For centuries, Jerusalem had been fought over because it was strategically useful. The crux of the issue began when people started believing it was irreplaceable.

By the second century B.C.E., the city sat at the crossroads of competing kingdoms, competing cultures, and increasingly competing visions of what Jerusalem was supposed to be, too many people believing the same place belonged to them for different reasons.

The next thousand years would transform Jerusalem from a sacred city into something far more complicated: a city claimed by multiple religions, conquered by multiple empires, and remembered differently by nearly everyone who passed through it.

The arguments were only beginning.

The Rebellion Before Rome

— Religious suppression sparks an uprising that restores Jewish rule for the first time in centuries.

Rome Arrives as Referee

— Internal rivalries fracture the Hasmonean state and invite foreign intervention that never intended to leave.

Revolt as Refusal

— Rome discovers that some cities would rather burn than submit.

Jerusalem, Renamed

— Rome attempts to erase Jerusalem's past and replace it with an imperial future.

Holiness Relocates

— The Temple falls, and holiness learns how to travel.

The Rebellion Before Rome

323–140 B.C.E. – Jerusalem passes between Hellenistic empires until one ruler attempts to reshape its identity by force.

After Alexander The Great died in 323 B.C.E., his empire fractured among rival generals because apparently conquering half the known world came with no succession plan.

Jerusalem found itself passed between two successor kingdoms: the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucid Empire of Syria.

For a time, life continued with surprisingly little drama.

Under the Ptolemies, Jerusalem remained relatively stable, they were more interested in taxes, trade, and turning Alexandria into the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean than policing local theology.

The arrangement was imperfect, but functional. The Egyptian empire wanted stability more than theological confrontation, so religious tolerance remained largely intact.

Then the Seleucids arrived.

At first, they governed much like their predecessors. But under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, imperial policy shifted from management to interference.

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Antiochus attempted something previous empires had mostly avoided: direct suppression of Jewish religious practice.

Traditional rituals were outlawed, the Sabbath was restricted, circumcision became punishable, even the Temple itself was rededicated to Zeus.

The result was the Maccabean Revolt.

In 167 B.C.E., a Jewish priest named Mattathias reportedly refused orders to participate in a pagan sacrifice.

His refusal kicked off the rebellion, military followers of his became known as Maccabees.

The rebels fought a guerrilla campaign against one of the most powerful kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean. Against the odds, they succeeded.

Jewish rebels reclaimed Jerusalem, rededicated the Temple, and established an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty. Hanukkah commemorates this event.

For the first time in centuries, the city was governed by an independent Jewish state.

Like many states built through revolt, the Hasmonean kingdom eventually collapsed inward.

The Hasmonean Dynasty transformed a revolutionary movement into a kingdom. Its rulers expanded territory, consolidated authority, and increasingly resembled the monarchies they had once fought against.

Like many states born through rebellion, the Hasmonean kingdom eventually became consumed by the same question that destroys empires, republics, and family businesses alike: Who gets power next?

The kingdom that had won independence through unity began dissolving through internal conflict.

Rome Arrives as Referee

63 B.C.E. —A Hasmonean succession crisis invites Roman intervention, ending Jewish independence and beginning Jerusalem's long relationship with imperial rule.

General Pompey the Great arrived during a succession crisis between rival Hasmonean claimants, both of whom believed involving Rome in an internal power struggle was a good idea.

History would like to note that this decision aged poorly.

When negotiations failed, Roman forces besieged Jerusalem and eventually breached the city. Pompey entered the Temple itself, crossing a boundary that was political, military, and sacred all at once.

Jerusalem retained a degree of local autonomy, but ultimate authority now belonged to the Roman Republic and, later, the Roman Empire. The sacred city was now governed under the ancient equivalent of “terms and conditions may change without notice.”

None embodied this contradiction better than Herod the Great.

Herod was simultaneously one of Jerusalem’s greatest builders and one of its least trusted rulers. Appointed by Rome and viewed by many Judeans as compromised, Herod attempted to solve a legitimacy crisis the way rulers throughout history tend to, with infrastructure.

He massively expanded the Second Temple complex, transforming it into one of the most imposing sacred structures in the ancient world. Architecturally, it worked.

Politically, it changed very little.

The city remained trapped between imperial control and religious absolutism, a combination history rarely handles gently.

Revolt as Refusal

66–70 C.E. – Resistance against Roman rule culminates in a siege that permanently transforms Jerusalem and Judaism itself.

For roughly a century, the arrangement held.

Rome governed through local rulers, taxes flowed, and Jerusalem remained one of many provinces scattered across an increasingly vast empire.

But the peace was never particularly stable.

Religious tensions simmered beneath the surface. Roman officials were frequently viewed as corrupt, taxation bred resentment, and periodic interference in Jewish affairs deepened hostility toward imperial rule.

By 66 C.E., resentment erupted into open rebellion.

Jerusalem became simultaneously a fortress, a shrine, and a powder keg.

General Vespasian was dispatched to suppress the uprising, methodically crushing resistance throughout Judea before leaving the final siege to his son Titus.

By the time Roman armies surrounded Jerusalem, the city was already collapsing inward.

Factions fought one another inside the walls. Food supplies dwindled. Refugees flooded the city. What began as resistance against Rome increasingly became a struggle for survival.

Then came the destruction.

The city’s sacred Second Temple was pummeled to dust, leaving nothing left.

The city burned. Survivors were enslaved, displaced, or executed. Sacred artifacts from the Temple were carried through Rome as trophies of conquest, immortalized on the Arch of Titus.

