There Is Only One Legitimate Claim To Jerusalem

During my first visit to Israel I was told that Jerusalem was a holy city for three major religions, 1.Judaism, 2.Christianity and 3.Islam. Today, everybody mentions this as a fact.

But as I started to investigate the different religions, I studied the Tanach, the Christian Bible and the Koran, and discovered the following.

1. In the Jewish Bible, Jerusalem has many names: Salem (Shalem), Moriah, Jebuse (Yevuse), Jerusalem (Yerushalayim), and Zion (Tziyon). The most common term for the city, Yerushalayim, is mentioned 349 times in the Jewish Bible, while Tziyon is mentioned an additional 108 times.

The earliest mention of the site is Genesis 4:18, when Abraham interacts with Malchizedek, King of Shalem. In Genesis 22:1-19, the story of the Binding of Isaac (not Ishmael!) also takes place on "Mount Moriah" the site of the present-day Temple Mount. This area is located beneath the platform on which the Moslem Shrine, the Dome of the Rock, now stands.

When David was anointed King of Israel (c. 1000 BC), and subsequently united the tribes of Israel, he captured the city -- which he perceived as an ideal site for the capital of his new kingdom. Then, with the King and the Ark of the Covenant in residence in the city, Jerusalem was transformed into both the political capital and the religious center of Israel. King David's son and successor, Solomon, consolidated Jerusalem's eternal religious significance for all Jews by building the First Temple.

2. The Christian connection starts during 1.Century, when the Romans ruled over that area. The Christian Bible tells us that Jesus came to Jerusalem with his Jewish parents when he was twelve and visited the Temple. Of the biblical writers, Luke, reports the visit of Jesus at the age of 12. The book of John records that Jesus restored a blind man’s eyesight at the pool of Shiloah. The Shiloah pool is the end of the Shiloah channel that was dug to bring water from the Gihon spring to a reservoir inside the city walls. When you hike through Hezekiah’s tunnel, this is where you’ll end up – by the Shiloah pool. Jerusalem is therefore important to Christians; however, since Jesus was a Jew, it is still a Jewish connection.

3. What about the Islamic claim? Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran, not even once. So what is the story?

Sura 17 in the Koran, tells us that Mohammed flew, in a dream, on a horse, from the sacred mosque to the farthest mosque. Muslims claim it today to be the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. That would make Mohammed's alleged overnight trip covering 1,000 miles from Mecca to Jerusalem, a trip to heaven, and a return to Mecca by morning.

Mohammed died in 632 of the Common Era. At the time of his death there was no mosque built in Jerusalem! The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. That’s about 80 years after Mohammed died.

Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the "Sacred Mosque," and the mosque in Medina as the "Furthest Mosque."

So much for the Islamic claim on Jerusalem as one of their holy places. Goebbels said once that "If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed." The Islamic claim is a lie, that’s all it is.

There is only one legitimate claim to Jerusalem as their city, and that’s the Jewish claim. I think even Jesus would agree with that.