The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

The Romans, who had defeated Antiochus III. at Magnesia in 190 B. C., forbade Antiochus IV. to make war on their protégé Ptolemy VII. in Egypt. Whether in wrath and disappointment he revenged himself on his Jewish subjects, or whether he regarded the consolidation of power as best effected by Hellenising them—as Russian Tsars have regarded the Russianising of Germans, Finns, and Jews in our own times—may be doubtful. But whatever the object with which Antiochus IV. deserted the tolerant policy of his predecessors, it is recorded that, on his return from Egypt in 170 B. C., he entered Jerusalem and plundered the city[183]; and two years later, on Cisleu 25, 168 B. C., he placed a Greek altar on that of Jehovah, and offered swine upon it, as also on other altars in every city and village of the country. Swine were offered to Aphrodite among Greeks in connection with the legend of Adonis, and to Osiris in Egypt.[184] Their bones have been found—as sacrifices to Demeter—in the ruins of the temple at Cnidus; but the pig was an unclean animal to Semitic peoples, and we can hardly doubt that the desecration was wilful, especially as the Semitic custom of circumcision was then also forbidden.

THE AKRA

At the same time Antiochus IV., having—according to Josephus—burned the principal buildings and thrown down the city walls, “built a citadel in the lower part of the city; for the place was high and overlooked the Temple, on which account he fortified it with high walls and towers, and put into it a garrison of Macedonians.” This was the famous Akra (or “citadel”) which played so important a part in the history of the struggle between Judas Maccabæus and his brothers on the one part, and the Greek kings of Syria on the other, and concerning which so many mistaken views survive from pre-scientific days.[185] The statements in the First Book of Maccabees are not very definite, though it is clear that this Akra was in the city of David, and that it was “alongside” the “hill of the Temple.” The Greek translators of the Old Testament, as already noticed, identified this Akra with the Millo of Solomon’s time. Josephus is more definite, and his evidence should not be lightly set aside because it contradicts the theories of modern literary critics, who have no hesitation in saying that the Jewish historian is wrong when his words cannot be reconciled with their understanding of the topography. Some writers[186] have placed the Akra south of the Temple, supposing the existence of an intervening valley (which, it may be said with certainty, never existed, since the levels of the rock forbid the supposition) and the existence of a summit on Ophel which was afterwards cleared away, and which would have had to be 150 feet high. They crowd all the nomenclature—city of David, Zion, Akra, Millo, Ophel, lower city, and the m’ṣudah or “hill-top”—into the narrow area of 15 acres (including also the supposed valley), leaving the city generally without any names for its quarters; and they reject the measurements and statements of the Bible and Josephus, except when these are misunderstood as confirming an unpractical theory. Others, on the contrary, would have us believe that the Akra destroyed by Simon the Hasmonæan was the same as the citadel Baris, which he or one of his family built soon after. They have been misled by Whiston’s translation “adjoined the Temple,” where the Greek really reads “lay over against the Temple.” If the Akra was levelled that it might not overlook the Holy House, it could not afterwards have been that rock which defended the Temple in later times, and which still rises with a high scarp above the inner courts. Both views are impracticable, and American scholars[187] seem always to have understood the topography better than some scholars in England, perhaps because they are not unconsciously influenced by the desire to save the traditional site of Calvary, which was the original cause of these attempts to twist the literary evidence from its natural explanation. The first school are involved in the dilemma that the city of David was first lower than the Temple, then—about 800 years later—was higher, and then lower again; while the supposed peak, 150 feet high, is geologically a very improbable feature, and the supposed valley never existed. The second school would make the Hasmonæans first cut down a hill as being a danger to the Temple, and then—later—build on the same hill a fortress overlooking and defending the Temple. Disregarding these dilemmas, we may inquire into the actual statements of ancient writers concerning the position of the Akra or “citadel,” though these have again and again been explained, without any answer having been given to the argument by those who are otherwise convinced.

THE AKRA

The word akra is Greek, and means “a citadel.” Josephus never applies the term to the fortress north of the Temple, which he calls the phrourion. In the First Book of Maccabees we read that the Greeks “built up the city of David with a great and strong wall and mighty towers, and it became a citadel (akra) for them.”[188] In another passage[189] we learn that this “city of David” was Jerusalem; and again[190] that this citadel was “in Jerusalem.” Jonathan, the brother of Judas Maccabæus, “piled up a great mound between the Akra and the city, to separate it from the city”[191]; and, as already noted, the “hill of the temple” lay “alongside the Akra,” which was finally taken by Simon, the elder brother of Judas.[192] The statements of Josephus are very clear on this subject. He says that this citadel was in the “lower part of the city,”[193] yet was “high and overlooked the Temple.” It moreover “lay over against the Temple,” and commanded the approach to it. Jonathan, he says, “built another wall to exclude the market from the Akra,” and this wall was “in the midst of the city.”[194] Simon took the “Akra of Jerusalem” and destroyed it, and the Jews then “levelled the mountain, and in that work spent both day and night without intermission, which cost them three whole years before it was removed, and brought quite to a level with the plain of the rest of the city. After which the Temple was the highest of all the buildings, now that the Akra, as well as the mountain on which it stood, was demolished.” Again he says that Simon “demolished the Akra,” and that the “hill which was called Akra and defended the lower city was gibbous” in shape; “and over against this was a third ridge, naturally lower than the Akra, and at first divided from the other by a flat valley. But in the times when the Hasmonæans ruled, they filled up the valley, deciding to join the Temple to the city; and, having levelled the mound of the Akra, they made it flatter, so that the Temple might be above the same.”[195]