Without Jerusalem’s sacred center, Jewish worship could no longer revolve around sacrifice, pilgrimage, or a single physical location. Authority shifted toward scripture, interpretation, and community. Synagogues emerged across the diaspora. Rituals adapted. Memory became temples.

Ironically, removing the physical center may have made Judaism harder to eliminate.

Jerusalem, Renamed

132–135 C.E. – Rome attempts to erase Jerusalem's past and replace it with an imperial future.

If the destruction of the Temple was punishment, what followed was something closer to reconstruction through amnesia.

In 132 C.E., another major uprising, the Bar Kokhba Revolt, erupted against Roman rule, it was the final attempt to reclaim Jewish sovereignty from Rome. It ended catastrophically.

Jews were now banned from Jerusalem. The city itself was renamed Aelia Capitolina.

Judea became Syria Palaestina, a political attempt to weaken Jewish territorial identification with the land by associating the region with the older Philistines.

This was not merely conquest. It was narrative warfare.

Rome understood something dangerous about Jerusalem: memory itself functioned as resistance.

Even after exile, people continued orienting themselves toward the city. They prayed toward it. Wrote about it. Mourned it. Rebuilt it symbolically in text and ritual.

Jerusalem had become portable.

Which, historically speaking, made it everyone else’s problem indefinitely.

The result was one of history’s great ironies.

By removing the center, Rome may have made Judaism harder to eliminate.

For centuries, Jerusalem had anchored Jewish identity to a place. After Rome, that identity learned how to travel.

The city remained holy. It just no longer had a monopoly on holiness.

End of Part III — Holiness Relocated

Rome destroyed the Temple. It renamed the land. It scattered the population and attempted to sever Jerusalem from the people who had built their history around it.

Yet Jerusalem remained.

Not as a kingdom or as a capital. Not even as a functioning center of worship.

It remained as memory.

By the end of the Roman period, Jerusalem had learned another lesson.

A city can survive conquest. A religion can survive exile. An argument can survive both.

The next chapter of Jerusalem’s history would not be defined primarily by kings or emperors. It would be shaped by believers.

Christians would inherit the city and attach new meaning to old ground.

Muslims would do the same.

Soon, three religions would claim the same hilltop, each carrying a different story about why it mattered.

The city was no longer merely sacred. It was becoming universal.

Part IV concludes the Jerusalem series by examining how one city became holy to billions, claimed by competing faiths, and ultimately transformed into one of the most contested places on Earth.

Citations

• Siege of Jerusalem, from Britannica

• Ptolemaic Dynasty and Seleucid Kingdom, from EBESCO

• Who Are “the Maccabees”?, from Museum of the Bible

• The Maccabean Revolt, from World History Encyclopedia

• The Hasmonean Dynasty, from Jewish Learning

• Antiochus IV & the Siege of Jerusalem: What Really Happened, from The Collector

• The Temple Mount during the Hellenistic and Hasmonean periods (332-37 BC) from Ritmeyer Archaeological Design

• Pompey’s Siege of Jerusalem, from Livius

• The Forgotten History of the term Palestine, Hudson Institute

Images:

• Coin of Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean king of Judea (r. 40–37 BC)

• The Story of Hannukah (detail), by Ori Sherman 1985. Credit: Magnes Collection of Jewish Art, UC Berkeley

• Relief depicting the sacking of Jerusalem by the Emperor Titus on the Arch of Titus. Source: Brittanica.com

• The diplomat who negotiated as an equal with colonial governors.

• The military strategist who built alliances, shifted loyalties, and refused to surrender her kingdom.

What it tends to forget is that before Portugal became Nzinga's enemy, her own family already was.

This story does not begin with European colonization.

It begins with a dead king, a disputed succession, a murdered child, an exiled princess, a missing heir, and a throne nobody intended for a woman to occupy.

The Kingdom of Ndongo was one of several powerful states in west-central Africa when the Portuguese arrived on the coast of present-day Angola in the late fifteenth century. They arrived as traders and diplomats. They stayed as kingmakers.

By the early seventeenth century, Angola had become one of the most important regions in the slave trade. As demand for enslaved labor grew across the world, Portuguese officials became increasingly interested in controlling the source of that trade.

Coastal commerce was no longer enough. Control over inland kingdoms meant control over trade routes, captives, and political influence.

The kingdom of Ndongo sat directly in the path of those ambitions.

The Family Business

Nzinga was born in 1583, just as Portugal was transforming a fragile coastal foothold into enterprise.

Luanda, the single largest slaving port in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, had been founded less than a decade earlier, and the slave trade was expanding rapidly.

As the daughter of the ruler of Ndongo, King Ngola Kiluanji, she grew up watching political alliances shift, kingdoms rise and fall, and foreign powers steadily increase their influence along the coast.

By the time Nzinga reached adulthood, Portuguese influence had spread far beyond the coast and deep into the political affairs of Central Africa.

This was not the sort of environment that produced naïve idealists, it produced survivors.

Contemporary descriptions depict Nzinga as intelligent, charismatic, multilingual, politically gifted, and highly skilled in diplomacy. She was also reportedly trained in combat and became known for her mastery of the battle axe.

The Original Unconventional Women

European observers struggled to make sense of Nzinga and she seemed to take genuine pleasure in ignoring the social expectations that were set around her.

Accounts describe a ruler who maintained both male and female lovers, adopted traditions when they served her interests, discarded them when they didn’t, and built a court that regularly confounded European assumptions about gender, authority, and power.

In many Central African societies, political authority and gender did not always align neatly with European expectations.

As her reign progressed, Nzinga increasingly adopted titles, symbols, and court practices associated with male rulers. Some accounts describe her presenting herself as king rather than queen, a decision that baffled European observers and fueled endless commentary from missionaries.

