All language subtitles for BBC.Jerusalem.The.Making.of.a.Holy.City.1of3.Wellspring.of.Holiness.DVDRip.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

(MUEZZIN CALLING)

(CLANKING)

SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE:
Jerusalem is the shrine of three faiths.

(SHOFAR BLOWING)

Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

It's a place of exquisite beauty
but also of ugly vulgarity.

(TOLLING)

For some, this is the centre of the
world and the home of God himself.

But for others,

Jerusalem is the best argument
against religion there's ever been.

Jerusalem's holiness has made it
the most fought over city in history.

Over the centuries,
Jews, Christians and Muslims

have competed viciously to commandeer
the history and holiness of this place.

But as the competition has intensified,
so has the holiness.

All three religions have shared origins
in the Old Testament

and all have laid claim to Jerusalem.

For many, the history of the city
is more a matter of faith than fact.

But I believe you can piece together
Jerusalem's fractured history

and that's the story I'm going to tell.

It's a story of empires won and lost,
of power and identity.

Above all, it's a story
of man's search for holiness.

So how did this craggy, remote,
obscure little stronghold

become the Holy City,

the prime place on earth
for God to meet man?

I'm a historian, but I've also got
a personal connection with Jerusalem.

I've been coming here with my family
since I was a boy.

(INDISTINCT)

I've always been captivated
by the city's spiritual aura,

but also by the mystery of its origins.

(SHEEP BLEATING)

In the Bronze Age, around 3200 BC,

people lived in these hills.

They existed in small square houses,
they herded sheep

and they buried their dead in the caves
that have been found around Jerusalem.

Over the next 1,000 years,
this land, known as Canaan,

became part of a province
ruled by the Pharaohs in Egypt.

On the fertile plains
of the Mediterranean coast,

there were already
several thriving cities.

But inland,
the hill country was a backwater.

Before Jerusalem expanded
in modern times, east and west,

the ancient city was founded
on two mountains,

Mount Moriah and Mount Zion.

But it all really started down there
on that dry little ridge, the Ophel.

The Ophel hill was where the
Canaanite settlers first began to build.

Their settlement was named Urusalem,

which some believe means
''founded by Salem, ''

the pagan god of the evening star.

This small, arid little hillside may
seem a strange place to build a city.

It's far from the trade routes,
it's distant from the Mediterranean,

but it did have two distinct advantages.

First, its steep ravines
make it almost impregnable.

And, crucially,

it had a spring.

And it was this combination
that attracted the first settlers

to build on the Ophel hill.

The earliest known Canaanite structures
are the foundations of two stone towers.

They were only discovered in the 1 990s
by archaeologist Ronnie Reich.

Ronnie, why did they need
this fortification here?

It's to protect the water.

The spring
and the approach to the spring.

And since this is the only spring
in a very large radius here around,

this was their lifeline,
the spring itself.

Do you think that the spring,
in that period,

with these high towers around it,

also had the holy qualities
that it later assumed?

It is the only spring in the vicinity
which points to the east,

to the sun,
and if you come in the morning,

the sun rays hit the water.

Today it's full with tourists
but you can see it.

And I can believe that there was
a sanctity attributed to the spring

in early days already.

So what we have here, amazingly,
is the first link to holiness,

in this city,
so this is incredibly significant.

Yes, I was happy to find it.

So long before the Christians,
long before Islam,

long even before the Israelites
captured Jerusalem,

this was already a holy place.

But for me, the history of Jerusalem
really comes alive in 1 350 BC,

where for the first time,
in the Amarna letters,

we hear the voice
of a real human Jerusalemite.

Inscribed in delicate
cuneiform characters,

these letters were sent by the
Canaanite king of Jerusalem, Abdi Heba,

to the Pharaoh in Egypt,

pleading for archers
to help defend the city from attack.

Alas, no more is heard of Abdi Heba.

We don't know if the Pharaoh came to
his help or if he ever got his archers.

And no more is heard of Jerusalem
either for several centuries.

All we know is that
this small provincial town

not only survived the attack,
but carried on growing,

with several new buildings clinging
to the slopes of the Ophel hill.

If you're looking for a reason of why
this unremarkable Bronze Age settlement

became the universal city,
it's because of the story told by a book

of unique and global prestige,
the Bible.

