HST 405/505
Winter 2012
Portland State University
(c) John S. Ott
HST 405/505:
Jerusalem and
the Holy Land in the Monotheistic Traditions
from the Age of Constantine to the Crusades
“Why, of all places, Jerusalem?”
- Yehuda Amichai, Open, Closed, Open
(New York, 2000)
“Jerusalem! Have you no greeting for
your captive hearts, your last remaining flocks,
who send you messages of love?”
-medieval Jewish liturgical poem (piyut)
“Holy City of God, Jerusalem, how I long to stand even now at your
gates,
and go in, rejoicing!”
- Sophronius of Jerusalem, Anacreontica
no. 20 (seventh century)
First of the two directions of prayer,
Second of the two sanctuaries,
Third after the two places of pilgrimage.
- Arabic epitheton in praise of Jerusalem (twelfth century)
Office: CH 441-M
Office hours: By e-mail appt. only
Office phone: 503.725.3013
E-mail: ott@pdx.edu
Course
overview
For three millennia, the city of Jerusalem and its surrounding land has
been revered as holy by believers of the three Mediterranean
monotheisms: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This course
explores by a combination of primary and secondary source material the
meaning of Jerusalem and the power of place through the scriptural,
historical, and practiced traditions of all three religions, from the
end of the Second Temple period of ancient Judaism to the Fatimid
period of
Islamic rule (ca. 1000-1099 C.E.) leading up to the First Crusade and
Latin conquest in 1099. Topics include: the spatial
dimensions of sacrality, belief, and religious identity; the historical
(re-)invention of cultural and religious traditions concerning the city
of Jerusalem and its holy sites; the changing topography of the city
over time; pilgrimage to the holy land;
and the complex and at times contested nature of a shared sacred space.
The course has as its principal objective to prepare students to write
a research paper in anticipation of taking HST 407/507k in Spring term..
Course
materials
The following materials are required and available for purchase at the
PSU Bookstore.
- Dan Bahat, Carta’s Historical
Atlas of Jerusalem: An Illustrated Survey (Jerusalem: Carta,
2004);
- Oleg Grabar, The Dome of the
Rock (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard/Bellknap, 2006)
Evaluation
Students will be evaluated according to the following criteria.
Guidelines for each assignment will be posted on the course web page in
advance of due dates.
- Regular attendance and
participation in discussion – 25%. I consider active
participation and attendance a critical component to every class I
teach. Attendance will be taken daily. Participation
anticipates thorough preparation of the readings in advance of class
and active, regular involvement in class discussion. Please note that
excellent attendance without oral participation will usually be
assessed a final grade of “C.” Weak attendance with little or no
participation will be assessed a grade of “C-” or lower.
- Review of periodical article
(ca. 5 pp.) – 20%. Due in class Tuesday, 2/14. | Guidelines
|
- Sacred site survey (ca. 3 pp.)
and oral presentation – 20%. Given in class on 2/2, 2/9, 2/21,
and 2/28. | Guidelines
|
- Historiographical essay and
annotated bibliography (10-12 pp.) on selected research topic --
35%. Due on Friday, 3/16. | Guidelines |
Plagiarism
policy
Plagiarism, intentional or unintentional, is an intolerable infraction
in any setting where ideas are exchanged and discussed. It is
also a violation of the PSU Student Code of Conduct, and egregious or
multiple cases may be grounds for suspension or expulsion from the
university. Thanks to recent software advances, detecting
plagiarism is extremely easy. Papers that can be shown to have
been plagiarized will automatically receive an “F” grade (or
“0”). Students will be required to resubmit their papers, and
will be automatically deducted in their grade an amount appropriate to
the late paper policy given in the assignment guidelines.
Remember, ignorance is no excuse! The PSU Code of Student Conduct
considers as plagiarism work submitted for other courses and turned
into me as original, and I will ask students to submit new, original
work in addition to taking the penalities above. If you are
unsure what constitutes plagiarism, you may test yourself at this web
site maintained by
Indiana
University.
Students
with disabilities
Students with disabilities who need additional consideration for the
timely completion of any of the course requirements should speak to the
instructor at the beginning of the term, and must be registered with
PSU’s
Disability Resource Center.
E-mail
policy
E-mail is a superb tool by which students may communicate with the
course instructor about questions concerning the course material,
content, and assignments. It is especially useful for providing
feedback to student ideas and for commenting on student theses or paper
topics. But please bear in mind the following:
- E-mail is not ideal for urgent matters. I consider 48-72
hours to be a reasonable period in which to respond to inquiries.