To Nzinga, however, legitimacy was less about conforming to expectations than exercising power effectively.

At various points, she converted to Christianity, negotiated with missionaries, allied with former enemies, and ruled in ways that challenged both Portuguese and local expectations of what a woman could be.

Missionaries spent years attempting to determine whether she was a Christian monarch, a pagan ruler, a diplomatic ally, or just a military threat. The answer was usually all four.

This unpredictability became one of her greatest political weapons.

The Chair Incident

Her most famous act of defiance happened during a diplomatic meeting with the Portuguese governor.

At the time, tensions between Ndongo and Portugal were escalating. The Portuguese wanted greater control over the region and access to enslaved labor. Ndongo wanted to remain independent.

The governor had provided chairs for the Portuguese delegation. For Nzinga, there was only a woven floor mat.

To Portuguese officials, this may have seemed insignificant but to the Mbundu people, it was an insult.

They expected her to negotiate from a position of inferiority, they expected a subordinate. What they got was Nzinga.

Without missing a beat, she ordered one of her attendants to kneel on all fours and sat on their back, creating a human throne equal in height to the governor’s chair.

Nzinga understood that power is often theater and she was very good at stealing the stage.

The Game of Thrones

Portuguese influence was growing, but the greatest threat to Nzinga’s future did not arrive by ship. It came from within her own family.

Following the death of Nzinga’s father, the throne passed to her brother, Ngola Mbande. Like many rulers inheriting a kingdom under siege, he became obsessed with legitimacy and succession. Rival claimants, foreign interference, and internal dissent created a climate where even family members could become political liabilities.

In true Targaryen fashion, the struggle wasn’t simply about who had the strongest claim, it was about who survived long enough to exercise it.

Historical accounts describe Mbande eliminating rivals, targeting family members, and allegedly preventing his sisters from producing heirs who could challenge his line.

Whether every detail is accurate remains debated, but the broader pattern is familiar: a ruler so consumed by the fear of losing power that he begins destroying the very family he hopes will secure it.

When Mbande died in 1624,rumors spread almost immediately. Some claimed he had taken his own life after years of military defeats and political humiliation.

Others whispered that Nzinga had poisoned him. The Portuguese enthusiastically repeated the latter version.

This presented an obvious problem:

• If Nzinga was a murderer, her claim to the throne could be dismissed as illegitimate.

• If she was a usurper, Portuguese intervention could be framed as restoration rather than conquest.

Whether the accusation was true remains unclear. What is clear is that everyone involved had a reason to shape the narrative.

Following her brother’s death, Nzinga did not immediately claim the throne outright. Instead, she assumed power as regent for her young nephew, Kaza, the heir to Ndongo. At least officially.

Sometime after Nzinga assumed power, Kaza vanished from the historical record. Later accounts alleged that Nzinga ordered his death. Others argue the story may have originated with Portuguese sources eager to undermine her legitimacy.

Four centuries later, historians still debate what happened. What is clear is that Kaza’s disappearance removed the last major obstacle between Nzinga and the throne.

By this stage, the House of Ndongo had become exactly what succession crises tend to become: a kingdom where bloodlines mattered, trust didn’t, and every death rearranged the board.

If you’re keeping score at home, the succession crisis had already claimed a king, a child, an heir, and several competing versions of the truth.

Not exactly the sort of political environment that produces enduring dynasties.

My Enemy's Enemy

By the 1630s, the Portuguese were no longer content to control trade routes and coastal settlements.

They had begun positioning themselves as kingmakers; funding allies, elevating rivals, and placing their fingers on the scales of succession across Central Africa.

Meanwhile, the kingdom of Ndongo, was slipping from her grasp.

Nzinga strategically relocated to the neighboring kingdom of Matamba instead.

She rebuilt her power base in Matamba, absorbed refugees fleeing Portuguese expansion, strengthened her military, and waited for an opportunity.

Eventually, one arrived. It just happened to come in the form of another foreign invader.

In 1641, the Dutch invaded Angola.

Nzinga quickly aligned herself with the Dutch, recognizing what every skilled political operator understands: principles are useful, but allies are temporary.

For years, she and the Dutch coordinated military campaigns against Portuguese forces throughout the region. Together they pushed the Portuguese into a defensive position and came closer than anyone had in decades to breaking their hold on Angola.

Uno Reverse

Working with the enemy only takes one so far, the Dutch wanted profit, Portugal wanted control and Nzinga wanted a throne that stayed hers.

Everyone was playing a different game on the same board. Just as quickly as the alliance formed, the board shifted again.

In 1648, Portuguese forces expelled the Dutch from Angola.

For most leaders, losing a powerful European ally would have been the end.

Nzinga simply pivoted. She returned to diplomacy, negotiated when necessary, fought when necessary, and continued ruling Matamba for decades afterward.

Portuguese officials persisted in their attempt to remove Nzinga from power.

They backed rival claimants. They questioned her legitimacy. They drove her from Ndongo. They spent years insisting she was a temporary problem that would eventually disappear, nothing worked.

By the 1650s, however, both Portugal and Nzinga had grown tired of a conflict neither could fully win.

In 1656, Portugal and Nzinga signed a peace treaty recognizing her authority over Matamba and agreeing to release her sister Kambu, who had spent years in Portuguese captivity.

It was a remarkable reversal.

The woman who had once been dismissed as an inconvenient claimant had survived long enough to force an empire to negotiate.

After decades of warfare, shifting alliances, and political maneuvering, Portugal was no longer deciding whether Nzinga could rule. It was acknowledging that she already did.