(READING ALOUD)

The Bible has been studied
and revered by millions of believers

over thousands of years.

It's made Jerusalem
the most famous city in the world.

I probably need a kippot. Ah! Thank you.
Thank you. Okay.

(CONVERSING)

Many of the stories told in the Bible

originated in the oral traditions
of the Hebrew people.

They were often only put down in writing

hundreds of years after they were
supposed to have happened.

(READING)

MONTEFIORE: To some believers, the Bible
is the fruit of divine revelation,

fundamentally infallible
in every detail.

But for the historian,

it's a troublesome,
complex and subtle source.

Some of it is undeniably
factually correct.

Some of it is mythological,
some of it is poetry of soaring beauty

and much of it is
absolutely mysterious to all of us.

(MEN CHANTING)

The Bible isn't only
a mystical and sacred text,

it also forms a chronicle of Jerusalem's
history and a hymn to its holiness.

It's not always reliable,
but it can be useful

when you can check it
against other sources.

The first reference to Jerusalem
is in the book of Genesis,

which recounts how the patriarch Abraham
visited what was then a Canaanite city,

ruled by a Canaanite priest.

It says...

(READING)

The Bible goes on to tell us
that centuries later,

Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt
to take over the promised land, Canaan.

The book of Joshua tells
how they occupied Canaan

in a series of battles and massacres.

There isn't much archaeological
evidence of a violent conquest.

There are hardly any ruined cities
or mass graves.

But there is evidence
of pastoral settlers

building new villages
in this countryside.

The Israelites brought with them
a new religion.

They believed in just one god, Yahweh,

and the first of the Ten Commandments
was to reject the pagan gods of old.

The Israelites may have been
united by their faith,

but politically they were divided.

There were 1 2 distinct tribes
lined up in two warring factions,

the northern tribes known as Israel
and the southern tribes of Judah.

Uniting these warring tribes

would take a visionary
and charismatic warrior king.

David.

The Bible presents him as a flawed
sinner, adulterer and man of blood,

but also as a sacred hero and poet.

Just as the American founding fathers
chose Washington DC as their capital

to bridge the gap
between north and south,

so David chose Jerusalem
as his neutral new capital.

This strategic decision transformed

a remote hilltop fortress
into a capital city.

There's archaeological proof
that David himself existed

and the Bible describes his Jerusalem

as the magnificent capital
of a large kingdom.

But after years of
archaeological research,

there's very little evidence
of a city built by David.

And what evidence there is
is hard to interpret.

This heap of stones is the most
contested archaeological site

in the most excavated place on earth.

Some archaeologists believe
that these stones

are the walls of the palace
of Kind David himself.

Other archaeologists believe that this
may not be King David's actual palace

but it dates from King David's reign.

And yet another group of archaeologists
disagree with them

and believe that this doesn't even date
from the 1 0th century

in King David's reign at all.

-...houses and bits of wall.
-Yes, yes. Yes.

MONTEFIORE: The most influential of this
more sceptical group of archaeologists

is Israel Finkelstein.

He believes these buildings
were already here when David arrived.

When he came here to Jerusalem

from the fringes
of the highlands of Judah,

he found an existing settlement.

Not a big one,
a small one which spread over an area

of possibly between five and 1 0 acres
with a modest population

also around maybe 500, 600, 700 people.

Not more than that.
It was a typical Bronze Age city.

There was no evidence whatsoever
for palaces and things like that.

Had there been a big city
with monuments, with walls,

with fortifications,

I think that archaeologists
would have been able to find that.

Why is David so controversial?

The controversy, in my opinion,

is driven and taken over

by modern debate over Jerusalem,

over the future of Jerusalem,

over the conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians.

I think that this is senseless

and I do not see this as important.

I don't think that the past
can decide the future.

With all due respect to the past,
as an archaeologist, I'm telling you,

I don't think that the past
can really decide the future.

MONTEFIORE: Both sides justify
their claims to Jerusalem

with contradictory
interpretations of the past.

For Jews everywhere, it was David
who made this their holy city

when he summoned
the Ark of the Covenant,

the chest containing
the Ten Commandments.

The Bible says he planned
a temple to house them

just above the Ophel hill
on the summit of Mount Moriah.

