Page 8 - Holyland Magazine - 2010 Edition
P. 8
FROMZION’S
HEIGHTS Sacred traditions from the
Old Testament and the
New, each marked by its
own memorable site, come
together on Mount Zion in
Jerusalem.
A complicated mixture of architectural styles, Throughout the first millennium BCE, south of the city walls built by Suleiman
mirroring the complicated history of the Room biblical sources like Isaiah 8:18 and Joel the Magnificent in the early 16th century.
of the Last Supper, become the backdrop for 3:17 identified Mount Zion on what we
moving spiritual experiences that make the now call the Temple Mount, or Mount Mt. Zion is the traditional burial place of
visit here a highlight. Photos: Itamar Grinberg Moriah. But the name Zion eventually King David. How can this be, visitors often
“migrated” from place to place – from what ask, when Scripture says that he was buried
It’s rather surprising, but the word we now call the City of David (the site of in the city of David (1 Kings 2:10),
the original “fortress of Zion” of 2 Sam. identified over a century ago by
Zion, one of the earliest names for 5:7); to what historians call the “western archaeologists as a spot down the mountain
Jerusalem (2 Sam. 5:7), comes from a hill,” the site of today’s Jewish Quarter near the Kidron Valley?
Hebrew word for desert – not because before finally coming to rest on the hill
Jerusalem itself is a desert area, but because That is one of Jerusalem’s many
it sits right on the edge of one. On a clear unanswerable riddles. The exact location
day, a number of vantage points on Mt. of the tomb was lost in Jerusalem’s turbulent
Zion and elsewhere in the capital afford past. For a time, around the turn of the
a magnificent view of the Judean 20th century, it was believed that the royal
wilderness, the Dead Sea, the Mountains tomb had been discovered in excavations
of Moab and beyond. in the City of David. Peter seemed to be
standing quite close to it during his discourse
in the room of the Last Supper, in which
8 “Walk about Zion, go around her, consider well her ramparts…” (Ps. 48:12)