Dance of the Leopards

Queen Nzinga died in 1663 at roughly eighty years old.

Considering how many people spent decades trying to kill her, that alone was a victory.

She outlived her brother, rival claimants, Dutch allies, Portuguese governors, and more than a few people who assumed they would be writing her obituary.

Most importantly, she left behind a functioning kingdom.

Her sister, Kamba assumed rule after her death

Today, Nzinga is remembered as a national hero in Angola. Statues stand in her honor, streets bear her name and history classes recount her story

Yet outside Africa, many people have never heard of her.

Perhaps that is fitting.

Empires are usually very good at preserving records of the people they conquered.

They are considerably less enthusiastic about preserving records of the people who refused.

History remembers her despite its best efforts

Citations:

• Ndongo,from Britanica

• Alamandini’s “Queen Njinga of Ndongo, from Jyfmuseums.

• Ndongo and Portugal at War, from Cambridge University Press

• Nzinga Mbande and the Chair That Wasn’t There “When history denies you, you become a throne from Coachability Foundation

• Review: The Portuguese Slave Trade from Angola, from JSTOR

• Luanda, Global Capital of the Slave Trade, from TESEOPRESS

Images:

• Queen Njinga, listed under her baptismal name, Anne. Source: Wikimedia.

• Queen Nzinga of Matamba

  with members of her military and royal entourage, 1660s.

• Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione de' Tre Regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola (Milan, 1690), p. 437 Cavazzi writes the Queen's name as 'Zingha'. (Copy in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

• Queen Nzinga with Military Entourage, Kingdom of Matamba, from Slavery Images

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

– Bhagavad-Gita and Robert Oppenheimer

On July 16, 1945, nuclear weapons were tested for the first time in the New Mexican desert.

A month later, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the aftermath of which would turn the tide of the war in favor of the allies.

Decades after the first test explosion in Mexico, Oppenheimer described the moment with the kind of understatement that should probably be illegal in the presence of mushroom clouds:

His sinister phrase would forever become synonymous with the atomic bomb and would ripple across the post-war nation.

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The quote gets repeated constantly, it gets interpreted less, because interpretation requires admitting what the scene actually is: a door opening that no one could close again.

Sanskrit scholar Stephen Thompson notes that the word Oppenheimer renders as “Death” is closer to “world-destroying time” not a villain with intent, but inevitability. The point is colder than the pop version: irrespective of what Arjuna does, the outcome is held by something larger than him.

Oppenheimer first read the original Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita when he was a professor at Berkeley in the 1930s. According to his colleague, Isidor Rabi, this manifested in him, “a feeling of mystery of the universe that surrounded him like a fog.”

I am become Death

The Bhagavad-Gita, which translates to “Song of God” in Sanskrit, is a 700-verse Hindu poem recounting a conversation between the kshatriya (warrior) Prince Arjuna, and his charioteer Lord Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu.

And the Gita is, essentially, a manual for moral vertigo.

The setup: a soldier who can’t do it

The story takes place in a war-torn land. The protagonist, Prince Arjuna, is on the precipice of a great battle between an opposing army which included members of his family and friends. Arjuna realizes he has to battle the people he loves and—he wavers.

Arjuna brings his reservations to Krishna, his charioteer and guide. Krishna scolds him for “cowardice” and reminds him of a core Hindu premise: the soul outlives the body.

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Death is not an ending, only a transfer, so Arjuna must follow his dharma as a Kshatriya (warrior aristocracy) and fight.

The Gita’s logic is blunt: act, but renounce attachment to the outcome; desire is what binds the soul to samsara’s cycle of rebirth.

By the 11^th verse, both men remain at an impasse, and Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his true cosmic nature. Krishna obliges, transforming into his doomsday embodiment—an infinitely vast being with a fiery mouth, innumerable eyes, and limbs that seem to contain everything in the universe.

In this new form, Arjuna finally understands: Krishna is the source of all things, physical and metaphysical; the highest mountain and the deepest valley, the supreme divinity that contains all other gods within himself.

He is both the creation of everything and its dissolution.

It is here that Oppenheimer reaches an epiphany.

Destroyer of Worlds.

In an interview with Wired, Dr. Stephen Thompson deciphers Oppenheimer’s sudden realization:

In the years that followed the atomic bomb’s launch, Oppenheimer struggled to make sense of the impact of his legacy.

He would wrestle with the after-effects of his creation for the rest of his life, trying to justify it, trying to undo it—but never quite managing either:

During the earliest stages of the atomic bomb project, Oppenheimer didn’t yet grasp what this work would become or that it would end in mass death and the erasure of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like Arjuna, he stepped into a duty that didn’t align with his values, but felt inescapable all the same.

The tale of Arjuna and Krishna ends with resolution: Arjuna accepts that the outcome isn’t his to own. He will act, and he will let go.

Oppenheimer didn’t get that ending. His famous quote gets treated like a prophecy, but it’s closer to a crisis of faith—a mind reaching for scripture when language fails.

• The Gita offered detachment: do your duty, renounce the craving for the results.

• The atomic age offered the opposite: results that refuse to be renounced.

In the years that followed, Oppenheimer became a prominent critic of nuclear disarmament—attempting to limit what he had helped make possible.

Oppenheimer turned to the Bhagavad-Gita not because it forgave him, but because it refused to treat destruction as a modern invention.

He spent the remainder of his life trying to argue with the door he helped open. Any release from that argument came only when he was no longer alive to keep making it.