Whether myth or reality,
this account would help make this site

the Israelites' holiest place.

It's likely that this commanding
location was already a shrine

for the cults of the Canaanites.

So that when David decided
to build his temple up here,

he was appropriating a holiness
that already existed.

Building the temple
was deemed too sacred a task

for the flawed character of David.

So after his death,
God chose his son to build it.

The Bible presents Solomon
as a study in superlatives.

He was the ideal
of the oriental emperor.

Everything he had was bigger
and better than any other king.

He was richer, wiser and more powerful.

He had 1 2,000 cavalry,
he had 1 6,000 chariots,

and as if that wasn't enough,
he had 700 women in his harem.

But overshadowing
all these accomplishments

was the temple he's believed
to have built on Mount Moriah.

Solomon's temple
probably stood right there.

But it is now the Islamic
Haram-al-Sharif, the sanctuary.

And the Dome of the Rock
stands on the site,

so it's impossible to excavate.

Although no remains of the first temple
have been uncovered,

its position is known,

and even after 3,000 years, for Jews,
it remains the place where God resides.

The famous Western Wall

was part of a later Jewish temple
built on the same site.

Its rabbi is Shmuel Rabinowitz.

(SPEAKING HEBREW)

(CHANTING PRAYERS)

MONTEFIORE: Today, the closest place
to Solomon's holy of holies,

where Jews can pray,

is as remote from the glories
of his temple as you can imagine,

hidden in a cramped, humid tunnel.

Ninety metres eastwards
and upwards from here

was the holiest place in Judaism and
it still is the holiest place in Judah.

The foundation stone
of King Solomon's temple.

For Solomon,
this was the holy of holies.

This was where God actually resided,
the house of God.

For Jews, ever since, this has been
the place where God can meet man.

And for all the Abrahamic religions,
Judaism, Christianity and Islam,

this is the essence, this is the source
of Jerusalem's holiness.

Right here.

(RECITING)

I'm not a very religious Jew,

but to me, this is one of
the holiest places on earth.

Solomon's temple
was the first Jewish temple.

Pilgrims came from all over his kingdom
to pray to their God, Yahweh,

and their donations
soon made the temple very rich.

Worship in Solomon's temple
was a religion based on sacrifice

outside the holy of holies
at the altar up there

and conducted by a priestly caste.

David and Solomon
are steeped in mythology,

but the evidence shows
that within decades,

a Jewish temple did stand here
in the capital of a Jewish kingdom.

(ALL SINGING)

When Solomon died after a reign
of 40 years, the kingdom split up.

The 1 0 northern tribes,
unhappy at the exorbitant taxation,

broke away to form
the kingdom of Israel

and Jerusalem remained the capital
of the southern kingdom of Judah.

With the Jews divided,
Jerusalem became vulnerable.

In the 8th century BC,
the voracious empire of Assyria

was expanding from its base
in modern-day Iraq.

When the Assyrians conquered
the northern kingdom of Israel,

the Jews of Jerusalem
knew they were next.

As the Assyrians approached Jerusalem,

the King of Judah received a warning
from his prophet Isaiah.

He said only a messiah
would be able to protect the city.

Isaiah prophesied that an anointed king
would appear and bring peace.

And this is what he wrote.

''Out of Zion shall come forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,

''and he shall be a judge
among the nations.''

He imagined a mystical new Jerusalem

that would exist in a perfect state
of peace and harmony.

An idealised heaven on earth.
And in this astonishing vision,

he would ultimately help inspire
a new-world religion

and transform Jerusalem
into the universal city.

He was the first, but not the last,
to see two Jerusalems.

One heavenly, one earthly.

700 years later, his prophecy would
become central to the teaching of Jesus.

But in the meantime, King Hezekiah
had a more immediate concern.

Hezekiah dared to rebel
against Assyria.

And now its king, Sennacherib,
was advancing with a huge army.

They deported thousands of captives,
blinded hundreds of victims

and burned and flayed
their enemies alive.

Like Jerusalem's earliest inhabitants,
Hezekiah had two priorities.

First, defences.

Knowing the Assyrian appetite
for brutal conquest,

Hezekiah built his walls 20-foot wide.