I am usually much faster than this, but not always.
- I will not, in general, respond to student e-mails received after
5:00 p.m. until the following day(s), nor will I generally respond to
student e-mail sent after 5:00 on Friday until Monday morning.
Please plan accordingly.
- Please remember to identify yourself and state your query as
clearly as possible.
- I will not fill in students who miss class on the details of a
particular lecture or discussion. Please seek that information
from your fellow students.
Syllabus
Tuesday, 1/10 – Introduction to course themes and readings-seminar model
Thursday, 1/12 – Theoretical considerations of space and the sacred
Readings:
- Mircea Eliade, Images and
Symbols. Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. P. Mairet (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1969), 27-56 (E-reserve);
- Jonathan Z. Smith, Map is Not
Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill,
1978), 104-28 (E-reserve);
- Philip S. Alexander, “Jerusalem as the Omphalos of the World: On
the History of a Geographical Concept,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Continuum, 1999),
104-119 (E-reserve)
Tuesday, 10/6 – Palestine before the Israelites; Canaan before Jerusalem
Readings:
- C. Nicholas Raphael, “Geography and the Bible,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed.
David Noel Freedman, et al., vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1992-),
964-976 (Skim parts ‘A’ and ‘B’, read part ‘C’ on Human Geography) (E-reserve);
- Genesis 1.1-13.18, in JPS
Hebrew-English Tanakh, pp. 1-23 (E-reserve);
- Robert P. Gordon, Holy Land,
Holy City. Sacred Geography and the Interpretation of the Bible
(Carlisle, Eng.: Paternoster Press, 2004), 5-16 (E-reserve)
- For articles on the 10,000 BCE temple (?) site at Gobekli Tepe,
Turkey, click here
and here.
Thursday, 10/8 – Canaan, Jerusalem, and the Temple of Solomon |
Some terrific B&W Library of Congress
photos of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (Dome of the Rock, al-Aqsa
mosque), from as early as the mid-nineteenth century, may be found here. (Note that I am not advocating the site
per se, only the photos. The maps, in particular, are
disappointing. However, there is also a trove of
twentieth-century official documents available as .pdfs for students of
the Modern Middle East and Israel-Palestine. |
I. The End of the
Second Temple
Tuesday, 1/17 – Jerusalem: Site of Disaster, site of Triumph
Readings:
- Michael Avi-Yonah, “The Second Temple (332 BC-70 AD) / Jews,
Romans and Byzantines (70-633),” in idem, ed., A History of Israel and the Holy Land
(New York: Continuum, 2001), 143-160 (E-reserve);
- Martin Goodman, “The Pilgrimage Economy of Jerusalem in the
Second Temple Period,” in Levine, ed., Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 69-76 (E-reserve);
- Gospel of Luke 2.21-29,
41-50, 19.28-21.38; Letter to the Hebrews 4.14-16,
5.1-10, 9.1-10.39 (On-line at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/luke-asv.html
[Luke] and http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hebrews-asv.html
[Hebrews];
- Bahat, Historical Atlas of
Jerusalem, 4-29
Thursday, 1/19 – Rome and the end of the Second Temple
Readings:
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish
Antiquities, 18.3.1-2 and 18.5.1-3, in The Works of Flavius Josephus,
trans. William Whiston, vol. 2 (New York: International Book Company,
s.d.), 441-43, 450-54 (E-reserve);
- Flavius Josephus, The Jewish
War, Book 6, trans. G. A. Williamson, rev. ed. (London: Penguin,
1970), 355-373 (E-reserve)
- Bahat, Historical Atlas of
Jerusalem, 30-35
- Avi-Yonah, “The Second Temple (332 BC-70 AD) / Jews, Romans and
Byzantines (70-633),” 160-179 (E-reserve)
- Martin Goodman, “Trajan and the Origins of Roman Hostility to the
Jews,” Past and Present 182:1
(Feb. 2004): 3-29 (via PSU’s Highwire Press database, accessible on-line at: http://past.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol182/issue1/index.dtl);
Tuesday, 1/24 – Forgetting and Reimagining Jerusalem
Readings:
II. Constantine and a
'new' Jerusalem
Thursday, 1/26 – Building a Christian Capital
Readings:
- Eusebius Pamphilius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine, Book III.25-47
(On-line at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iv.vi.iii.xxv.html)
(Note: You will have
to click serially through the sequence of books);
- Avi-Yonah, “The Second Temple (332 BC-70 AD) / Jews, Romans and
Byzantines (70-633),” in idem, ed., History
of Israel and the Holy Land, 179-183 (E-reserve);
- Eliav, God’s Mountain,
125-150, 181-188 (E-reserve)
Tuesday, 1/31 – The Establishment of a Pilgrimage Site
Readings:
- “Egeria’s Travels,” both in Egeria’s
Travels, trans. John Wilkinson (London: S.P.C.K., 1971), pp.
