The Holy Land is part of the territories of the modern State of Israel (until 1948 - Palestine). It is a shrine of three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The borders of the Holy Land stretch from the west from the Mediterranean coast to the deserts of Jordan and from Galilee in the north to the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.
At the center of the Holy Land stands Jerusalem, an ancient walled city located in the Judean Hills west of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth.
Hebrew - ‏ארץ הקודש‎, Éreẓ haQodeš
Greek - Άγιοι Τόποι, Agioi Topoi
Arabic - ‏الأرض المقدسة‎‎, al-Arḍu l-Muqaddasa
The Holy Land has significant religious significance for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Baha'i Faith. It currently includes the Israeli territories, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and parts of Lebanon. Israel - Holy Land, Jerusalem is the jewel of the Israeli crown. Jerusalem has great religious significance, it is the holy city for Judaism, the birthplace of Christianity, and the third of the holy cities for Islam. The perception that the land was sacred to Christianity was one of the reasons for the Crusades, in which Christians sought to conquer the Holy Land from the Muslims who had invaded and liberated it from the Byzantine Empire. The Holy Land has been a place of religious pilgrimage since biblical times for Jews, Christians and later Muslims.
The forefather of the Jewish people, Patriarch Abraham, comes to this land in the 19th century BC (about 1850 BC) from Mesopotamia, from Ur of the Chaldeans (Sumerian) to southern current Euphrates. At the call of God, he sets out from there through Harran (north of the Euphrates), from where the patriarch Jacob then came, the first to be called by the name Israel (one of the etymologies is “He who saw God,” “who came face to face with God”) (Gen. ch. 32:28), according to which the entire Jewish people received the name Israel... Abraham and his descendants were promised by God the land of Canaan, named after its then inhabitants. According to this promise of God, this land is called the promised land, as the great Jew and great Christian Paul of Tarsus (Heb. 11:9).

After forty years of wandering in the desert, the people of Israel, led by Joshua, settled in Palestine (c. 1200 BC). The next two centuries cover the period of the Judges, and then comes the era of the Kings. Around 1000 BC, the strong and glorious King David, poet, musician and prophet, occupied Jerusalem, which later became the capital of Israel. From this time on, over the centuries, the Holy City of Jerusalem becomes a symbol of all Palestine as the Holy Land and a symbol of the Earth and all humanity in general. Every reader of the Bible knows about the Holy Land, the land of sacred memories. Orthodox pilgrims have been flocking here for more than two thousand years. For every Orthodox Russian person, the Holy Land has always been the closest, most desirable place on earth. For on this earth the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Presentation of the Lord, the Baptism of Jesus Christ, and his appearance in the Tabor light of the Transfiguration took place. Here lay earthly ways Savior, His sermons and teachings were heard, His great miracles were performed. The Last Supper took place on this earth. Here the Savior suffered the betrayal of Judas, the trial of Pontius Pilate, walked the Way of the Cross to Golgotha ​​and was crucified by his people on the cross. The glorious Resurrection of Christ as a prototype of our resurrection, the Ascension of the Savior into Heaven, and the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles took place in the Holy Land. The earthly life of the Virgin Mary took place here, and Her Assumption took place here. From here the apostles, disciples of Christ, dispersed to all corners of the world, bringing to people His Teaching about the salvation of mankind.
Once you have visited the Holy Land, it is impossible to forget the atmosphere of the holy places and beauty. Palestinian landscapes, night services at the Holy Sepulcher. The Holy Land, the cradle of the Christian faith, always remains near and dear to the heart of every person.

The HOLY LAND is the meeting place of man and God. The land where most of the Old Testament history took place, the land of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; the land of the holy prophets - Isaiah, Elijah, Elisha and many others. The Holy Land is the birthplace of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was the Nativity of Christ, the Presentation of the Lord, the Baptism of the Lord, the Transfiguration of the Lord, there the Lord preached, performed miracles, suffered freely and death on the cross; there was the all-glorious Resurrection of Christ, the Ascension of the Lord into heaven, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit. This is the Promised Land.
The Holy Land is the land where the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary took place, Her introduction into the temple, the Annunciation, where HER glorious Assumption took place. Holy Land - land of St. The apostles and many saints of God, the first martyrs for Christ, reverend fathers and wives.