And second, protecting the city's
vital and sacred spring.

The spring on the Ophel hill was still
the city's only source of water.

But now it lay outside
the new city walls.

To ensure safe access to it
in case of a siege,

he decided to hack a tunnel
through 1,700 feet of solid rock.

And here it is, and it's taken us
35 minutes to walk along it.

And I can tell you,
you never lose the wonder of this place.

(WATER SLOSHING)

And as you walk through here,
you can actually feel the chisel marks

of the excavators 2,700 years ago.

The tunnel was dug by two teams
starting at opposite ends.

It was only re-discovered
in the 1 9th century

when a pair of curious schoolboys
went exploring.

One of the little boys got frightened
and ran back to school,

but the other one
felt his way along the tunnel

until he could feel that the blades
of the excavators had changed direction.

And at that place
he found an inscription.

And it reads, ''Each quarryman hewed

''towards his fellow quarryman,
axe by axe.''

And then, when the tunnel was dug,
the water flowed.

And amazingly,
almost 3,000 years later,

here is the tunnel
and here the water is still flowing.

No sooner had Hezekiah
completed his fortifications

than Sennacherib of Assyria descended
on Jerusalem like a wolf on the fold.

He surrounded the city with his armies.
All seemed lost.

Then, at the last minute,
he abandoned the assault,

leaving the city unharmed.

To the Jews of Jerusalem,
his decision was a divine miracle.

The truth is, we don't know
why he spared them.

But there is a clue
in Sennacherib's own account.

He says that he had Jerusalem
like a bird in a cage,

and that he returned home
after receiving gold,

probably from the temple.

So was it divine providence
or just a mighty big bribe?

The emergence of the Jews' faith
in one God, Yahweh,

had been plagued by the persistence
of older pagan beliefs.

When Hezekiah died, his son Manasseh
turned his back on Yahweh.

He brought pagan idols
into Solomon's temple.

And just outside the city walls,
he introduced a much darker ritual,

child sacrifice.

Here in the valley of Hinnom,
Manasseh placed the roaster,

an altar at which innocent children
were burned and killed

to appease the many gods
of the Canaanites.

Israelites were appalled by this
and gradually, Hinnom,

or its Hebrew name, Gehenna,

came to be synonymous
with the practices of Hell itself.

This biblical story has also helped form
our very concept of religious evil

and our map of heaven and hell.

Just as the Temple Mount
in all its beauty and sanctity

was heaven on earth, so Hinnom,
right here, was Jerusalem's own hell.

(CHANTING)

When Manasseh died,
the Jewish religion was revived.

(CONVERSING)

Idols were cast out of the temple
and the child murderers put to death.

The new king Josiah hoped to restore
the glories of David and Solomon,

but when he was killed,
Jerusalem's hopes were crushed

and its religion faced annihilation.

A new empire emerged
from the ruins of Assyria, Babylon.

It, too, used spectacular cruelty
and mass deportations

to enforce its dominion.

The Babylonian empire now
controlled the whole Middle East.

The kingdom of Judah
was a semi-independent state

with Jerusalem as its capital.

When the Judeans rebelled
against the Babylonians,

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched
south and laid siege to the city.

His men surrounded the walls.
Inside, food started to run out.

People starved.

As the Jewish month of Ab began,

it was clear
they could hold out no longer.

On the 9th of Ab, 586 BC,

Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon
burst into the city.

Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem,
he burned it to the ground.

He emptied its teeming streets,
demolished the temple

and then he rounded up the Jewish elite

and deported around 40,000 of them
all the way to Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar action
created a theme that runs through

the Jewish relationship with Jerusalem.

The idea of exile
and the dream of return.

The book of Lamentations
mourns the tragedy.

(READING)

This tragedy became the template
for the end of the world,

depicted in the Bible, for the Jews
and also for the Christians.

Ever since,Jerusalem has been seen
as the location of the final apocalypse.

The destruction of the temple
must have seemed

like the death not just of a city,
but of an entire people.

Surely the Jews
would vanish from history

like all the other peoples
whose gods had failed them.

And yet that didn't happen.

Somehow this experience
transformed the Jews themselves

and it helped re-double
the sanctity of Jerusalem, too.

