Holy City, Holy Frauds

The identification of all the sites in Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine now traditionally associated with the figure commonly known in English as Jesus Christ dates back to the latter half of the second decade of the 4th century CE.

In 326 CE, devout Christian Flavia Julia Helena, mother of Imperator Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, showed up in the province of Syria Palaestina looking for tourist traps at which to enhance her own holiness simply by osmosis.  Specifically, sites that were guaranteed one hundred percent absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt true places associated with first century Galilean prophet and convicted terrorist Isho Nasraya bar Maryam.

The capital of Syria Palaestina was a big city on the coast of the Mediterranean called Caesarea Maritima.  It had earlier been the capital of Judaea after Judaea became a Roman province.  Its bishop, the metropolitan of the province, was an ambitious cleric named Eusebius Pamphili who was now faced with quite a problem.  The entire city of Jerusalem had been utterly destroyed by the armies of Titus Flavius Vespasianus after its fall in 70 CE, so there was nothing left at all from that time. 

Eusebius, being a good Christian, however, was not one to let a little thing like factual truth get in the way, so he came up with substitutes, which he guaranteed were one hundred percent absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt true places associated with Iesus Christus, or as Greek-speakers called him, Iesous Christos. 

Greek-speakers originally called him Iesous Chrestos (instead of Iesous Christos), but that’s another story entirely.  The early Greek Christians also called him Iesous Nazaraois, a direct translation of his actual name, Isho Nasraya, which means ‘Jesus the Nazorean’ rather than ‘Jesus of Nazareth’.  Which makes sense given that the town of Nazareth did not exist in early first century CE Galilaea. 

But getting back on topic, Eusebius’ fraudulent fibs were hardly the first case of Good Christian Bitches using alternative facts to perpetrate what is too often euphemistically referred to as pious fraud, but it is one of the more enduring.

Great Jewish Revolt (66-73 CE)

The current favored name of this conflict is the First Jewish-Roman War, but since there were already numerous prior uprisings of Jews and Galileans against Rome since 63 BCE, it’s not really accurate.

The roots of the conflict lay in anti-taxation protests by the Jews (strictly, residents of Judaea) in general and attacks on Roman citizens by the Zealots (1st century Taliban) and the Sicarii (1st century Al Qaida).  Gessius Florus, procurator of Iudaea, responded by sacking the Temple treasury and taking 19 talents, then raiding the city of Jerusalem and arresting many of the Jewish leaders in the city.

The response was a massive popular uprising supported by the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, the Zealots, and the Sicarii that swept Roman forces from the bulk of Judaea.

The provisional government established when Florus’ forces were gone was dominated by the Sadducees and the Pharisees, but it only lasted until 68 CE, when the Galilean Zealots arrived to assist the Judaean Zealots in taking control.  After that, the city became divided amongst several factions, which greatly aided the Romans in crushing the revolt.

Joseph ben Mattathias, later Titus Flavius Josephus, had been captured in Galilee in 67 CE and held prisoner until 68 CE.   He served as an interpreter between the besieging Romans and the besieged Jews, Idumeans, and Galileans during the six-month siege of Jerusalem.  During the capture of the city, the Temple burned.  The last part of the city to fall was the Upper City on Mount Zion, which ended in a conflagration that destroyed the whole section including the Praetorium and Herod’s Palace.

After the final end of the fighting, Titus forced the prisoners to dismantle their city, leaving only the city’s western wall and the three surviving towers of Herod’s palace.  Special attention was paid to dismantling the entire temple compound because when the temple burned much of the gold in its treasury melted and fell through crack in the stonework.  Even the walls surrounding Mount Moriah were torn down.

From then until 122 CE, the only occupants of the former city were those of the cohort of Legio X Fretensis at the camp on Mount Zion, where the Upper City used to be, and Gareb Hill to its west, where the praetorium and Herod’s palace formerly stood.

Colonia Aelia Capitolina (122-135)

In 122, Imperator Caesar Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus established a colonia for retired Roman soldiers north of the garrison encampment of the cohort of Legio X Fretensis at the site of the former city.  The camp lay on Mount Zion, host of the former Upper City, and Gareb Hill, former host of Herod the Great’s palace that became the praetorium.  The colonia lay to the immediate north, and east of that to take in the area north of the Mount Moriah.

In this new city, named for his family, there were several temples, shrines, and sacred pools for its pagan residents.  Most prominently, there was a Temple of Jupiter Capitolanus on Mount Moriah, probably oriented north-south rather than east-west and including the sites and possibly actual structures of the later Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque.  Since in this form Jupiter was a member of the Capitoline Triad, the temple or temple complex would have also included shrines to both Juno Capitolana and Minerva Capitolana.