This is the Land where believers, saints and sinners have long sought. This is the Land where St. Equal to the Apostles Helen, the life-giving Cross, where our near and dear Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker and many many believers from all countries flocked to worship.
From distant Russia, for a long time, people have been striving to the Holy Sepulcher, to the Holy City of Jerusalem, to the Trembling Golgotha. The name of one such pilgrim has survived to this day: this is the “abbot of the Russian land” Daniel, who at the beginning of the 12th century from Russia reached the Holy Land, spent 16 months in it, having visited everywhere, and, returning home, told his brothers and sisters where he was and what he saw.
What can you see now in the Holy Land? We see the same sky, the same mountains and waters, we feel the same air that we had during the earthly life of Christ the Savior. We walk on earth that is sanctified by His feet. We visit places associated with certain events of His earthly life. And yet, we see how diversely the love of believers for the Lord has manifested itself and continues to manifest itself; how these places, sometimes naively, sometimes ugly, but from the bottom of a loving heart, were and are being decorated.
May the blessing of the Lord be with all who strive to become more familiar with the earthly homeland of Christ the Savior, with the Holy Land, with the “revealed Gospel,” as it is sometimes called, and so come closer to understanding the Holy Scriptures - the Word of Life, illuminating their daily lives with it.

Bishop Afanasy (Evtich)
The Holy Land is the name given to the territory of present-day Israel, or Palestine. Literally, the expression holy land is found in the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 2:12) and in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon (12:3), where it is also called the most precious land for God of all others (“the land most precious of all to You”) (Wis. 12.7).
The name Palestine, in Hebrew Paleseth, means the land of the Philistines, who at the end of the 13th century BC. occupied this territory and gave it a name, which was later reported by the Greek historian Herodotus.
However, the oldest biblical name for this territory is Canaan (Judges 4:2), the land of Canaan or the land of the Canaanites (Genesis 11:31; Exodus 3:17). Somewhat later in the Old Testament it is called the borders of Israel (1 Sam. 11:3) and the land of the Lord (Hos. 9:3) or simply the land (Jer.). Therefore, it is primarily the Earth. Hence, in modern colloquial language in Israel, it is simply called Eretz, or Haaretz - land (Ps. 103.14: “Hamotzi lehem min ha-aretz” - “to produce bread from the land”).
In the New Testament it is called the land of Israel and the land of Judah (Matthew 2:20; John 3:22), as well as the promised land, which the patriarch Abraham “received as an inheritance” from God (“had to receive as an inheritance”) and “by faith he dwelt in the promised land as if it were a stranger" (Heb. 11:8-9). In these last words contains the highest historical, metahistorical meaning of the Holy Land, but more on that later.
So, Palestine is a biblical land - a land of sacred history and sacred geography of the three great world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Let's look at it first from a geographic point of view.
Today, biblical scholars refer to the large geographic area of ​​the Middle East, including Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, by the appropriate term for it: the “Fertile Crescent.” This geographical space stretches out in the form of a kind of bow or arc over the Syro-Arabian Desert and connects the Persian Gulf with the Mediterranean and Red Seas. On the upper side of this geographic arc are the mountain ranges of Iran, Armenia and Asia Minor Tavros, and on the lower side are the Syrian and Arabian deserts. Four rivers flow through the territory of this arc. big rivers: Tigris, Euphrates, Orontes and Jordan, and on its very border is the Nile River. The eastern end of the Fertile Crescent is Mesopotamia, while the western end includes the valley between the Judean Desert and the Mediterranean Sea and extends down to the Nile Valley. Palestine is the southwestern extremity of this large geographical territory, connecting Asia and Africa, and, through the Mediterranean, also Europe.
This key place at the junction of the old continents of our planet Earth has been inhabited since ancient times and represents a center of civilization. For Europe, this territory was in fact primarily the East. It was and remains, because, undoubtedly, without this there is no Middle East and Europe itself.
So Palestine, being a connecting link between Mesopotamia and Egypt, was at the same time the connection and center of East and West. This Middle Eastern territory, or, otherwise, the space of the Eastern Mediterranean basin, is the cradle of European civilization, and in its geographical and spiritual content is neither East nor West. Both from a geographical and spiritual point of view, this territory was never closed, but was in constant contact with Arabia and Mesopotamia, through Iran (Persia) with India, then through Egypt and Nubia with Africa, as well as through Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands with Europe. Consequently, Palestine was in constant contact with the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and also, from very early times, with the Aegean and Hellenic-Roman civilizations and cultures. But, like the Holy Land, Palestine has its own special biblical civilization, which includes all three of the above.