Exiled in Babylon,

the Jews developed new religious
practices to preserve their identity.

They wore distinctive clothes,
circumcised their sons,

observed the Sabbath
and avoided certain foods.

It only lasted for 50 years,
but the exile was a defining moment

in creating the Judaism
we recognise today.

In 539 BC, Babylon was conquered

by King Cyrus of Persia.

Cyrus let the Jews go back to Jerusalem

and even paid for them
to rebuild their temple.

For the next 200 years,

the Jewish high priests ruled Jerusalem
as a theocracy,

until the brilliant Macedonian king,
Alexander the Great,

swept across the near east bringing
a new empire and a cultural revolution.

Alexander's empire didn't last long,

but his Greek culture
became the international culture,

just as the American is today.

In Jerusalem, even young priests
started to exercise naked in the gym.

They even started to try
to reverse their circumcisions.

They wanted to do everything
the Greek way.

But this totally contradicted
the ideals of Jewish purity.

After a century of benign Greek rule,

Jerusalem came under the control of
King Antiochus Epiphanes, God Manifest,

who was as beautiful and crazy
as he was ambitious.

When the Jews rebelled against him,
Antiochus stormed Jerusalem.

He wasn't satisfied
by just sacking the city,

he decided to wipe out
the Jewish religion altogether.

He placed statues of Zeus and of himself
in the temple and had them worshipped

but worse still, he sacrificed swine
on the altar there.

He forced the Jews to eat pork.

Mothers who circumcised their babies

were thrown off the city walls
with their infants.

Anyone caught reading
Jewish holy books was burnt alive.

These deaths created the first cult
of religious martyrdom.

When he demanded that the Jews
worship him and not Yahweh,

his sacrilege provoked
a religious revolt.

In a small village outside Jerusalem,
Antiochus' officers tried to force

an elderly Jewish priest named
Mattathias to sacrifice to Antiochus.

Mattathias refused,
killed the Greek general,

raised the flag of rebellion
and fled to the hills.

He was joined by a group
known as the Hasidim, the pious,

who were so religious
they would not fight on the Sabbath.

Needless to say,
when battles were fought on Saturdays,

they were slaughtered.

Here on the outskirts of Modin

are the rock-cut tombs
where the fallen were buried.

But the fortunes of the rebels were to
change when they found a new leader.

Mattathias' son, Judah,

known as ''The Hammer''
or ''The Maccabee'' in Aramaic,

launched a successful guerrilla war
against Antiochus and his Greeks.

His dynasty became known
as the Maccabees.

To the Greeks,
they may have seemed to be

a fanatical bunch of Jewish Mujahideen,

but to the Jews they show
how a small band of brothers

could heroically resist
the armies of a superpower and win.

They recaptured Jerusalem,
and in the process,

triumphed in the first recorded
holy war.

(MEN CHANTING)

One by one, the Greeks were
losing control of their kingdoms

to a powerful new neighbour
from the western Mediterranean.

The Maccabees' kingdom
was weakened by infighting.

Now it was the Romans
who decided who ruled Jerusalem.

In 40 BC, the two rulers of the
Roman world, Mark Antony and Octavian,

appointed a brilliant young strongman,
Herod, as King of Judea.

Half-Jewish, half-Arab,

Herod was the ambitious son
of a pagan convert to Judaism.

He was Jerusalem's own version of
a cross between Henry VIII and Stalin.

(MAN SPEAKING HEBREW)

(SOFTLY) As soon as
he conquered Jerusalem,

Herod killed half the members
of the Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin.

He married 1 0 times and murdered
his favourite wife by public garrotting.

Oh, and he killed
three of his own children.

(INDISTINCT)

But this monster had impeccable taste.

He had a vision to build a temple
and a Jerusalem

as glorious as that of Solomon.

And this is what
it would have looked like.

Despite his pagan roots, Herod built
the most majestic Jewish temple.

It was a vast enterprise.
It took 80 years.

A thousand priests
had to be trained as builders,

since only priests
could enter the inner courts.

Whole quarries of
golden blocks of limestone

had to be brought here to build it.

And whole forests of cedars
had to be sailed down from Lebanon

to embellish this remarkable building.

To this day,

there are remnants of Herod's Jerusalem
visible all over the city,

most famously, the huge stones of the
supporting Western Wall of the temple.