Citations/References:

• Debate: The amorality of ‘Oppenheimer’ from The Conversation

• The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from The National Archives

• Bhagavad Gita (The Song of God) with commentary from Swami Mukundananda

• Hindu God Krishna from Mythopedia

• Krishna in Art from Google Arts & Cultures

• Haunting Unedited Footage of the Bombing of Nagasaki (1945)

Images/Art

• The Aftermath of Hiroshima, Getty/image

• Indian. “Vishvarupa: The Cosmic Form of Krishna,” ca. 1820. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

• East Asian. “Vishvarupa: The Cosmic Form of Krishna” 18th Century. MCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation

• 1630–50 Manuscript origin: India (Rajasthan, possibly Mewar) Medium: Ink and opaque watercolor on paper

• J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1963. Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Together, they turned an insignificant hill into a holy place everyone wanted and no one could keep.

Following the end of Solomon’s reign, Israel was split into two kingdoms:

• The Kingdom of Judah in the South was a smaller kingdom and held sole control of Jerusalem at the time.

• The Kingdom of Israel in the North was larger, wealthier, but politically volatile.

By the time the great empires arrived, the city had already learned a crucial lesson: holy land was a liability.

Jerusalem was no longer just a hilltop. It became a symbol others could see, and what could be seen could be taken.

Part I

Empires Arrive, Temples Fall

Assyria and the first forced exiles (722 B.C.E.)

The Center Does Not Hold

Babylon, collapse, and the removal of the sacred core (586 B.C.E.)

Belonging by Permission

Persia and conditional restoration (539 B.C.E.)

The Holy City on Probation

Alexander The Great, tolerance, and imperial calculation (332 B.C.E.)

End of Part II – Compliance Is Not Protection

Exile as precedent. What survival postpones, but does not prevent

Empires Arrive, Temples Fall

722 B.C.E – The North Erased

The Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered Samaria and began dismantling the kingdoms’ identity.

Starting with the expulsion of Jews from the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

The invaders began forcibly relocating large portions of the North’s population across the empire and resettled them among foreign communities.

This wasn’t a biblical holocaust, this was stability through disruption.

By removing people from their land and scattering populations across unfamiliar territory, the empire eliminated the conditions that made rebellion possible. No shared ground. No unified leadership means no rallying point.

What could not be organized could not revolt.

Population destabilization functioned as a reset: remove cohesion, and the city became administratively manageable and free to become whatever its conquerors desired.

586 B.C.E. — The Center Does Not Hold

By the late Iron Age (7th century BCE), the Neo-Assyrian Empire had discovered that governance by terror has an expiration date.

The Neo-Assyrian empire collapsed under its own weight, it was too big to control, ruled in a way that created no loyalty, then was hit by a variety of rebellions throughout their empire at the same time.

The empire’s fracture led to the arrival of two new major players who were hungry for the holy hill and the unoccupied land the Neo-Assyrian empire abandoned as it collapsed, starting with Babylon.

The contest for power was heating up in the Near East between Egypt and Babylonia. Jerusalem, now both symbolically charged and strategically positioned, sat directly in the crosshairs.

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem after King Jehoiakim, who would become known as one of the last kings of Judah, refused to pay tribute.

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The result was decisive. The city fell. The Temple was destroyed and much of the population was deported eastward.

This was not the first displacement for Jerusalem citizens, but it was a different kind:

• The Neo-Assyrian exile had scattered people to erase them.

• Babylon removed the center itself.

Babylonian exile preserved the community while eliminating the place, and that distinction changed everything.

Jerusalem wasn’t just emptied; it was dismantled. The Temple of Solomon, the physical anchor of worship, was gone.

What remained was an idea: portable, repeatable, and no longer dependent on a single structure.

Faith was forced to learn how to survive without a location.

539 B.C.E. — Belonging by Permission

Less than fifty years later, power shifted again.

The Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and inherited its territories, and its exiles.

Cyrus allowed the displaced Judeans to return and rebuild the Temple.

The decision was framed as benevolence, but it carried a quieter implication: belonging was now conditional.

Foreign rulers would shape Jerusalem’s future not only by conquest, but by deciding who was allowed to come back.

The Temple rose again, but sovereignty did not. Jerusalem survived, but under supervision.

The Holy City on Probation

332 B.C.E. — Return, reconstruction, and imperial permission

Jerusalem survived, but only on terms set by others.

Shuffled between administrations and governed by people who mostly tolerated religion—well, until they didn’t.

Jerusalem was no longer a capital in the traditional sense. It was a temple under watch, rebuilt, repopulated, and governed by approval rather than sovereignty.

At the same time Alexander the Great was conquering the Eastern Mediterranean with remarkable speed, he destroyed the Persian Empire in a series of decisive battles and inherited a region already accustomed to foreign rule.

According to later accounts, Jerusalem did not resist. Alexander passed through, acknowledged local religious customs, offered sacrifices, and left governance intact.

This was not tolerance out of respect. It was tolerance by calculation.

Jerusalem posed no military problem, and accommodating its priestly leadership cost the empire very little.

What mattered was precedent: the city remained sacred, but only with imperial approval.

End of Part II – Compliance Is Not Protection

After centuries of conquest and displacement, Jerusalem learned how to survive. Survival no longer meant resistance; it meant yielding without disappearing.

When Alexander arrived, Jerusalem opened its gates, kept its rituals, and accepted a new reality: holiness now required permission.

Under Alexander, and later his successors, the city remained sacred, but only so long as it remained administratively convenient.

Jerusalem emerged from the Hellenistic world intact, rebuilt, and still praying, but newly aware of a dangerous truth:

The city’s survival depended less on God than on empire.

The city had learned how to be managed, but it had not yet learned what happens when management fails.

