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Emet m'Tsiyon

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

WHEN AND WHY WAS AELIA FOUNDED?

Some who have read the two preceding blog items may have noticed a contradiction between Eusebios and Dio Cassius. According to Eusebios, Jerusalem was rebuilt after the Bar Kokhba uprising [132-135 CE] as the Roman polis of Aelia to serve as a kind of punishment for the Jews. In contrast, Dio Cassius writes that Aelia was founded as a Roman polis a year or two before the revolt and was in fact a provocation for the revolt.
Archeologist Hanan Eshel argued in a recent lecture that the issue has been resolved. Aelia was founded before the revolt. As grounds for this conclusion, Eshel pointed to a hoard of coins found in a cave northeast of Jerusalem, near the Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood of today. Most of the coins were Jewish coins minted by Bar Kokhba. A few others, however, were coins of the Colonia Aelia Capitolina. Now, it is reasonable to assume that a hoard of Bar Kokhba coins found in a cave were brought there by refugees from the Romans seeking refuge in the cave. That the Bar Kokhba coins and the Aelia coins were found together, presumably in the possession of war refugees who may have been killed in (possibly by smoke-producing fires) or near the cave by Roman troops, shows that the Aelia coins were minted before the war.

Bar Kokhba Coins -- a major motif on these coins is a sketch of the entrance to the Temple sanctuary. Inscriptions on the coins include For the Freedom of Jerusalem.
The Bar Kokhba coins were struck on Roman coins that were thereby reminted. Some think that the Jewish forces captured the pay chest for the 22nd Legion Deioteriana, a legion which --it is generally believed by historians-- was wiped out by the Jews. Nothing is heard of this legion after the Bar Kokhba uprising. The coins meant to pay the legion were presumably reminted as Jewish coins.
See link below for a view of Bar Kokhba coins and Aelia coins:
http://members.verizon.net/vze3xycv/Jerusalem/conf2ndRevolt.htm

Aelia Coins -- these carried the inscription Col Ael Cap and other abbreviations [Col Ael Kapit, etc.] of Colonia Aelia Capitolina. The name Aelia was used by the Eastern part of the divided Roman Empire, ruled as a Christian state from Constantinople [originally Byzantion], and today called the Byzantine Empire. This was so notwithstanding that the Christians knew that Jerusalem was the original name. Aelia was still in use when the Arabs conquered the country. The Arabs retained pre-Arab place names in the conquered territories. Hence, they called Jerusalem at first Iliya, their pronunciation of Aelia (as proven by their coins, inter alia). Only a few hundred years after the conquest did they begin to use al-Quds and Bayt al-Maqdis which were copied from Jewish terms, haQodesh and Beyt haMiqdash, which originally referred to holiness and the Temple, and later were applied by Jews to the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem in Hebrew was Yerusholem. Today's name Yerushalayim means "the two Jerusalems" and refers to the heavenly and the earthly Jerusalems. As a comparison, Mitsrayim, the Hebrew name for Egypt, means the two Egypts, Upper Egypt --the south-- and Lower Egypt --the north. The Nile flows downstream from south to north.

The Walls of Aelia -- Hadrian is depicted on a coin driving a team of oxen around the ruins of Jerusalem left from the first revolt [when the Temple was destroyed in the year 70 CE], making a furrow on which the new city walls would be built. This was a Roman ceremony for founding a new city. The Old City walls of Jerusalem today follow the walls of Aelia, except on the south. Jerusalem in Second Temple times was much bigger than the Old City of today. The Third Wall of the Second Temple city was built just south of the present US consulate about a kilometer north of today's Old City. Remains of the Third Wall can be seen very close to the consulate building, southwest of it, and east of the new Route One.
On the south, the walls of Aelia went substantially south of the present Old City walls, which were built for Ottoman Sultan Sulayman the Magnificent by a Jewish contractor, Abraham de Castro.

2 Comments:

  • Blackhole Lies

    There Was Never Any Biblical Jerusalem Ever in Israel/Palestine-Never Since The Creation of This Planet. However, it can be anywhere else.

    All historically recorded geographical information contradicts locating that forgotten Biblical place anywhere in todays Israel/Palestine area.