But some of the best preserved
parts of Herod's Jerusalem

are actually down here in these tunnels.

During the 1 980s,

the first archaeologist
to document these tunnels was Dan Bahat.

-Wow, what a room! So what is this?
-Actually, we are now in what we call

the Herodian Hall,
which was built by Herod the Great.

It is the best preserved structure
in Herodian Jerusalem.

Herod tried to glorify his city.
He did it by rebuilding the temple.

He built streets which we see
lavishly paved with enormous stones.

Really, everything to make
Jerusalem look beautiful.

In some ways he created modern
Jerusalem, modern holy Jerusalem.

Yes, one must remember that
Herod the Great was not a great believer

for whom the temple as such
was an important thing.

He did it because he believed that
in case he beautifies the Temple Mount,

the nation will accept it as favour
and they will start to like him.

The fact is that they did not,
the fact is they did not.

MONTEFIORE:
Herod was hated by his own sons.

They planned to grab his kingdom
and he murdered any who challenged him.

Herod the Great, in old age,
suffered a most terrible death.

The lower half of his body,
his belly and scrotum

swelled up, suppurating fluid.

And into this fluid, flies laid eggs,

which, to the horror of everyone,
including Herod himself,

gave birth to worms.

His scrotum and his intestines
swelled up

and he died in terrible, terrible agony.

Yet, somehow, this gruesome end matched

Herod's record of barbaric sadism.

His death provoked chaos.

Three Messianic Jewish kings rebelled
and were crushed by the Romans.

Herod's kingdom was divided
between three of his sons.

The one who inherited Jerusalem
was so oafishly inept

that the Romans took control of Judea,

which they ruled in alliance
with the high priests.

In this febrile atmosphere,
a child was growing up in Galilee.

His father, though a carpenter,
was descended from King David,

a lineage both royal and sacred.

He was steeped in the knowledge
of the Jewish scriptures

and everything he did was a conscious
fulfilment of the Jewish prophecies.

But in particular, he saw himself
fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah,

that an anointed king would bring forth
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

His name was Jesus.

When he started preaching
up-country in Galilee,

his message was direct and dramatic.

''Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand. ''

The essence of his ministry
was the imminence of the apocalypse

and he soon attracted
a devoted following.

Jesus was a practising Jew.

So Jerusalem and the temple
were absolutely central to his beliefs.

He never actually claimed
to be the Messiah,

but his apocalyptic message

and his mocking of
the pro-Roman temple establishment

were a clear challenge
to their authority and to Roman rule.

In about 33 AD, he arrived in Jerusalem
for the Passover festival.

The city was at its most tense.

It was crowded with hundreds
of thousands of Jewish pilgrims

and the authorities, both the Romans
and the high priests alike,

feared another outbreak
of Messianic rebellion.

On the day before Passover,

Jesus came to the temple
crowded with pilgrims.

Now Jesus entered
the temple's royal portico,

where pilgrims could change money
to buy animals for sacrifice,

oxen for the rich, doves for the poor
and sheep for the squeezed middle.

And there, he attacked
the temple establishment,

overturning the tables
of the money changers

and telling them that they had turned
God's house into a den of thieves.

By confronting the temple priests
in such a public way,

Jesus was asking for trouble.

That night,Jesus was arrested
and brought before the Roman prefect,

Pontius Pilate.

The Romans had executed
all previous rebel prophets

and now Pilate sentenced Jesus
to the same end, death by crucifixion.

(SOFTLY) After Jesus' crucifixion,

his followers gave him
a traditional Jewish burial.

They laid him in this rock-cut tomb

and then they sealed the entrance
with a large stone.

Three days later, the gospels tell
that Jesus rose from the dead

and appeared to his amazed followers.

They became known as Nazarenes,
after the place Jesus came from.

The Nazarenes continued to worship
as Jews in the Jewish temple.

In fact, they didn't regard themselves
as a different religion at all.

It would be another 30 years

before the Nazarenes
established a separate identity.

In 66 AD, Roman corruption,
incompetence and brutality

provoked a massive Jewish rebellion.

The Jewish warlords were determined
to overthrow Roman rule.