Geographically, the Holy Land of Palestine itself consists of different regions. In the central part this is the Judean Plain, or, in biblical terms, Ezdrilon. It stretches from the Negev, or Negib, desert in the south, i.e. from the Sinai Peninsula, to Mount Carmel in the northwest and to Mount Hermon in the north, that is, to the mountain range of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. The height of this central plateau reaches more than 1000 meters above sea level, and Dead Sea it drops 420 meters below this level. To the west of the central part there are lowlands that descend to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, while eastern part Palestine is made up of the Jordan River Valley, which carries its waters from Dan (a source under Mount Hermon) and Lake Galilee to the Dead Sea. The eastern side of this valley, called Transjordan (Transjordan), adjoins the Syrian and Arabian deserts.
The northern part of Palestine is called Galilee, the central Samaria, and the southern part Judea. The length of this entire geographical territory is 230-250 km in length and 60 to 120 km in width. In Galilee there are Mount Carmel and Tabor, beyond Lake Gennesaret the Golan Heights, in Samaria - Ebal and Gerizim, and in Judea Nebi Samuel near Jerusalem and Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and to the east of it the Mount of Olives. There are other mountains in the Judean Hills.
The climate in Palestine is varied: Mediterranean, desert and mountainous, and so is the fertility of its land. It varies from abundance to scarcity, and therefore in the Bible this land is called both “a good and spacious land, where milk and honey flow”, and “a empty, parched and waterless land” (Ex. 3, 8; Ps. 62:2 ). Geographical and climatic diversity Palestine seemed to foretell the complexity of its history, about which we will say a few more words.
The oldest inhabitants of Palestine were the Amorites and Canaanites, who lived here around the 20th century BC. Then come the Arameans, who lived in Palestine and Syria around the 13th century, from about the same time - the Philistines, after whom the land itself received its name, as well as many other ethnic groups mentioned in the Bible.
The forefather of the Jewish people, Patriarch Abraham, comes to this land in the 19th century BC (about 1850 BC) from Mesopotamia, from Ur of the Chaldeans (Sumerian) in the southern reaches of the Euphrates. At the call of God, he sets out from there through Harran (north of the Euphrates), from where the patriarch Jacob then came, the first to be called by the name Israel (one of the etymologies is “He who saw God,” “who came face to face with God”) (Gen. ch. 32:28), according to which the entire Jewish people received the name Israel... Abraham and his descendants were promised by God the land of Canaan, named after its then inhabitants. According to this promise of God, this land is called the promised land, as the great Jew and great Christian Paul of Tarsus reminds us of this (Heb. 11:9).
The descendants of Abraham, and in addition to this promise, soon descended from Palestine to Egypt, at the time when it was owned by the Hyksos (Hiks) (c. 1700-1550 BC). The presence of Jews in Egypt is clearly attested during the times of the pharaohs Akhenaten (1364-1347) and Ramses II (c. 1250), when the entire people slavishly served this powerful pharaoh, engaged in "plinfurgy" (brick production Ex.5,7-8) and building pyramids. In view of the heavy exploitation of Israel, the great Moses is a prophet called by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob during his wanderings in the desert, who saw the Bush on fire under Mount Sinai (a well-known theme of Orthodox iconography “The Burning Bush”) and heard from it the voice of Yahweh: “I I am Jehovah" and "the place on which you stand is holy land" (Ex. 3:5), led the Jews from Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula (in the middle of the 13th century BC). Here, under the rocky Sinai and Horeb, Moses received the Law from God: the Ten Commandments and the rest of the religious, moral and social institutions of the Covenant, or more precisely the Union concluded between God and Israel (Ex. 7 - 24).
After forty years of wandering in the desert, the people of Israel, led by Joshua, settled in Palestine (c. 1200 BC). The next two centuries cover the period of the Judges, and then comes the era of the Kings. Around 1000 BC, the strong and glorious King David, poet, musician and prophet, occupied Jerusalem, which later became the capital of Israel. From that time on, over the centuries, the Holy City of Jerusalem became a symbol of all Palestine as the Holy Land and a symbol of the Earth and all humanity in general.