In addition to the temple/temple complex on Mount Moriah, two statues stood at its western edge, one undoubtedly representing Hadrian and the other either of his male lover Antinous or of his adopted son and successor Antoninous Pius.  The whole complex was enclosed with a wall reconstructed according to Roman specifications and engineering practice.

North of the northeast corner of the Mount Moriah complex, Hadrian built a temple of the syncretistic god Serapis in the shadow of Fortress Antonia.  This replaced the shrine of Asclepius at the site built by Herod Agrippa I, King of the Jews 41-44 CE.  The Asclepius shrine had stood adjacent to the Asclepion, or healing pool of Asclepius, built around 20 CE.  The Serapaeum almost certainly included shrines to Asclepius and Hygieia, and its complex included the Asclepion plus a pool of Serapis and one of the goddess Fortuna, whom the Greeks called Tyche.

To the west of Fortress Antonia Hadrian built a temple to Venus Heliopolitana atop a hill of flaky rock next to a quarry.  From the temple, an underground tunnel led to a grotto where the goddess was also worshipped, one shared with the god Asclepius.  Outside the lower entrance to the grotto at its west lay a courtyard and garden guarded by a statue of Jupiter Heliopolitanus.

West and south of there on Gareb Hill, to the west and north of Mount Zion, stood a Temple of Saturn Africanus, tutelary god of Africa known to its Punic inhabitants as Baal Hammon then popular among soldiers of the Imperium Romanum.  Elsewhere in the legionary encampment and the colonia were shrines or temples of Mercury, Mars, Neptune, the Dioscuri (Castor & Pollux), and Bacchus.  At the Pool of Siloam, formerly attached to the Jewish temple complex and playing a huge part in rites at Sukkot, now stood the Shrine of the Four Nymphs.

A cave in the western foot of the Mount of Olives may have served as a Mithraeum.  A cave in nearby Bethlehem certainly was, as well as being considered the birthplace of Mithras, a function is had earlier served for the cult of Adonis and before that for the cult of Tammuz.

Paganism elsewhere in Palestina

After the Bar Kokhba War, Hadrian consolidated Iudaea (including Idumaea) with Samaraea, Galilaea, Peraea, and Paralia (Philistia) as Syria Palestina.  As a designation for the southern Levant, the name Palestina went back to the fifth century BCE, originating with Jews of the Diaspora and attested to by the Greek historian Heroditus.

Before the war, Hadrian had renamed the capital of Galilaea from Autocratoris (built on the ruins of Sepphoris) to Diocaesarea and rebuilt its temple into one honoring both Jupiter and himself along with Fortuna.  He also refurbished the Temple of Zeus in Tiberias and built another to himself there.  In Scythopolis, leading city of the Decapolis, stood temples to Zeus Akraios and Dionysos since at least the early 1st century CE.

In the capital of Caesarea Martima (at which the Colonia Prima Flavia Augusta Caesariensis had been established by Vespasian), Hadrian built a Temple of Mithras (Mithraeum) and another that was dedicated to himself as divine emperor.  These were in addition to the ones that built by Herod I to Augustus and to Roma, the tutelary goddess of the city of Rome, something the king of the Jews also did in the city of Sebaste (formerly Samaria).

In Samaraea, Hadrian refurbished the Temple of Augustus in Sebaste, built a Temple of Kore, and converted the Temple of Serapis and Isis into a Temple of Demeter and Persephone. 

Replacing the village of Mabartha near the former Shechem (about 2 km distant), the earlier emperor Vespasian had established Flavia Neapolis Samareias, which hosted temples to Zeus Olympios, Artemis, Serapis, and Asclepius.  Hadrian built a Temple of Zeus Hypsistos on top of Mt. Gezirim, which the Samaritans fully accepted as representing their own god. 

Hypsistos in Greek means ‘Most High’ (like Elyon in Hebrew), and the epithet was then being used by several local Gentile cults worshipping a single monotheistic (or at least monolatrous) deity, most commonly as Zeus Hypsistos, Theos Hypsistos (equated with the former), Theos Hypsistos Pantokrator, or sometimes just Hypsistos or even jsut Pantokrator.  In fact, many of these Gentiles explicitly equated their deity with that of the Jews and Samaritans.

These examples of pagan prayer and praise in Palestine were hardly the only examples, just the most prominent.

Enter Saint Helena

Mount Zion and Gareb Hill remained an encampment for the cohort of Legio X Fretensis until the latter was transferred out of the province and the city opened for unrestricted settlement in 289, which is the same year Jews were finally allowed to return.