When the Roman emperor Nero
heard about the rebellion,

he was at the Olympic games in Greece.

He immediately dispatched
his trusted general, Vespasian,

and his son, Titus,
to wipe out the rebellious Jews.

Titus advanced on Jerusalem
with a massive army of 60,000 men.

As the legionaries surrounded the city,

many of the Jews trapped inside tried to
escape by sneaking past the Roman lines.

The escaping refugees would swallow
their coins to protect their wealth.

But the legionaries discovered this

and started to eviscerate
every escaping Jew,

sifting greedily through their
intestines in the search for treasure.

Even Titus, hardly a squeamish man,
was shocked by this.

He banned it,
but the practice continued.

Titus ordered that every refugee
escaping from Jerusalem

should be crucified.

At its height,
500 Jews were being crucified a day.

The hillsides around Jerusalem
were a forest of crucifixes,

and the legionaries made it worse
by deliberately crucifying Jews

in grotesque and comical poses.

Truly, this was a scene from hell.

Those trapped inside the city

did everything they could
to keep the Romans out.

Yuval Harari has studied their methods.

Jerusalem at the time
had three different sets of walls,

and also, the defenders,

when they saw that one of the walls

was crumbling or about to be stoned,

sometimes build a makeshift wall
behind it.

So the Romans are faced by
multiple walls and fortification.

So what systems did the Romans use
to break into the city?

They tried to go under.
They dig tunnels under the walls

and then you have attempts
to go through the wall with huge rams.

Which is basically such a huge tree
with a big head,

usually from iron
or something like this,

which they just swing
and hit against the wall.

And finally,
the Romans also have artillery,

which fires huge

balls of rock.

They fire it over the walls,
into the city.

I mean, it's not a way to take a city,

but it's a way to terrorise
the civilian population inside.

MONTEFIORE: Either way,
you were pretty sure to die, somehow.

Yeah, by the time the Romans
are around the city,

the chances of survival

of the civilian population is very bad.

MONTEFIORE: Four months into the siege,
Jewish resistance was weakening.

On the 9th of the Jewish month of Ab,
the very day almost 500 years earlier,

when Nebuchadnezzar
had stormed Jerusalem,

Titus prepared to attack the temple.

That night his men broke through
the last and strongest

of the city's defensive walls.

The ensuing battle was witnessed
by a renegade Jewish general

who had defected and was travelling
in Titus' entourage.

Josephus described the horror
of the battle for the Temple Mount.

''Around the altar the heap of corpses
grew higher and higher,

''while down the holy of holy steps
poured a river of blood

''and the bodies of those killed
at the top slithered to the bottom.''

And then, the soldiers
let rip upon the city.

The soldiers were like men possessed.
Running, galloping through the streets,

killing everyone they could find,
men, women and children,

and burning every house they could see.

Josephus tells how, at dusk,
the slaughter finally ceased.

But now, the flames and the fire
gained mastery over the Holy City.

(FLAMES CRACKLING)

Through the roar of the flames

could be heard the sound
of these cracking stones,

the screaming of men,
women and children,

the screaming of burning people.

It was the sound of the greatest
city of the east dying.

So ended the siege of Jerusalem.

The next day, Titus ordered his men to
destroy what was left of the Temple.

Some of the stones
still lie where they fell.

Unlike after the Babylonian destruction,
the temple was never to be rebuilt.

The treasures that he looted
were paraded through Rome,

where Titus' triumph was celebrated
by the building of a monumental arch.

As many as 600,000 Jews were killed

and those who were left
were banned from Jerusalem.

60 years later, the emperor Hadrian

decided to annihilate
Judaism altogether.

When the Jews rebelled, he crushed them
with genocidal brutality.

This was a turning point for the Jewish
people and the Jewish faith.

They had to get used to life and faith

without the Temple Mount
and without Jerusalem.

From now on, Jerusalem remained
the Holy City for the Jewish people,

but it also became the lost motherland,
an ideal, a sacred talisman.

Hadrian renamed the province of Judea
as Palaestina,

after the Jews' enemy, the Philistines.

He rebuilt Jerusalem
as a typical roman pagan city,

with a new main street and two forums.

There are fragments of Hadrian's
Jerusalem hidden all over the city

and some of them
are in the most unlikely places.