103-128 (E-reserve);
- “The Pilgrim of Bordeaux (333)”, in Egeria’s Travels, 153-163 (E-reserve);
- Gregory of Nyssa, “On Pilgrimages” (ca. 381) (On-line at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2913.htm);
- Andrew S. Jacobs, Remains of
the Jews. The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), chap. 5, "This Exalted
City" (pp. 139-199) (E-reserve)
Thursday,
2/2 -- The View of the Holy Land from early medieval western Europe
Readings:
- Gregory of Tours, Glory of the
Martyrs, trans. Raymond Van Dam (Liverpool University Press,
1988), pp. 1-21 (E-reserve);
- Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take
Place. Toward Theory in Ritual, chap. 4, "To Replace" (pp.
74-95) (E-reserve)
PRESENTATION
OF SITE REPORTS I
Tuesday, 2/7 – Byzantine Jerusalem
Readings/visual sources:
- Madaba
(Jordan) Mosaic (sixth century);
- Avi-Yonah, ed., History of
Israel and the Holy Land, 183-193 (E-reserve);
- The Piacenza Pilgrim, Travels
from Piacenza, and Sophronius Patriarch of Jerusalem, Anacreontica, nos. 19 and 20,” both
in Jerusalem Pilgrims before the
Crusades, trans. John Wilkinson (Warminster, Eng.: Aris and
Phillips, 1977), 79-93 (E-reserve);
- Robert L. Wilken, The Land
Called Holy. Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), chap. 11, "The Jerusalem Above
Wept Over the Jerusalem Below" (pp. 216-232) (E-reserve);
- Bahat, Historical Atlas of
Jerusalem, 36-43
Thursday, 2/9 – Jerusalem in early Islamic tradition
Readings:
- The Qu’ran, trans. N. J. Dawood: Sura 2.127-153, “The Cow” (pp.
19-22); Sura 17.1-7, “The Night Journey” (p. 281) (E-reserve);
- ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Hishām, The
Life of Muhammad, trans. Alfred Guillaume (Oxford University
Press, 1955), 181-187 (“The Night Journey and the Ascent into Heaven”) (E-reserve);
- Moshe Gil, “The Political History of Jerusalem during the Early
Muslim Period,” in The History of
Jerusalem. The Early Muslim Period, 638-1099, ed. Joshua Prawer
and Haggai Ben-Shammai (New York: NYU Press, 1996), 1-10 (E-reserve);
- Suleiman Ali Mourad, “The Symbolism of Jerusalem in Early Islam,”
in Jerusalem. Idea and Reality,
ed. Tamar Mayer and Suleiman Ali Mourad (London: Routledge, 2008),
86-102 (E-reserve)
PRESENTATION
OF SITE REPORTS II
Tuesday, 2/14 – The Muslim Conquest of Jerusalem
Readings:
- The History of al-Tabarī,
trans. Yohanan Friedmann, vol. 12 (Binghamton: SUNY Press, 1992), pp.
24-25, 189-197 (E-reserve);
- Moshe Gil, “Political History of Jerusalem during the Early
Muslim Period,” pp. 10-16 (E-reserve);
- Bahat, Historical Atlas of
Jerusalem, 44-49
PERIODICAL
REVIEW PAPER DUE, IN CLASS
Thursday, 2/16 – Constructing the Haram al-Sharif
Readings:
- ‘Arā’is al-majālis fī qişaş
al-anbiyā’ or ‘Lives of the Prophets’, trans. William M. Brinner
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 513-519 (“Building of the Temple”) (E-reserve);
- Grabar, The Dome of the Rock,
pp. 19-58 (pp. 1-18 optional);
- Heribert Busse, “The Temple of Jerusalem and its Restitution by
‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” in The
Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art. Studies
in Honor of Bezalel Narkiss on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday,
ed. Bianca Kühnel (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1998),
23-33 (E-reserve);
- M. J. Kister, "'You Shall Only Set Out for Three Mosques'. A
Study of an Early Tradition," Le
Museon 82 (1969): 173-196 (On-line
at http://www.kister.huji.ac.il/content/you-shall-only-set-out-three-mosques-study-early-tradition)
Tuesday, 2/21 – The Dome of the Rock
Reading: