years old, presumably. A2003 report by archaeologists indicates a possibility that grapes were mixed with rice to produce mixed fermented beverages in China in the years of the seventh millennium BC. Pottery jars from the Neolithic site of Jiahu, Henan, contained traces of tartaric acid, however, other fruits indigenous to the region, such as hawthorn, cannot be ruled out. The spread of wine culture westwards was most probably due to the Phoenicians who spread outward from a base of city-states along the Lebanese, Syrian, the wines of Byblos were exported to Egypt during the Old Kingdom and then throughout the Mediterranean. Evidence includes two Phoenician shipwrecks from 750 BC discovered by Robert Ballard, whose cargo of wine was still intact. As the first great traders in wine, the Phoenicians seem to have protected it from oxidation with a layer of oil, followed by a seal of pinewood and resin
8.
Delilah
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Delilah is a woman in the Book of Judges, where she is the woman in the valley of Sorek whom Samson loved, and who was his downfall. Judges 13–16 portrays Samson as a man who was given strength by God. Samson was born into an Israelite family, the son of Manoah, both were visited by the Angel of the Lord and told that their child would be a Nazirite from birth. Delilah was approached by the lords of the Philistines, to discover the secret of Samsons strength, three times she asked Samson for the secret of his strength, and all three times he gave her a false answer. The first time, he told her, If they bind me with seven green withes that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man. Then he told her, If they bind me fast with new ropes that never were occupied, then shall I be weak, the third time, he told her, If thou weavest the seven locks of my head with the web. The toponym Sorek or soreq is identified only in connection with the Samson story, in the fourth century AD, Jerome mentions a Capharsorec that was near Saraa. Modern Israel has a Soreq Valley and even a Sorek Vineyard producing Merlot, Soreq, however, is the grapevine itself in Genesis 49,11, Isaiah 5,2, and Jeremiah 2,21. Samson had been dedicated as a Nazirite, from the womb to the day of his death, petrarch instanced Samson and Delilah in his Trionfi, as a victim in his allegorical depiction of the Triumph of Love. In art the subject is one of the most commonly shown in the Power of Women topos, somewhat inappropriately it would seem to a modern eye, the theme was depicted on more than one fifteenth-century Tuscan painted marriage tray. S. Might be a scene of love, Madlyn Kahr has remarked. In Northern Europe the Delilah theme was prominent among painters like Lucas van Leiden and Maerten van Heemskerck. Tintoretto followed Titian in introducing a female accomplice of Delilahs, Rubens added further females, with a suggestion of a brothel, no major seventeenth-century artist approached the subject more often than Rembrandt. John Milton personified her as the misguided and foolish but sympathetic temptress, much like his view of Eve, by the time of Camille Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila Delilah had become the eponym of a Delilah, a treacherous and cunning femme fatale. Most movie and film versions of Delilah cater to Miltons more sympathetic view, in one, from 1984 based on a book by Erik Linklater, she ends up as the heroine and almost true protagonist. Delilah at DMOZ Hebrew concordance with Strongs Dictionary, soreq International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Sorek, Valley of, asserting connections with specific sites
9.
Samson
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Samson is sometimes considered to be an Israelite version of the popular Middle Eastern Heracles figure. However, if Samsons long hair was cut, he would lose his strength, in some Jewish traditions, Samson is believed to have been buried in Tel Tzora in Israel overlooking the Sorek valley. There reside two large gravestones of Samson and his father Manoah and it is located between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol. Samson is said to have lived during a time when the Hebrew Bible suggests God was disciplining the Israelites by giving them into the hand of the Philistines, Manoah was an Israelite from Zorah, from the family of the Danites, and his wife had been unable to conceive. The Angel of the Lord appeared to Manoahs wife and proclaimed that the couple would soon have a son, the Angel of the Lord stated that Manoahs wife was to abstain from all alcoholic beverages, and her promised child was not to shave or cut his hair. He was to be a Nazirite from birth, the wife believed the Angel of the Lord, her husband was not present, so he prayed and asked God to send the messenger once again to teach them how to raise the boy who was going to be born. After the Angel of the Lord returned, Manoah asked him his name, Manoah then prepared a sacrifice, but the Angel of the Lord would only allow it to be for God. He touched it with his staff, miraculously engulfing it in flames and this was such dramatic evidence of the nature of the Messenger that Manoah feared for his life, since it was said that no one could live after seeing God. However, his wife convinced him that, if God planned to slay them, in due time, their son Samson was born, and he was raised according to the provisions. When he was an adult, Samson left the hills of his people to see the cities of the Philistines. He fell in love with a Philistine woman from Timnah, whom he decided to marry, ignoring the objections of his parents, in the development of the narrative, the intended marriage was shown to be part of Gods plan to strike at the Philistines. According to the account, Samson was repeatedly seized by the Spirit of the Lord. The first instance of this is seen when Samson was on his way to ask for the Philistine womans hand in marriage and he simply grabbed it and ripped it apart, the spirit of God divinely empowering him. However, Samson kept it a secret, not even mentioning the miracle to his parents and he arrived at the Philistines house and became betrothed to her. He returned home, then back to Timnah some time later for the wedding. On his way, Samson saw that bees had nested in the carcass of the lion and he ate a handful of the honey and gave some to his parents. At the wedding feast, Samson told a riddle to his thirty groomsmen, if they could solve it, he would give them thirty pieces of fine linen and garments, but if they could not solve it, they would give him thirty pieces of fine linen and garments. The riddle was an account of two encounters with the lion, at which only he was present, The Philistines were infuriated by the riddle
10.