Hi, can we go and look at the wall
and the arch at the back? Thank you.

This archway and this pillar
were once part of Hadrian's forum.

And it is rather exciting
to find them here,

in the back of a Palestinian patisserie

and the back storeroom,
lost and forgotten here.

And look, all their tools
and bits of building material

and old chairs turned over.

This is very Jerusalem. I love it here.

Jerusalem was pagan for over a century

with a shrine to Aphrodite
on the site of Christ's crucifixion

and a statue of Hadrian himself
on the Temple Mount.

After the destruction of the temple,
the Nazarenes had separated

from the Jewish mother religion
to become a distinct new religion,

Christianity.

They kept alive the traditions
of their holiest site

where Jesus had died and been buried.

Even in the centuries
when this was a pagan temple,

Christians still used to
sneak into these caves

and secretly keep this place alive
as a Christian shrine.

And take a look at what they wrote here.

(READING)

''We come to the Lord.''

Christians were sometimes tolerated,
but at other times viciously persecuted.

They were forced
to keep their rites secret

while the city was under pagan rule.

Without the Jews
and with the Christians lying low,

Jerusalem ceased to be
a religious centre altogether.

Without religion, it was just
another small, provincial town

of the Roman east.

The population fell to 1 0,000,

less than half its former size.
The walls crumbled.

Until the fate of the city
was transformed

by the caprice of one extraordinary man.

Constantine was a rough, tough soldier
who slashed his way to power,

but Jerusalem was to benefit
from his brutality.

In 3 1 2 AD, the Roman emperor
converted to Christianity

and set about rebuilding Jerusalem

as the religious centre
of his Christian empire.

(BELLS TOLLING)

Here, at the place
where Jesus was crucified,

Constantine knocked down
Hadrian's pagan temple

and built a Christian church.

He sent his beloved mother Helena,
who'd also converted to Christianity,

to rebuild Jerusalem.

When she came, the Empress Helena
heard from local Christians

that some parts of the true cross,
the actual wood

on which Jesus had been crucified,
was buried up here.

When she started to dig, the Empress
Helena found not one but three crosses.

She did not know
which one was the true one.

So she presented each one,
one by one, to a dying woman

and when the woman recovered,
she knew which one was the true cross

on which Jesus had been crucified.

Relics of Jesus' life became
increasingly important in Christianity,

none more so than the life-giving
wood of the true cross.

It had to have a special guard

because pilgrims tried to
bite chunks off when they kissed it.

Jerusalem was a totally Christian city.

Pilgrims could follow every step
of Jesus' life through its shrines.

But the Christians also inherited
the holiness

and the ancient Jewish stories
of Jerusalem itself.

It's one of the fascinating and
idiosyncratic things about this place,

the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
is that over time,

the Christians simply took some of the
stories of the Jewish Temple Mount

and moved them to
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

So that now they came to believe
that Adam was buried here

and his skull is beneath the Church.

They came to believe that Abraham
almost sacrificed his son Isaac here,

not on the Temple Mount.

And they came to believe that this
was the true centre of the world.

Just as the early Israelites

appropriated the Canaanites'
sacred places,

the Christians, too, borrowed the
holiness attached to the Jewish temple,

but they turned the Temple Mount
itself into a rubbish dump,

to celebrate their victory over Judaism.

(ALL SINGING)

Where once Jewish pilgrims came from
all over the east to celebrate Passover

in the temples of Solomon and Herod,

now Christian pilgrims came at Easter
to worship at the Holy Sepulchre.

The Jews themselves were still
banished from Jerusalem.

Persecuted by the Christian emperors,

they were allowed onto
the Temple Mount once a year

to be mocked by the Christians
who saw their lamentations

as proof of Jesus'prophecies
that the temple would fall.

By the 6th century, Rome had fallen

and Jerusalem was now ruled
from Byzantium,

the capital of the eastern Roman empire.

But the holiness of the city was
about to make it the coveted prize

of a new religion and a new empire.

As the Byzantine hold
on the middle east was waning,

weakened by war and corruption,
out of the deserts of Arabia

was about to burst forth
a new revelation

that would change the course
of human history

and transform the face of Jerusalem.

The new revelation was Islam
and Jerusalem was in its sights.