This chapter examines the development of health services in late Ottoman Palestine. Through the eyes of a French physician living in Jerusalem in the first years of the twentieth century, it surveys the city’s medical institutions and personnel as a prelude to developments in the decades to come. It focuses on Jerusalem, which Western and missionary competition made into the city with the highest bed capacities in the empire, and on late Ottoman and regional developments, which set the stage for the medical profession’s development. Western encroachment, Zionist immigration and funding, late-Ottoman administrative reform, and local Palestinian initiative created an institutional and social setting that transformed Palestine’s medical landscape.

This chapter concentrates on the spatial presence of Palestinian doctors – the communities they served and those they did not. Villages rarely had medical facilities or doctors, and peasants had to travel to the town or city for medical services and would otherwise rely on traditional practitioners. Towns usually had missionary medical facilities, a small community of doctors (some of whom were native to the town), and one or two government medical facilities – a District Health Office, a government clinic, or a small hospital. Palestine’s large cities – Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa – were characterized by a relatively large professional community, substantial Jewish presence, strong missionary presence that provided both educational and medical services, and a strong presence of the Mandate administration. The chapter places doctors on Palestine’s map and examines how medical services transformed urban relationships, as well as those between the city, the town, and the countryside.

Augustine’s picture of the Christian life as a voyage to the heavenly homeland is central to his thought and preaching, especially prominent in his sermons on the Psalms. For Augustine, peregrinatio is a defining image for the earthly life as such as well as of the process by which the Christian believer seeks to travel home on the path made by Christ. Augustine’s vivid imagery for this spiritual journey traverses a varied landscape, which this essay traces through a range of his sermons. Augustine’s Christology is particularly powerful in these images, for it is Christ who makes a way across the sea and over land to the homeland. Yet to be able to take this path, the believer must also be taught and inspired by the Holy Spirit to desire this homeland. Augustine’s exhortations to cultivate desire and longing are thus also dominant features of his sermons on this theme.

Over the time of his ministry, Augustine came more strongly to see that only in heaven will we find the fullness of peace. This chapter reviews Augustine’s preaching on heaven and its peace first in its ecclesial and liturgical settings. It then takes into consideration objections faced by his people to Christian faith in the resurrection of the dead. Then it reviews the face-to-face vision of God and the communal dimensions of the heavenly Jerusalem where angels and saints experience peace together. The chapter focuses on Augustine’s preaching on the words “amen” and “alleluia” that express our whole activity in heaven’s peace.

The chapter traces Dayan’s military career progression during Israel’s War of Independence, which prepared him for future senior command and leadership positions. It highlights his experiences in battles over Degania and his command of the Commando 89th Battalion, including leading the battalion in the conquest of Lod, and finally his command over the Jerusalem front. In Jerusalem, Dayan became involved in peace negotiations with Jordanian Jerusalem front commander Abdullah al-Tal and later with Jordan’s king, showcasing his diplomatic skills. Dayan acknowledged being blessed with the very best teacher – David Ben-Gurion himself. Ben-Gurion was hugely impressed by Dayan’s political and diplomatic finesse, forging even closer relations with him. However, Dayan’s success also made him a target of criticism and jealousy among former Palmach commanders, making him several enemies.

Is the biblical story about Israel’s “United Monarchy” history, fiction, or somewhere in between? This chapter reviews the scholarly discourse about the texts and introduces critical Bible study. Since the inception of critical scholarship, Bible scholars have noted that the narrative contains tensions and even contradictions that demonstrate the impossibility of accepting the details of the biblical narrative as an accurate reporting of events. Nevertheless, researchers long distinguished between the core narrative arc of the Saul and David stories, which was relatively consistent between the sources, and the many contradictions, alternative details, and smaller points, which were understood as attempts at polemic and apologetics, pushing one agenda or another, or simply rhetorical flourish. This meant that while many of the details in these accounts cannot be taken at face value as historical, the same critical reading of the text led biblical scholars to believe – until recently – in the historicity of the bigger picture. The reasons why this consensus has changed are primarily due to broader, “archaeological” considerations that are discussed in Chapter 3.

“The Book of Isaiah and the Neo-Babylonian Period” by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer investigates the “black hole” in the book that is the Babylonian Exile from three perspectives. First, it analyzes how the Book of Isaiah conceptualizes Babylon. It demonstrates how the Isaianic authors sought to underscore Babylon’s weakness and transitory existence, and aimed to assert that its demise was the result of Yhwh’s supremacy over Babylon’s own deities. Second, it challenges the dating of those texts in Isaiah that are traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian period. References to Babylonian customs and religious traditions, polemic against Babylon, and support of Cyrus should not be used without reflection as dating criteria. Third, it argues that the material in Isa 40–55, traditionally assumed to have been written in Babylon because of its familiarity with Babylonian matters, rather reflects the kind of general knowledge that the people living in the shadow of the Neo-Babylonian Empire would be expected to have.

