Karen Armstrong-- Finally a Glossy Review

"In monotheistic terms, it is idolatry to see a shrine or a city as the ultimate goal of religion" (Karen Armstrong 423).

So it's pretty ridiculous to do a post-post reaction to Karen Armstrong's Jerusalem (silly me!), but thankfully I highlighted her tome along the way. Overall, I think Armstrong gave a fair and balanced historical account, considering where she began and how far she had to go. I do think she seemed to stop short at the end of the book, however, giving much less page space to events in recent history. I guess every student of Jerusalem will be different in their interests, some paying more attention to biblical history, others focusing on present politics. So while I think Armstrong shed a lot of light on historical periods such as the Crusades or the Ottoman rule, she spared too much detail covering the 20th Century. Oh well. One thing I enjoyed from the start was manner of putting very religious concepts into layman's terms, focusing on three aspects affecting each each religion's view of Jerusalem. Regarding the "sacred," the "mythology," and the "symbolism," Armstrong opened readers to the understanding that each historical period, every action must be looked at much more abstractly than the just the literal events.

"At this date, all cities were regarded as holy places, an alien concept for us in the modern West, where the city is often experienced as a godforsaken realm in which religion has an increasingly marginal role. But long before people began to map their world scientifically, they had evolved a sacred geography to define their place in the universe emotionally and spiritually"
(Armstrong 7).

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What I see as one of the greatest problems...
"Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the more difficult duty of compassion" (Armstrong 66).

Example of the effect this can have: The Crusades
"However holy the city, few of the Franks wanted to live in Jerusalem, now only a shadow of its former self. Most preferred the coastal towns, where life was easier and there were more opportunities for trade and commerce" (Armstrong 277).

However...
"At about the same time in India, Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, discovered that it was possible to enter into the ultimate reality by the practice of meditation and compassion: it was no longer essential to walk into a temple or other sacred area to attain this transcendent dimension. In the spirituality of the Axial Age it was sometimes possible to bypass the symbols and experience the sacred in the depths of the self" (Armstrong 89).

***

Looking toward the future of Jerusalem, the "hope" that Armstrong conveys seems to lay in the many examples of communities living relatively successfully together in the city: "In the history of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all found other people in possession. They have all had to cope with the fact that the city and the land have been sacred to other people before them and the integrity of their tenure will depend in large part upon the way they treat their predecessors" (Armstrong 25).
However, she also emphasizes the opposite: "As always the new creation depended upon the destruction of others-- a motif that would frequently recur in the future history of Jerusalem" (Armstrong 31).

Some quotes highlighting her more "hopeful" historical examples of shared space:
"No Bronze Age temple has been unearthed in Jerusalem, but the city's name shows that the inhabitants were also open to Syrian religion" (Armstrong 7).
"Instead of erupting violently into Canaan from the outside, Israel emerged peacefully and gradually from within Canaanite society" (Armstrong 23).
"Thus, David, who was famous for his wholesale slaughter of Philistines and Edomites, may well have been a just and merciful conquerer of Jerusalem. He not only treated the existing inhabitants of the city with respect but even worked closely with them, incorporating them into his own administration" (Armstrong 38-39).
"But Muhammad was also convinced that not all Jews and Christians subscribed to this exclusive sectarianism, and, despite his own desperate struggle with the Jews, he insisted that all his followers must respect (...) those who followed an earlier vision" (Armstrong 220).
"They had been as willing to support the Muslims as they had the Persians, especially since this new form of monotheism was much closer to Judaism than Christianity" (Armstrong 233).
"Saladin had conducted his jihad in accordance with the Qur'anic ideal: he had always granted a truce with the Crusaders had asked for one; he had, for the most part, treated his prisoners fairly and kindly. He had behaved with humanity in the hour of triumph" (Armstrong 295).
"It was an Islamic conquest of Jerusalem that made it possible for Jews to return to their holy city. Umar and Saladin both invited Jews to settle in Jerusalem when they replaced Christian rulers there" (Armstrong 420).

***
But is there hope? The Holy Sepulcher Church is just one example of the intra-religious strife that makes inter-religious peace seem even more distant.
"Christians found it impossible to live together at their holiest shrine (...) the different denominations would take the key in turns to hold services at the tomb, but this frequently led to brawling and incivility" (Armstrong 348).

The future:
"In 1994, 52 percent of the Jewish children under ten in Jerusalem belonged to ultra-Orthodox families" (Armstrong 418).

"Despite romantic myths to the contrary, suffering does not necessarily make us better, nobler people(...) On both sides, attitudes harden after an atrocity, and peace becomes a more distant prospect" (Armstrong 424).

These two parting quotes from Armstrong reveal truths about common misconceptions for the present and future of Jerusalem. 1. Ours and younger generations may not be any less conservative than older generations in their approach to the conflict. 2. The result of tragedy and violence is often vengeance, more tragedy and violence. I find these sentiments interesting coming from Armstrong, who for so many chapters seems to straddle the fence, sometimes seeing good neighbors, and other times seeing bad neighbors. She seems to stray away from the hopeful after all, but then again, it may just be a bad point in a very long history.