That lesson comes next.

Part III traces the point where accommodation fails, revolt begins, and destruction becomes policy.

Citations/Reference

• Judea and Samaria—the Heartland of Israel

• SENNACHERIB’S MILITARY CAMPAIGN AGAINST JUDEA IN 701 B.C. from Facts & Details

• Archaeological Views: Jerusalem and Samaria: An Anthropological Tale of Two Cities – Biblical Archaeology Society Library

• The History Leading Up to the Destruction of Judah from The Torah.com

• Nebuchadnezzar: An Instrument of God's Judgment – BibleHub

• Jerusalem The Neo-Assyrian Period by Wolfgang Rollig

• The Babylonian Captivity from Bible History

• The Cyrus Cylinder In Ancient Persia from Bible History Daily

• The Miraculous Way God Used King Cyrus to Rebuild Jerusalem from Patterns & Evidence

• When Alexander The Great Came to Jerusalem from Bible Reading Geography

Images:

• Cover Image: The Burning of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar’s Army, circle of Juan de la Corte, ca. 1630-1660. Wikimedia

• THE NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE, C. 700 B.C.E. from Norton Anthology of World Literature

• The Defeat of Sennacherib (ca. 1612–1614) by Rubens

• King Jehoiakim by: Guillaume Rouille – Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum & Tattoo illustration overlaid onto King Jehoiakim’s image from Rouille’s Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553).

• A woodcut depicting Nebuchadnezzar II, by the 16th-century German engraver, painter and printmaker Georg Pencz, from a series of woodcuts titled Tyrants of the Old Testament

• Wood engraving after the original painting by Eduard Bendemann (1872) – LINK

• Alexander the Great Conquest of Persia Map from stepmap.com

• Sebastiano Conca: Alexander the Great in the Temple of Jerusalem

• For the Jews, it is the city where King Solomon built the First Temple.

• For Muslims, it is where the Prophet Muhammad made the Night Journey from Mecca (Isrā).

• For Christians, it is where Jesus was crucified.

Over the last 3,000 years, Jerusalem has been conquered roughly twenty times and survived at least six major wars.

That number alone should tell you something: this is not a city that rewards certainty. It rewards memory, myth, and force...often in that order.

Jerusalem has changed hands many times. Its current status is no exception. East Jerusalem has been under Israeli control since 1967, a situation widely regarded internationally as occupation, while Palestinians continue to claim it as the capital of a future state. The terminology changes. The violence adapts.

Without understanding how this dusty hilltop became sacred property, it’s impossible to understand why it remains a geopolitical powder keg.

This is not a story that begins with destiny. It begins with ambition.

Here is a brief history of an unremarkable hill summit’s rise to become the religious center of the world, sparking centuries of bloody conflicts over the Holy Land.

The Problem With Promised Land

— Why Jerusalem became sacred and combustible

Kings before Capitals

— Saul, David, and the cost of an insecure ruler

Why This Hill, Of All Hills

— Geography, ambition, and why this place mattered

Solomon: Peace, With an Asterisk

— Succession, sanctified violence, and sacred infrastructure

What Is Claimed Can Be Reclaimed

— Why consecration does not equal protection

The Problem With Promised Land

3,000 to 1,000 B.C. – The land was first settled by various pagan tribes and becomes known as Canaan.

Long before Jerusalem became a theological lightning rod, it was part of a region known as Canaan, settled by pagan tribes with no idea they were squatting on future holy ground. No temples, no prophecies, no global significance. Just land. Then came kings.

According to the Hebrew Bible, Israel’s first king, Saul, ruled from Gibeah, at a time when Jerusalem was still just another fortified hill. His reign, preserved largely through scripture, reads less like a founding myth than a tragedy: prolonged war, internal collapse, and a violent end on the battlefield.

By the time Saul fell, the kingdom he was meant to unify was already looking elsewhere for stability.

Saul’s rule ended not with consolidation but with failure: a disastrous campaign against the Philistines. Enter David: shepherd, court-appointed musician, and political wildcard.

During one prolonged standoff, a dual was proposed, and the Philistines sent in their fiercest warrior: Goliath, a giant whose job was intimidation. The Israelites stalled. No warrior in his right mind would go up against such a behemoth that is, except David, who showed up armed with a sling, a stone, and what appears to have been an aggressive amount of confidence.

David struck Goliath in the head. The giant fell. The Philistines retreated and the myth was born.

This moment is often framed as divine intervention. It is also, more practically, the beginning of David’s rise to power.

Killing Goliath won David fame, but not yet a crown. Kingship would come later, after suspicion, exile, and a civil war that left the old order in ruins.

Kings Before Capitals

1025 – 1010 B.C. – David rises to prominence under King Saul and eventually decides exile is preferable to workplace violence.

At first, Saul welcomed him. David soothed the king with music, served at court, and fought effectively on Israel’s behalf. But as David’s fame grew, so did Saul’s suspicion. Admiration curdled into comparison, and comparison into threat.

As an additional insult, David married his daughter, turning political rivalry into something unmistakably personal.

Already humiliated and showing increasing signs of scizophrenic paranoia, Saul decided this arrangement had gone far enough.

A plan was set in motion to remove David before his popularity could eclipse Saul’s authority. Once Saul made his intentions unmistakably clear, David did what most people do when spears start flying, he left.

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In his absence, war resumed between the Israelites and the Philistines, this time without its newly crowned hero. The result was catastrophic. Israel’s army was crushed. Saul’s sons were killed, leaving him without an heir and his kingdom without a future.

Defeated in battle and stripped of succession, Saul took his own life, bringing his reign to an end and clearing the throne for the man he had failed to destroy.