Chapter 6 returns to William Thackeray’s Mediterranean travel writing to show how his humor fails to challenge the dominant heritage discourse in Jerusalem. Although Thackeray derides other Mediterranean sites for inauthenticity, he cannot profane Jerusalem, which means he cannot return it to human (and imperial) use, either by word play or physical contact. Anthony Trollope takes up this problem in his novel The Bertrams, in which he reconceives some places, like Alexandria, for modern use. These sites are wiped of their significance to British heritage discourse as ancient lands and rendered available for modernization. Jerusalem, though, proves too sacred, and thus too integral to British cultural heritage, to be colonized in the same way. Some holy sites thus endure as historical relics while others are rewritten as a “middle” East.

By the late fifth century, Armenian writers had developed a local historiography including the idea of righteous kingship linked to and assisted by the new institution of the Christian episcopacy.This essay considers the Letter of Macarius and the royal establishment of Christianity from the perspective of several early Armenian historians.

From the perspective of Constantinople, Jerusalem was part of the Byzantine periphery. Even so, its Chalcedonian Orthodox liturgy influenced Constantinople because Jerusalem was the setting of biblical events. In Jerusalem, liturgy was intrinsically connected to movement in processions and holy places, creating a distinctive Eucharistic liturgy, local calendar, and particular lectionary. After the Christological controversies and the Arab conquest, this liturgy proved a unifying factor, grounding the identity of Jerusalem’s Church. Nevertheless, Jerusalem’s liturgy eventually underwent a process of “Byzantinization,” abandoning local practices and adopting Constantinople’s liturgy. Ironically, however, this only occurred once Jerusalem was beyond the borders of the Byzantine Empire. Despite the absence of imperial policy to propagate the Byzantine Rite abroad, the reconquest of Antioch facilitated liturgical Byzantinization by disseminating liturgical manuscripts from Constantinople to Antioch and then Jerusalem. The liturgical rites these books contained were, however, received and adopted in Jerusalem only gradually. Thus, the destruction of holy sites after the Arab conquest only explains the historical circumstances in which liturgical Byzantinization occurred. Fundamentally, liturgical Byzantinization occurred because local Greek, Georgian, Syrian, and Arab scribes working near Jerusalem and faithful to Constantinople selected which liturgical texts were recopied and preserved, and which were abandoned. Throughout this process, these scribes acted as guardians of the liturgical tradition of Jerusalem, and increasingly peripheral in the eyes of Byzantium.

Chapter 6 relates how David establishes his position as Saul’s successor and has considerable achievements as king, acquiring a capital, planning a temple, and receiving God’s promise of a dynasty to succeed him.

Sæwulf is known only from his fascinating autobiographical account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land around the year 1100 at the time of the First Crusade, which can be compared with such works as Adomnán’s book on the Holy Places and Hugeburc’s account of Willibald’s journey to the Holy Land, both excerpted in Volume One. The excerpt here recounts a storm and Sæwulf’s visit to Bethlehem.

Adomnán had come from Ireland to settle on Iona off the west coast of Scotland where he was abbot for many years. He wrote a biography of St. Columba, and the work excerpted here, namely a book about the Holy Places in and around Jerusalem, for which his source was the account given to him by Arculf who visited him on Iona. Bede wrote a version of this work, and a short passage is included here for the purpose of comparison.

Egeria, a late fourth century Christian pilgrim to Jerusalem, describes a dramatic ritual on the morning of Good Friday. This text is remarkable on several counts: it is written by a female, it has an early date (soon after Constantine’s initiatives in establishing Christian pilgrimage) and it provides a wonderfully detailed description of the areas visited in Jerusalem during Holy Week. She and the other pilgrims venerate the wood of the cross, the inscription over Jesus’s head, the horn used to anoint the kings of Israel, and the ring of Solomon. Throughout her account, Egeria stresses the importance of pilgrims being assured of the truth of their faith by encountering physical landscapes and tangible objects. Theatrical studies in dramaturgy and stagecraft affirm the role which props play in helping actors activate memory and achieve a rich performance. This chapter examines the network of symbols in these artifacts using ritual studies, theatre analysis and space and place theory, demonstrating how these objects were used as props in a complex ritual drama, which offered material, sensory and embodied experiences for religious pilgrims.

Macedonian conqueror, in both Jewish and Christian sources, was a composite and of complicated design. It was constantly created and recreated, using varied techniques and inspirations, which resulted in a number of disparate, fragmentary projections. The dominant features of these projections were selected according to the immediate need and agenda of the text in which the figure of Alexander appeared. There is a certain continuity between the development of Alexander stories and legends in the Jewish milieu and those of the Greek and Roman pagan traditions, but there are significant innovations as well. As for the Christian authors, as much as they were familiar with Classical writings on Alexander, they would also exploit the Jewish corpus of Alexander legends, some of which have no direct parallel in Greco-Roman pagan writings.

The commentary on 2 Samuel 5:4–24:25/1 Kings 2:11 focuses on the reign of King David ben Jesse over Israel, including his choice of Jerusalem as his capital; the eternal Davidic covenant; his affair with Bath Sheba; and the revolt of his son Abshalom.