Last semester I took a class in the Classics Department called Introduction to the New Testament. As someone who was raised in a secular household, I had always felt that I was missing some essential part of my basic education. This lack of knowledge of major faiths and the influence they exert on modern culture has led into a deep fascination of religion. It also led me to that New Testament class, and to this class about a city so sacred to the three major monotheistic belief systems.
In the Introduction to the New Testament, I came to realize how disputed the historical life of Jesus was. The only major written sources we have are the four gospels of the Bible, the earliest of which was written decades after the death of Jesus and all of which contain the bias of being written by Christians. In Karen Armstrong's brief summary of the life, death, and rising of Jesus I recognized stories and passages from all of the gospels (whose plot lines do not always agree).
Such dissonance within just one faith of the three that hold Jerusalem so holy exemplifies just how deeply the conflict runs. The first seven chapters detail the history of the city from the earliest records thousands of years ago. However, just as the four gospels are a disputed source for "facts" about Jesus, all records, especially those so removed from the modern era, undoubtably have faults. In a city already plagued by differing beliefs about the "truth" and religious events, even the secular "history" will never be verbatim. This is a reality that emphasizes the importance of belief. This conflict has been going on far too long for what "really" happened to be much of a concern. Any solution will come only from a combination of the acceptance of today's reality, respect of "belief" as equally valuable as "fact", and a focus forward instead of back.
Preach. Dissonance is the word of the day. It's kind of terrifying sometimes, thinking about how many millions of people care about this issue and how each one of them has a different set of beliefs and values and things that they consider "fact" or "fiction", etc. That proves that you're entirely right about the fact that any solution will have to be forward-focused and based on the here and now instead of the tangled tales of what may or may not have happened so many years ago.
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