While the idea of uncircumcised thrusting from enemy soldiers would strike fear into anyone, the armorbearer could not bring himself to kill his leader. According to the Bible, Saul fell upon his own sword, with the armorbearer following after him.

Thus began David’s ascent as Israel’s second king, marked less by divine order than by personal grievance.

Why This Hill, Of All Hills

1010 – 1000 B.C. – David becomes king, first over Judah and later over a united Israel.

By the time David became king, Jerusalem was still not the center of anything. No capital had ever been established there, and no empire had claimed it as home. David’s reign changed that.

Jerusalem had three things going for it:

• Water, a rare commodity in the desert.

• Natural defenses, thanks to steep valleys that made invasion inconvenient.

• Symbolic flexibility, it belonged to no single tribe in a way that made it politically untouchable.

It was also centrally located, making it accessible for pilgrims and strategically useful for unifying a fractured kingdom. And, according to scripture, God allegedly picked it.

David took the city and declared it his capital, moving the Ark of the Covenant there, effectively turning Jerusalem into both a political and spiritual headquarters.

David crushed the Philistines so thoroughly they never recovered, and by the end of his reign, David presided over a loose empire of subordinate kingdoms.

Justice and equity, the Bible tells us, were administered. History, as usual, is less tidy.

David’s rule did not end in quiet succession, but in an internal fracture, leaving the throne contested by his sons even as Jerusalem stood newly consecrated.

Solomon: Peace, With an Asterisk

970 – 931 B.C. – Solomon (Sulaymān) secures the throne after a contested succession that ends in fratricide.

David had many sons. By custom, the throne should have passed to the eldest, Adonijah.

David disagreed. He believed his younger son, Solomon, whose name is derived from shalom, meaning “peace”, was divinely chosen.

Adonijah said screw you and declared himself king anyway.

With his father’s backing, Solomon staged a counter-coup, secured the throne, and executed his brother shortly thereafter. So much for shalom.

Scripture credits Solomon with divine wisdom, most famously in the Judgment of Solomon, where he proposed cutting a disputed child in half to reveal the true mother. Whether this was insight or theater depends on how generously one defines wisdom.

What matters more for Jerusalem is this:

David centralized the Ark in Jerusalem, and Solomon turned that decision into stone.

The most significant accomplishment he completed under his reign was the construction of the First Temple.

By building the Temple to house the Ark, Solomon ensured that Jerusalem was no longer merely a capital, it was sacred infrastructure. From this point on, the city stopped being negotiable.

End of Part I – What Is Claimed Can Be Reclaimed

Jerusalem’s story does not begin with coexistence. It begins with conquest, consecration, and collapse, repeated often enough to become tradition.

By the time religion hardened into doctrine and borders into absolute, the city was already soaked in memory and blood. Everyone would come later, carrying scripture.

But power arrived first.

Citations/References

• David and Goliath Statues – LINK

• "David and Saul" by Julius Kronberg, Oils 1885 - LINK

• “David and Saul,” by Ernst Josephson, 1878. Nationalmuseum (Stockholm), via Wikimedia Commons.

• David Harp Painting – LINK

• Gabreah Geo-Images - LINK

• David bearing Ark of the Covenant – LINK

• City of David Model – LINK

• The Anointing of Solomon by Cornelis de Vos (c. 1630). According to 1 Kings 1:39, Solomon was anointed by Zadok.

• Luca Giordano, The Judgement of Solomon, 1665

History remembers Aristotle for his logic and Plato for his ideals—but Diogenes? He’s remembered for telling civilization to go to hell.

“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” -Diogenes of Sinope

Archival records on the philosopher are scarce, if not entirely nonexistent, yet his ideas were so profound that they’ve secured him a place in the history books.

Diogenes was unique among his fellow Grecian philosophers. He chose to reject societal norms like “manners” and ignored the opinions of others, meanwhile advocating for complete truthfulness, always and under all circumstances. For Diogenes, this was the secret to freedom.

“Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man,” by Jacob Jordaens, 1642 A.D

At one point in his life, his father, who was a minter of coins in the city, was accused of defacing currency and sentenced to exile, for which Diogenes followed his father to Athens.

Diogenes began his career as a student of the similarly eccentric philosopher Antisthenes (445-365 BCE), a former student of Socrates. It has been alleged that Plato referred to him as “A Socrates gone mad.”

Born into a wealthy family, Antisthenes’ philosophy was influenced by the contradictions and injustices he observed within society. Diogenes quickly took to these lessons and applied them to his own ideology.

A Search For An Honest Man

Although originally from Sinope, the majority of Diogenes' history has been recorded in Athens. In order to follow his own philosophy, Diogenes chose to be homeless, at least in the traditional sense. For him, “home sweet home” was a ceramic tub or pithos. His house truly gave a new meaning to the phrase “humble abode.”

Diogenes sitting in his tub. Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1860 AD)

Early on in his life, he realized that he did not need conventional shelter or other “dainties” after he witnessed a mouse adapt to different living situations with ease. Observing the mouse taught him that he, too, could adapt himself to fit into any circumstance; this lesson became the origin of his famous askēsis, or intense self-discipline.

Diogenes chose to live self-sufficiently and close to nature. He rejected materialism and egotism and wandered the Greek Empire for decades, carrying nothing but a knapsack, a staff, and the cloak around his shoulders.

Diogenes disregarded conventionality completely; he masturbated, defecated, urinated, and even participated in intercourse in public. His eccentric behavior made him infamous. He was often seen walking backward through the streets of Athens or carrying a lantern in broad daylight, explaining that his purpose for such behavior was his endless pursuit to find “an honest man.”

