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.

Theriac was an ancient antidote against poisons, as well as a strong medicine for serious diseases and plagues. Theriac was a much-needed compound drug, and therefore authorities took an active part in its production. We learn from historical sources that commercial ties and networks between countries were linked with the trade in the ingredients of theriac. The vast majority of these ingredients (of plant, animal, and inorganic origin) were brought from the region of the Dead Sea and from other parts of al-Shām. During the tenth century theriac specialists were active in Jerusalem, producing the antidote and exporting it to other countries. During the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, Egypt became the main centre of production for theriac. The uses of theriac were known and applied in the East throughout the late medieval and early modern periods right through to modern times.

Since late antiquity, bishops have been regarded as possessing the highest authority among Christians. But there was no linear path leading there. Rather, there were different bearers of authority among Christians: James, as the respected brother of Jesus, was a key figure at the beginning; intellectuals were able to gain importance as teachers, prophets also appeared after Jesus, among them many women; widows and virgins attained a special position; finally, the authority of ascetics increased. Basically, authority could be derived from an office within the church or from personal charisma, which was considered God given. Good bishops tried to combine both, but charismatics could always challenge them and would continue to do so throughout the history of Christianity.

In 1882, the eldest sons of the Prince of Wales visited Palestine and Syria as they neared the end of a voyage around the globe. This chapter uses the written record of their journey on board HMS Bacchante to argue that it signalled important changes in the religious profile of the British monarchy. John Neale Dalton, the tutor to the princes, misrepresented his unintellectual pupils as keen students of the religions of the world in his voluminous two-volume journal of their tour. As British monarchs now headed an empire which its admirers argued was unprecedented in its extent, they prepared to rule it by travelling to encounter the many religions of their future subjects. Dalton’s princes journeyed through time as well as space, capitalising on British power and their royal standing to meet philologists and archaeologists who explained to them the ancient faiths of Japan, China and Egypt. In this global context, their visit to the Holy Land was no longer just a pilgrimage to the origins of Christianity and of elite culture, but a journey of discovery which connected the biblical to other, hitherto alien pasts.