Sacred to three great monotheistic religions, Jerusalem is one of the most excavated cities in the world. Almost everywhere archaeologists dig in and around Jerusalem, new and exciting clues emerge about the world of ancient Israel and the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this BAS symposium, leading experts take you on a captivating journey into the Holy City, revealing how Jerusalem developed and maintained its sacred status across the millennia, and visiting new excavations that are challenging long-held assumptions about the city’s biblical history. They also trace the various religious and political interests that have motivated archaeological work in Jerusalem over the past two centuries and how such interests continue to have a prominent role in shaping the city’s archaeology today.

Lectures

What Makes Jerusalem Special?

Jodi Magness

Why has Jerusalem—an isolated and relatively poor mountain town through much of its history—exerted such a powerful hold on billions of people worldwide over the course of millennia? The short answer is that followers of the three Abrahamic faiths believe Jerusalem is the place where the presence of the God of Israel dwells and the Last Judgement will take place—that is, the meeting point of heaven and earth. In this lecture, we journey back thousands of years to explore the origin of these beliefs, incorporating findings from Magness’s recent book, Jerusalem Through the Ages (Oxford Univ. Press, 2024).

The Archaeology of Jerusalem’s Mt. Zion: New Discoveries from Archives and Excavations

Shimon Gibson

In recent decades, considerable archaeological attention has been devoted to the history of the City of David and its immediate vicinity, but Mt. Zion should not be overlooked. Archival research and the re-examination of unpublished artifacts from older excavations have revealed important new evidence about Mt. Zion, changing our perception of the city in the Iron Age and Persian periods. New information has also emerged concerning Herod’s palace and the adjacent neighborhood in the first century CE, while the camp of the Tenth Roman Legion can now be more precisely delineated. The lecture will also highlight the ongoing UNC Charlotte excavations at the site.

How Archaeology Remade Jerusalem

Andrew Lawler

Nineteenth-century Europeans arrived in Jerusalem eager to uncover its biblical past. Their efforts profoundly altered the Holy City, producing new insights below ground while sparking new conflicts above. In the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli archaeologists picked up where Europeans and Americans left off. Subsequent excavations in the Old City were often closely linked with political and religious goals of the Israeli state. More recently, digs at sites like the City of David have produced important new data, while spawning criticism from Israeli and foreign academics and violent protests from Palestinians. This discussion, based on the book Under Jerusalem (Anchor, 2023), will put into context the controversy over who controls Jerusalem’s past—and, therefore, its future.

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