There does not seem to be any difficulty in understanding these notices when taken together, nor do they contradict one another. The city lay over against the Temple “like a theatre,”[196] the upper city being on the south, and the lower city in the broad Tyropœon to the north; the horseshoe head of the valley gave the theatre form, and the hill defending the lower city was that “gibbous” spur—resembling the moon in the third quarter—which bulges out eastwards near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At its highest point—the rock of the traditional Calvary—it is 2,497 feet above sea-level, or more than 60 feet higher naturally than the rock site of the Temple. Originally the high ground stretched farther east, not far from the Temple, but separated from it by a flat valley 40 feet deep, which is the confluent of the Tyropœon, having its head near the present Damascus Gate on the north side of the city. By digging down this ridge, and filling the valley east of it, the surface in this part of Jerusalem became much what it now is; for the rock in the confluent valley—usually known as the Hasmonæan Valley—is now 40 feet under the street, and the visitor who follows the Via Dolorosa from the cathedral to Antonia (the Turkish barracks) is unaware of the original depth of this valley, though the street is not quite level throughout. East of this valley the present street rises towards Antonia, running over the fosse north of that citadel, which was filled in in 70 A. D., and over the Byzantine roof vaults of the Twin Pools, which were cut in that fosse. It is thus 40 feet higher than it was in the Hasmonæan age when the fosse was visible, and the road nearly level. There was plenty of room on the Akra spur for a citadel with towers, and the keep of the fortress was probably at the rock of the orthodox Calvary. The valley has been filled in at some period of history, and there is no reason to doubt that this was done by Simon the Hasmonæan. Josephus does not say that the rock was cut away, but merely that the “mound” on which the Akra stood was “worked down.”

THE HASMONÆANS

Considering the site to be thus settled, we may briefly sum up the history of the fortress. It was built as the Macedonian citadel in 170 B. C., the rest of the city being more or less destroyed; and—after the persecution of 168 B. C. and the setting up of “the abomination that maketh desolate” on the altar—the Temple itself was deserted. The revolt of the Hasmonæans (commonly known as “Maccabees”[197]) began at Modin, a little village in the low hills, 6 miles east of Lydda and 17 miles from Jerusalem, overlooking the plains, with a view of the sea. Here Mattathias the Hasmonæan and his five sons were successively buried, and their monument perhaps still awaits excavation under the tell south of the village of Medyeh. Mattathias died in 166 B. C., and the heroic Judas about five years later. The energy and ability of the brothers brought about final independence, in spite of occasional checks and misfortunes. The relief of the Akra garrison was the objective of the various Greek generals, and the Macedonian resistance in this citadel continued for thirty years, until the weakness of the Seleucidæ, due to internecine disputes in Antioch, rendered Antiochus VII. willing to accept Simon, the surviving brother of Judas, as ethnarch of Palestine, under a suzerainty which soon became nominal.

The first great victory of Judas Maccabæus was won over the Greeks near Emmaus Nicopolis, not far from Modin, in 165 B. C.; he subsequently defeated Lysias at Bethzur, south of Jerusalem, in an attempt to reach the city by the southern pass. After this second victory Judas and his men went up to Mount Sion—that is, to Jerusalem—to cleanse the Temple[198]: “And when they saw the sanctuary desolate and the altar profaned, and the gates burned up, and shrubs growing in the courts as in a forest or in one of the mountains, and the chambers pulled down, they rent their clothes, and made great lamentation, and cast ashes on their heads.” The defiled stones were carried out to an unclean place, but those of the Altar of Jehovah were laid up in the “Mountain of the Temple,” “until there should come a prophet to show what should be done with them.” They appear to have remained in the north-east chamber of the great gate-house called Moḳed (on the north side of the priests’ court), until the final destruction of the city.[199] The Temple was rebuilt, with a new altar of white stones, and was reconsecrated on Cisleu 25, 164 B. C. The Feast of Dedication has been commemorated ever since on that day. But hardly had this work been accomplished when Jerusalem was retaken by Lysias, and the Macedonian garrison relieved. The year 163 B. C. was a sabbatic year, and no resistance appears to have been made by the majority of the nation. Judas was defeated at Beth-zachariah, south of Jerusalem, and his brother Eleazar perished under one of the elephants of the enemy. The Hasmonæans shut themselves up in the Temple courts, but fortunately—at the moment of their greatest need—bad news from the north reached Lysias, and he hastily made peace, and conceded the main demand that the Jews should be at liberty to follow the law. The young king Antiochus V. appears to have been with the army, and when he entered Sion and saw the strength of the place, he commanded the destruction of the walls.[200]

DEATH OF JUDAS