Jesus and Jerusalem
What happened to Jesus in Jerusalem?
For Christians, Jerusalem’s place in the life of Jesus gives it great importance, in addition to its place in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible.
Jerusalem is the place where Jesus was brought as a child, to be ‘presented’ at the Temple (Luke 2:22) and to attend festivals (Luke 2:41). According to the Gospels, Jesus preached and healed in Jerusalem, especially in the Temple courts. There is also an account of Jesus’ ‘cleansing’ of the Temple, chasing various traders out of the sacred precincts (Mark 11:15). At the end of each of the Gospels, there are accounts of Jesus’ Last Supper in an ‘upper room’ in Jerusalem, his arrest in Gethsemane, his trial, his crucifixion at Golgotha, his burial nearby and his resurrection and ascension.
Jerusalem at the Time of Jesus
by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, O.P.
Jesus paid his first visit to Jerusalem in the arms of his mother when he was a month old (Luke 2:22). It was to be 12 years before he visited again, this time as a Galilean pilgrim (Luke 2:42).
The fatigue of the four- or five-day walk from Nazareth would have fallen from him when he reached the summit of the Mount of Olives and looked down upon the city. Its power and beauty would have swept aside all emotions save wonder and immense pride.
When Jesus first saw it that spring day, Jerusalem had been a Jewish city for a thousand years, during which it had been laid waste many times. The last had been the summer of 37 B.C. when the catapults of Herod the Great and his Roman