The best vantage point on Jerusalem is on the Mt. of Olives. We drive through a-Tur, an Arab village, at 2650 feet above sea level. The Mosque of the Ascension appears on the left. Christians built a chapel here in the late 4th century to commemorate the ascent of Jesus into heaven. A piece of bedrock in the middle contains a mark like a footprint, which pilgrims through the ages attributed to Jesus.

A few yards to the south is the Pater Noster ("Our Father") church (open 9.00 - 12.00, 15.00 - 17.00, not Sundays). Here stood the Constantinian basilica where Jesus' ascension was first remembered. Inside is a cave, which early Christians identified as the site of his teaching about the coming judgment. (Matthew 24:1-26:2) This cave later became associated with the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:1-4). It appears on tiles in the present church in more than a hundred languages.

Driving south, we reach a point where the city is tipped toward us as though on a platter.

At the center of vision is the Dome of the Rock, commemorating Muhammad's ascent into heaven. It stands, we shall see, where the Temple stood. Beyond it, to the north, west and south, spreads a city of 650,000, people whose presence here, like ours, can be traced, directly or indirectly, to feelings about the place we are looking at. In the time of the Temple, on first seeing the city before them (after reaching the top of one of the mountains around it) pilgrims would sing:

Psalm 122:1-9 

Looking at the development (and we see only a small portion from here) it is hard to imagine that before 1850, Jerusalem existed only within what we today call the Old City walls. Standing here, say, in 1849, we would have seen just landscape around those walls, as well as a caravanserai and perhaps the occasional ruin of a church. To the north, on the horizon, we would have seen the alleged grave of Samuel, Nabi Samwil, as we can today. And far to the southeast, we would have made out (as we do now) the cone of Herodion, burial place of Herod the Great.

Coming back to the golden dome: to its left we see the black one of the al-Aqsa Mosque:

The whole area including them is known in Arabic as the Noble Sanctuary (Haram es-Sharif), which Jews and Christians also refer to as the Temple Mount. Looking between the two domes but beyond, we see the new buildings of the Jewish Quarter. (Beyond it lies the Armenian quarter, not visible from here.) On the skyline behind them (the water divide, which was the ancient road) are some of the buildings of the western, Jewish side.     To the right of the golden dome and beyond is the Christian quarter, with the large gray dome of the Holy Sepulcher in its midst. The Haram, with the area to its right, is the Muslim quarter.

Here is a photograph from the opposite angle, taken at a time when al-Aqsa's dome was silver:

The view from the Mt. of Olives offers many possibilities. We shall look at the city according to the following order: 

• The first Jerusalem

• Jerusalem from Solomon to Herod

• Jesus' entry into Jerusalem

• The Cemeteries, the Golden Gate and Judgment Day

• Dominus Flevit ("The Lord weeps")

• Gethsemane

See also Jerusalem: An Introduction,

The Pater Noster Church and the Mosque of the Ascension

© 2003 Near East Tourist Agency (NET)

Text © 2003 Stephen Langfur