    "Egyptian Aristeas writes in a letter, letter of aristreas, his view of the city and its temple" when we approached near the site we saw the city built in the midst of whole of the jews, upon a hill which extended to a great height. On the top of the hill the Temple had been constructed, towering above all" image of a city on a mount.


    "Less known is the gap between this image and the actual physical-topographical situation in the city " Jerusalem, mountains surrounding it" Psamist poem 125:2 , but the city and the Temple are actually located on one of the more unassuming ridges in the area, which by no stretch of imagination can be seen as a lofty mountain."

    God's Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Place, and Memory, by Yaron Z. Eliav. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p1-2, 2005.

    This Place was called Aelia when Muslims took it in 7th century AD

    All historical records from time immamorial to the begining of crusades called it Aelia. This small town was not considered important by Byzantine Constantinople or other big surrounding Roman cities for sending troops to help Aelia against Muslims. There was no shred of evidence that christians in surrounding areas or in ANY PART OF THE WORLD ever protested later for hundreds of years against unholy occupation by Muslims of their Holy Land . No church sermon mentioned that some fake Holy Place of a Mythical Christ has come under pagan occupation.

    Visitors from Palestine to Europe Did not Report Any Jerusalem Till 1074 AD, Why?

    Yes even for inciting people at the beginining of crusades, this location was not mentioned by anyone.
    http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/g7...


    Gregory VII: Called for a "Crusade", in 1074 long before the first cusade but did not mention Jerusalem, Why?

    The crying need for crusades was only:
    " that a pagan race(Muslims) had overcome the Christians(in the near east) and with horrible cruelty had devastated everything almost to the walls of Constantinople, and were now governing the conquered lands with tyrannical violence, and that they had slain many thousands of Christians"

    "The Crusades were the long-term result of the rise of Islam."

    Elizabeth Hallam, Chronicles of the Crusades, Publisher: Welcome Rain, New York, New York, U.S.A., Year 2000.

    Scholars: Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeol... Thomas L. Thompson, Kamal Salibi and their fast growing associates deny any existance of any Biblical city called Jerusalem in Palestine ever in the history. They point to the complete absence of any Archeological and textual evidance for Biblical Jerusalem in Palestine despite hundred and fifty years of most intensive research.

    "Digging in Jerusalem has failed to produce evidence that it was a great city in David or Solomon's time. Thus a reconsideration of the evidence has enormous implications. For if there were no patriarchs, no Exodus, no conquest of Canaan- and no prospous united monarchy under David and Solomon- can we say that early biblical Israel, as described in the Five Books of Moses and the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, ever existed at all?"

    The Bible Unearthed: Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts, page 124, by Israel Finelstein and Neil Asher Silberman



    No one with right senses and open eyes can believe in the story, that is almost unanimously presented by all blind religions, that a whole capital city at the center of the worlds greatest civilisation of its age can be lost, without a trace under a known location, like a needle in the hay stack?


    Location of Biblical Jerusalem was invented to fool christians for Jihad missions to the Near East during crusades. Thus Biblical Jerusalem was founded in Palestine during crusades in the eleventh century. All stories of its destruction by Romans were mythologized later. The works like Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, the Septuagint and literature of the great scolars of the past Josephus, Philo, do not relate anything about any location with a geography similar to Aelia. In fact pre-crusade scholars like Maimonides, Rashi etc never talk about Aelia or a Jerusalem buried under it. Rather they discuss about a Jerusalem which is going to be decended from heavens sometime in future.
    see complete article free at:
    http://groups.msn.com/ScientificReligion/jerusalemhoax.msnw

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:33 AM  

  • I note that "Anonymous" does not supply us with a name, not even a nickname.

    What needs to be said is that this message is a mixture of ignorance and arrogance, fanaticism and borderline insanity, plus the urge to deny what Jews believe, which is strongly connected to Holocaust, among other things.

    our benighted Anon cannot accept the references made in this post to archeological discoveries, tangible proof of Jerusalem's ancient existence. Check out Assyrian archives for record of the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib. See Greek and Roman authors on Jews and Judaism, edited by Menachem Stern, for a host of Greco-Roman references to Jerusalem and Jews living there. See Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Hecataeus, Titus, Dio Cassius, etc etc.

    By Blogger Eliyahu m'Tsiyon, at 7:39 PM  

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