The city of JerusalemConder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
History
The city of Jerusalem
Conder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
Jerusalem -- Antiquities; Jerusalem -- History
ruling races, and because to Jew, Christian, and Moslem alike there has
always been a Holy City here which they coveted, and for which they
shed their blood.
Some few of the principal sites have remained always the same; others
have been often shifted; and the number of sites has been increased
continually from century to century. Most of the pilgrims, whether
Christian or Moslem, were illiterate; and those who were better
educated, and whose accounts were copied and re-copied more or less
accurately, were often strangely ignorant of the Bible and of the
history of Palestine. To the ordinary pilgrim the relics and the
pictures were “books of the ignorant,” and strange superstitions--such
as that of the crypt where “Solomon tortured demons”[3]--are mingled
with the statements of the Gospels. The first record of a pilgrim visit
is that of a traveller from Bordeaux in 333 A. D. He makes the curious
mistakes of supposing the Transfiguration to have occurred on Olivet
and David’s victory over Goliath near Jezreel. St. Silvia of Aquitaine,
half a century later, accepts as genuine the forged correspondence
between Christ and King Abgarus; and after the fifth century the
legends of the Apocryphal Gospels--especially those concerning the
Virgin Mary--form the foundation of traditional topography in many
cases. In the Middle Ages the pilgrims are also influenced by the
comments on the Gospels of Tertullian, Origen, and other Christian
fathers, though the works of those fathers who wrote before 325 A. D.
show no acquaintance with any Jerusalem sites. For these reasons it
is evident that the traditions must be received with caution; and,
as the pilgrim texts are only valuable in showing contemporary facts
and beliefs, their accounts may be here summed up as far as regards
traditional sites.
[Sidenote: THE TRADITIONS]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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