Jerusalem:One City,Three Faiths

Rating:
Summary: One city, many religions
Review: Well, there are three contenders for whose city it is! Just ask Karen Armstrong. Should it be awarded to the evil Christians, who killed the Pagans and went back on the noble idea of refusing to consider mere terrain sacred? Obviously not. How about to the Pagans? No, of course not. They don't count at all, even though I must admit that Armstrong does refer to them a few times. How about to the Jews? No, these folks are just interlopers who had to invent arbitrary myths to pretend that they cared at all about the place, much less had a right to be there. The winners are ... (envelope please!) ... the Muslims! The Muslim Arabs had no need to invent any myths to "fuel their struggle" because Jerusalem was theirs like a spouse. I wonder if Karen will award Paris to the Germans next.

I was hoping to see a more sympathetic treatment of Aelia Capitolina. Still, I wasn't shocked by Armstrong's lack of concern for the polytheists: she seemed to discuss them only to complain about the Christians. But I was surprised to see Armstrong trying to mislead her readers into thinking that Jerusalem is Arab by right and is in the process of being wickedly Judaized. After all, as even Karen states, Jerusalem was over 60% Jewish by 1900. And, in fact, the Jewish percentage of the city hasn't changed much since then, even though the surrounding area has become far more Jewish. This sort of blatant bias made Armstrong look more like a Hamas gun moll than a serious scholar.

There are plenty of facts in this book, but Armstrong's tendency to invert truth makes it appear that she wrote the book just to attack the human rights of a few non-Muslims. Avoid this paean to hatred, racism and intolerance.

Rating:
Summary: A history and a meditation
Review: While this is a superb, fair-minded and empathetic history of the city which will be enlightening to all except very knowledgeable specialists, it is at the same time Karen Armstrong's meditation on the "sacred geography" conceived by the three faiths in its spiritual and its material form. She is very sympathetic to and receptive of the spiritual ideals of all three faiths, and is dismayed by how so often they have all been debased by bitter rivalries (between as well as within religions), by demands for exclusivity and domination, as well as by the "idolatry to see a shrine or a city as the ultimate goal of religion". This is something the wisest theologians - few, alas, in number - have taught. At the same time, however, a material shrine is one expression of one's spiritual identity, so that the perceived threat or the destruction of a shrine - let alone expulsions and exile - are experienced as violations of one's spiritual identity. She shows that the potency of religious symbolism is such that even secular nationalism (to which she perhaps does not pay quite enough attention) has recourse to it. She shows how the best periods in the history of the city have been those few when the rulers of one faith or ethnicity have respected the faith, ethnicity and buildings of another. She is not optimistic that such wisdom is available in Jerusalem in the near future.