Artuf
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Artuf was a Palestinian village in the Jerusalem foothills depopulated in 1948. It was situated 21.5 kilometers west of Jerusalem on a plateau, surrounded by plains on the south, east. The village was on a road that linked it to the main road to Jerusalem. Under the Ottoman Empire, in 1596, Artuf was a village in a nahiya of Ramla, the villagers paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and fruit, as well as on goats, beehives and vineyards. It was also noted that it was half hour from Sara, the Palestine Exploration Funds Survey of Western Palestine in 1883 described Artuf as a small village built on a low hill, with an open valley to the west. There is a pool in the valley, whence the village obtains its water, olive trees occur round the place. In 1883, a group of English missionaries purchased land in Artuf to establish a colony, called Hartuv. When the settlers refused to convert, the project was abandoned and it was resettled in 1895, but destroyed in the 1929 riots. Most houses were built of stone and adobe, a few were built of stone, the villagers, who were all Muslims, worshipped in a mosque called the al-Umari Mosque, perhaps in reference to the second Muslim caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab. The tomb of a local Muslim sage named Shaykh ´Ali al-Ghimadi stood on the outskirts of the village, about half of the villagers worked in agriculture, while the rest worked in the nearby Bab al-Wad station, on the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway. The agricultural land extended west of the village, where fruit trees, in the 1922 census of Palestine Artuf had a population 181 Muslims, while nearby Hartuv had a population of 124 Jews, changing in the 1931 census to 253,252 Muslims and 1 Jew. In 1944/45, the village had a population of 350 Muslims, a total of 61 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards,279 dunams were for cereals, while 18 dunams were built-up land. Artuf, along with four villages, were overtaken by the Israeli Harel Brigade on 17–18 July 1948 in Operation Dani. The villages had been on the front line since April 1948, many of those who stayed fled when Israeli forces attacked and the few who remained at each village were expelled. After the establishment of the State of Israel, a transit camp was established on the site for Jewish immigrants. In 1950, Moshav Naham was built on Hartuvs land, in the middle of the Jewish settlement is a small stone house that is used as a warehouse, it stands by the site of the former mosque. On the western slopes of the site is a structure with no roof that was formerly used as a lime kiln. The village cemetery, to the west, has been levelled, part of the British police headquarters is still standing
11.
Jaffa
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Jaffa or Yafo, is the southern and oldest part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, an ancient port city in Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the stories of Jonah, Solomon and Saint Peter as well as the mythological story of Andromeda. The town was mentioned in Egyptian sources and the Amarna letters as Yapu, mythology says that it is named for Japheth, one of the sons of Noah, the one who built it after the Flood. The Hellenist tradition links the name to Iopeia, or Cassiopeia, an outcropping of rocks near the harbor is reputed to have been the place where Andromeda was rescued by Perseus. Pliny the Elder associated the name with Iopa, daughter of Aeolus, the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi referred to it as Yaffa. The tell of Jaffa rises to a height of 40 metres, with a view of the coastline. The accumulation of debris and landfill over the centuries made the even higher. Archaeological evidence shows that Jaffa was inhabited roughly 7500 BCE, the natural harbour of Jaffa has been in use since the Bronze Age. The city is mentioned in the Amarna letters under its Egyptian name Ya-Pho. The city was under Egyptian rule until around 800 BCE, Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the territorial border of the Tribe of Dan, hence the modern term Gush Dan for the center of the coastal plain. The tribe of Dan did not manage to dislocate the Philistines from Jaffa, in the Song of Deborah the prophetess asks, דן למה יגור אוניות, Why doth Dan dwell in ships. After Canaanite and Philistine dominion, King David and his son King Solomon conquered Jaffa, the city remained in Israelite hands even after the split of the united Kingdom of Israel. In 701 BCE, in the days of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, after a period of Babylonian occupation, under Persian rule, Jaffa was governed by Phoenicians from Tyre. Alexander the Greats troops were stationed in Jaffa and it later became a port of the Seleucid Empire until it was taken over by the Maccabees and ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty. During the First Jewish–Roman War, Jaffa was captured and burned by Cestius Gallus, the Roman Jewish historian Josephus writes that 8,400 inhabitants were massacred. Pirates operating from the rebuilt port incurred the wrath of Vespasian, the New Testament account of Saint Peter bringing back to life the widow Dorcas (recorded in Acts of the Apostles,9, 36–42, takes place in Jaffa, then called in Greek Ἰόππη. Peter retells the story of his vision in Acts 11, 4-17, in Midrash Tannaim in its chapter Deuteronomy 33,19, reference is made to Jose ben Halafta traveling through Jaffa. Jaffa seems to have attracted serious Jewish scholars in the 4th and 5th century, the Jerusalem Talmud in Moed Ketan references Rav Acha of Jaffa, and in Pesachim chapter 1 refers to Rav Phineas of Jaffa
12.
Jerusalem
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Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem
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