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"SPLENDID . . . Eminently sane and patient . . . Essential reading for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike." --The Washington Post Venerated for millennia by three faiths, torn by irreconcilable conflict, conquered, rebuilt, and mourned for again and again, Jerusalem is a sacred city whose very sacredness has engendered terrible tragedy. In this fascinating volume, Karen Armstrong, author of the highly praised A History of God, traces the history of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all laid claim to Jerusalem as their holy place, and how three radically different concepts of holiness have shaped and scarred the city for thousands of years. Armstrong unfolds a complex story of spiritual upheaval and political transformation--from King David's capital to an administrative outpost of the Roman Empire, from the cosmopolitan city sanctified by Christ to the spiritual center conquered and glorified by Muslims, from the gleaming prize of European Crusaders to the bullet-ridden symbol of the present-day Arab-Israeli conflict. Written with grace and clarity, the product of years of meticulous research, Jerusalem combines the pageant of history with the profundity of searching spiritual analysis. Like Karen Armstrong's A History of God, Jerusalem is a book for the ages. "THE BEST SERIOUS, ACCESSIBLE HISTORY OF THE MOST SPIRITUALLY IMPORTANT CITY IN THE WORLD." --The Baltimore Sun "A WORK OF IMPRESSIVE SWEEP AND GRANDEUR." --Los Angeles Times Book Review… (more)
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My overly simplistic view of history is that it's
It's interesting to me how all three religions have turned away from the founding compassionate tenets of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity and are bent on the others' destruction. I now have a better understanding of the issues (and the history), and also a better understanding of why finding peace in the Middle East is so fraught with peril.
The book of Revelation, about Jerusalem: “The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed.” Is this a prophetic inevitability, or is there hope for peace? I’m one of the many with a placard hanging on my wall, requesting that we pray for the peace of Jerusalem. I read Armstrong’s book as research for my own book about Revelation, because Jerusalem, both the Old and the New, is the focal point of John’s Apocalypse.
Karen’s topic is extremely important for today’s world of religious unease, and it’s an absolutely fascinating topic. Unfortunately, I found the writing to be a bit more dry than usual for Armstrong. I think the book could have been condensed to about 2/3rd its size. But by the time you finish—if you’re able—you’ll have a better grasp of the bitterness and misunderstanding, and why all three religions claim Jerusalem as their own.
This long prologue is necessary because I have tried, and failed, to apply this principle to Armstrong's very detailed but wildly biased book about the history of Jerusalem. Her context is very clear: she wants to oppose the silliness of late 20th century Islamophobia and militant Zionism, as well as the 'conservative' (though they're not very into conserving things) appropriation of religion. In order to do this, she writes as if the great prophets (Jesus, Mohammed) and religious thinkers (early Rabbis) were more or less interested *only* in 'social justice,' and that their thought then got perverted by a bunch of, well, conservatives. Sadly none of that is true, and her repeated claims to the contrary make this book almost unreadable and often highly misleading: for instance, she concludes that "the Muslims got their city back because the Crusaders became trapped in a dream of hatred and intolerance." Actually, the 'Muslims' got 'their' city back because 'the Crusaders' split up into a bunch of squabbling little princedoms, and eventually their on and off treaties with a wide variety of Islamic neighbors (intolerance?) were a bad defense. Far from hatred and intolerance being 'the crusaders'' downfall, it was tolerance and friendliness. But that doesn't make for quite the same story.
The focus on 'social justice' also sits very uncomfortably with the general impression that if everyone was only mystical about their religious experience like the sufis, everything would be fine. It's only when you try to go out into the world and do something on the basis of your convictions that the problems start. How to reconcile that with the presumably activist principles of religious social justice is very unclear.
Also, the first few chapters are far, far, far, far too long and I can only assume just as misleading as the middle chapters.
This is a shame, because the idea for the book is a good one, and if you can filter out the nonsense, it's not particularly biased in any one direction. The bits on sacred place are nice, though obviously contribute, too, to much silliness (e.g., if only we all got back to worshiping places, religion would stop being the source of division... erm, no).