The citizens of Athens began referring to Diogenes as “κύων” (kýon) – the Greek word for “dog.” Ironically, what was intended as an insult to Diogenes turned out to be a perfect representation of his philosophy. Even the Greek word for cynic (κυνικός) or “kynikos” means “dog-like.”

Banksy original, with a quote by Diogenes the Cynic.Can be found in Brooklyn, New York

Diogenes understood that dogs weren’t burdened by concepts like social standing, wealth and vanity. They were, therefore, freer than men. It was in Athens that Diogenes began his “search for an honest man” as his way of revealing the hypocrisy of polite societal conventions. The shameless philosopher was seen as an extreme version of the Socratic philosophy, which provided a captivating, if not unrefined, time in Greek history.

According to legend, an old and wise Diogenes even encountered the young and brash Alexander of Macedonia, also known as Alexander the Great, at one point in his life. At the time of the encounter, Diogenes was well-known, and it was likely that the great conqueror had heard of the famous Cynic, especially since Diogenes was allegedly taken captive by Alexander’s father before Alexander took up the campaign against the Greeks.

Alexander and Diogenes by Caspar de Crayer (c. 1650), Wikipedia

Diogenes was asked by Alexander’s father, King Phillip II, if he was a spy, to which the philosopher replied, “I most certainly am a spy, Philip. I spy on your absence of wisdom and common sense, which is the only thing forcing you to go and gamble your kingdom and your life in a single moment.”

Such a retort earned him a “vacation” in a Greek prison.

Accounts differ, but years later, during Diogenes’ encounter with Alexander, it is believed that the philosopher was sleeping when Alexander approached him and asked Diogenes what he could do for him. Diogenes’ response, “Stand aside to stop blocking the sun.”

To insult the great conqueror could have resulted in his capture again or even his death, but Alexander was not displeased. Instead, he said, “If I were not Alexander, I would want to be Diogenes.”

“If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes,” he responded.

It’s easy to simply categorize Diogenes as a negative individual with a pessimistic philosophy to boot, but that would be ignoring the larger picture of his teachings. Although Diogenes was often dismissed as absurd, his audacity earned the respect of his fellow philosophers, including Alexander the Great.

Diogenes’ life was a reminder that freedom isn’t found in comfort or conformity, but in the courage to live without either.

His defiance made him a fool to some and a genius to others, but his point was never lost: freedom disappears the moment we mistake performance for living.

original article posted by me on Jetset Times 1/28/22. Edited and re-uploaded 10/9/25 - LINK HERE

By the 9th century, it became a full-fledged cultural cornerstone among both the Saxons and the Norse. There are many examples of flyting in Norse mythology, for instance, Lokasenna, a poem that roughly translates to The Flyting of Loki: The Lay of Greybeard. In the poem, the Norse God of Mischief, Loki, disguised as the eponymous Greybeard, engages in a flyt with the Norse God of Thunder, Thor. Another example of the Norse God engaging in flyt is the poem Hárbarðsljóð, in which Hárbarðr (generally believed to be Odin in disguise) challenges Thor to a flyt, just as Loki did in the previous poem.

Graphic Design and Illustration by author, Allison Hinrichs

Most insults consisted of references to cowardice, appearance, or lack of intelligence, and of course, when in a particularly heated flyt battle, one opponent may insult the other’s manhood, possibly by insinuating that he is overcompensating with a massive axe for what he lacks in masculinity.

The skill required to spontaneously compose a retort in a verse form with the proper number of syllables is what makes this such a true test of intelligence and resourcefulness. The Vikings would sometimes use flyting matches to gauge the intelligence of a potential ally. As brutish as the Vikings were, their culture valued cunning and wit as much as it did athletic skills and battle prowess.

1545 woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder, referencing (and possibly illustrating) flyting. The image depicts German peasants responding to a papal bull issued by Pope Paul III. The caption reads: “Don't frighten us, Pope, with your ban, and don't be such a furious man. Otherwise, we shall turn around and show you our rears.”

As for the Anglo-Saxons who likely adopted the practice of flyting from their Viking invaders, flyts often, would often take place in the feasting hall of the village. The winner would be determined by the audience and based on the reactions to the competitors’ insults. In typical Viking and Anglo-Saxon fashion, the winner would chug a large mug of beer in celebration of their victory, and they would then invite the loser to join them in drink.

The popularity of flyting would spread well beyond England and into Scotland in the 15th and 16th centuries, where makars, a type of poet, would attack another using sexual and scatological insults.

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The most famous instance of flyting was The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie. According to records, William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy participated in a flyting match in the court of King James IV of Scotland, who had a particular fondness for the craft. This flyt is said to contain the earliest recorded use of the word sh*t used as a personal insult.

Flyting Illustration from Norse Folklore titled “Loki Taunts Bray” accompanying Lokasenna, in The Elder or Poetic Edda, trans. Olive Bray (London: Viking Club, 1908)

For the most part, the public view of Vikings is that they were ruthless savages whose sole purpose was to massacre, rape, and ransack. They were indeed skilled raiders, whose battlefield tactics enabled them to conquer and expand their territory in a manner that amazes historians to this day. But they were also complex, beautiful, and diverse. They created art, they traded with other cultures, and even accepted non-Norse folk into their family.

They managed to track and explore much farther than any civilization before them, and they even reached North America about 500 years before Columbus “discovered” it.

The Vikings left much more than blood in their wake, and many of their customs and rituals are still practiced today; we just don’t realize it.

Original Publication

Edited 8/19/25, Published at Jetset Times 7/21/21