The year after the inaugural Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325, accompanied by massive riots and street brawls between the Athanasians and the Arians, Helena mother of Constantine the Great and devout convert to Christianity visited Jerusalem and Palestine primarily to located the places especially associated with Iesus Christus, as she probably knew him. 

Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea and therefore Metropolitan of Palestine, was more than happy to help.  Accordingly, the hill upon which the Temple of Venus Heliopolitana sat became the hill of Golgotha.  The grotto below it, where both Venus and Asclepius were worshipped, became the Holy Sepulchre.  The shrine of Mercury became the Cenaculum or Upper Room.  The birth cave of Mithras in Bethlehem became the manager of the Nativity of Christ.

Meanwhile, the Asclepion east of Fortress Antonia became the Pool of Bethesda.  Like the site so named in the Gospel of St. John, the pool of the Asclepion, or at least its surrounding portico, does have five sides.  These five sides represent the daughters of Asclepius:  Panacea, Hygieia, Iaso, Aceso, and Aglaea.

That really is how all the sites now identified with Isho Nasraya bar Maryam, aka Iesous Chrestos or Jesus Christ, came so to be.

A Muslim interlude

Despite the Churchification of the city and the province in which it lay, the former remained officially Aelia for the remainder of its time in the Imperium Romanum/Basilea Rhomain, just as the former Iudaea-Idumaea-Samaraea-Peraea-Galilaea-Paralaea remained Syria Palestina.  Even following its capture by invading Muslim forces in 638, it remained Aelia as Iliya for another two centuries.  In the 9th century the new name Al Quds began appearing.

About ten years after the Ecumenical Council of First Nicaea, Constantine dedicated a basilica called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which took in both the grotto and the alleged hill of Golgotha.  Upon learning that the Easter Vigil rites of Christians included the mixture of two liquids whose combination produced fire and was fraudulently touted as a miracle by the church’s clergy, an enraged Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the basilica then extended his wrath to a number of other Christian sites in Palestine and Egypt.

The Christians of the West, who still considered themselves Romans, responded rather bizarrely to the destruction with mass expulsions of the Jews in their lands.

Enter the Ari

Despite being one of the most brilliant Kabbalists to ever live, Isaac Luria was not nearly as accurate when it came to history, or more specifically archaeology.  For it was from him that the notion arose that the western wall of the former Roman temple compound was the western wall of the compound of Herod’s Temple.  He cleary had either badly misread the historical writings of Josephus or not read them at all, or he considered a little bit of pious fraud harmless.  That is why for centuries generation after generation of Jews have bowed and prayed at a wall dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus.

Foundation Stone

Also known as the Pierced Stone, this is the Rock under the Dome on Mount Moriah (Har ha-Bayith to Jews and Haram esh-Sharif to Muslims).

The anonymous Bordeaux Pilgrim who visited Aelia in 334 CE reported that Jews visiting the city mourned at the Pierced Stone near two equestrian statues, which at the time was believed to mark the former site of the Holy of Holies in Herod’s temple.

The Rock has several mythical meanings for Jews and Muslims alike, the one which the two groups share being that of the Rock being the stone where Abraham nearly murdered his own son Isaac to please a bloodthirsty version of Yahuweh/Adonai/Allah.

According to the Jewish Talmud, the Rock is also the site where God formed Adam and where Adam, Cain and Abel, Noah, and David offered sacrifices.  According to the Muslim Hadith, the Rock is also the spot from which the prophet Muhammad began his Night Journey.

ADDENDUM: Temple Mount?  Or Fortress Antonia?

There is a growing and very credible body of historical opinion that the massive stone enclosure atop Mount Moriah was not the base of Herod’s temple compound but the base of the Fortress Antonia built by Herod the Great.  They cite Byzantine (a 16th century neologism; they called themselves Romans) pilgrims referring to the structure as the Praetorium and point out the dearth of material from Mount Zion, former home of the Upper City and traditional location of the encampment for the cohort garrison of Legio X Fretensis.

Many of these sources also cite contemporary reports of the Church of Hagia Sophia (literally, Holy Wisdom) at what was believed to be Gabbatha, where Isho Nasraya was sentenced to death by praefectus Pontius Pilatus.  That Gabbatha is the same now held by Muslims to be the Rock under the Dome.  This church was said to be octagonal, which lends credence to the idea that it was the foundation of the current Dome of the Rock.

According to these same pilgrims, there was another church on top of the Praetorium, the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, which may or may not have been the basis for Al Aqsa Mosque.

In this scenario, Herod’s temple, and that of the Capitoline Triad which came after, stood on the height known as Ophel, or the City of David.  On that same hill, archaeologists have uncovered (and now opened to the public) a Canaanite fortress dated to 1800 BCE, when Urusalim was at its height.