Jerusalem was also an ancient Canaanite city. Even in ancient Egyptian texts (c. 1900 BC) it is mentioned as Urusalem. Around the same time that the patriarch Abraham came to Canaan, Jerusalem was the city of Melchizedek, king of Salem, whose name in the Bible means “king of righteousness and king of peace” (Gen. 14; Heb. 7), which again is a sign of a great future , that is, messianic eschatology. The oldest inhabitants of Jerusalem, starting from approximately 3000 BC, were the Amorites and Hittites, who were also called Jebusites; David later took Jerusalem from them (this name most likely means the home of the world, but history shows that its world is the same as the whole history of the earth and the human race). In Jerusalem, David built a royal tower on Zion, the highest place in the Holy City, and his son Solomon erected a magnificent temple of God on Mount Moriah. Here, according to legend, the forefather Abraham, according to God's commandment, wanted to sacrifice his son Isaac, and nearby is Mount Golgotha, on which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was sacrificed for humanity.
In the context of the Old Testament, Jerusalem, as we have already said, is understood as a symbol of the Holy Land and Israel as a people, and further - as a symbol of the whole earth and all humanity. Therefore, God, through the great prophet Isaiah, says to Jerusalem: “Will a woman forget her suckling child, so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb? But even if she did forget, I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on My hands; your walls are always before me.” By me." (Isa. 49:15-16). The strength of this covenant, or promise, of God, according to the Holy Scriptures, is the strength of God’s love for man and the entire universe. Yahweh conveys this to Israel through the prophet Jeremiah, thus anticipating his new covenant (= union) with humanity: “I have loved you with everlasting love, and therefore have shown favor to you.” (Jer. 31:3).
Here, in connection with the idea of ​​Jerusalem as the Holy City and Palestine as the Holy Land, there is a certain Divine, or rather Divine-human, dialectic. It is still relevant now, but more on that later, but first let’s complete the excursion into history.
Around 700, the Assyrians, having occupied the northern part of Palestine, besieged Jerusalem, but only the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was able to capture and conquer the city in 587 BC. A month later, the military commander Nebuzaradan destroyed the Temple and the Holy City and took the Jews into Babylonian slavery. Fifty years later (538 BC), the Persian king Cyrus captured Babylon and allowed the Israelites to return from captivity to their homeland. At the same time, both the Temple and the city were restored under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Ezra. In 333 BC, Palestine was occupied by Alexander the Great, and the Hellenistic period began for it, which lasted until 63 BC, when the Roman Pompey took possession of Jerusalem. Roman-Byzantine rule in Palestine lasted until the arrival of the Muslims in 637.
Great and glorious period kings of Judah in Jerusalem, covering about half a millennium, was a time of development and rise, but also of the fall of the Holy City and the Holy Land - both material and spiritual. The Assyrian-Babylonian captivity stopped this development. Then came periods of Persian, Greek and Roman rule over Israel and national-religious resistance, as described in the book of the prophet Daniel and the books of the Maccabees. All this time, the period of great and small prophets of God continues in Israel, starting with the greatest figure in Israeli sacred history, the prophet Elijah the Tishbite, who was reflected in the person of the prophet John the Baptist in the time of Christ.
The appearance and activity of the prophets in the Holy Land and Jerusalem became a decisive event in the history of Israel and Palestine and unique in the history of all mankind. To the prophets is added Jesus Christ, the Great Prophet from Nazareth of Galilee, the Son of God and the Son of Man - the Messiah, who with His death and resurrection in Jerusalem expands the geographical and historical boundaries of the Holy Land and the Holy City, thus turning history into eschatology. The work of Christ is continued by the New Testament apostles, who interpret and complement the Prophets, and transform the Old Testament tabernacle (synagogue) into the Church. Without prophets and apostles, at the center of which is the Messiah Christ, who unites them, fulfills them and fills them with meaning, the history of Palestine and the entire Old Testament-New Testament civilization, and therefore our European civilization, is incomprehensible and inexplicable.
The appearance of Christ in the sacred history and sacred geography of Palestine was preceded by the period of the Maccabean struggle and the emergence of religious movements and groups in Israel, which were an expression of the attempts of the Israeli people to resist the influence of Hellenistic and Roman religion and culture, syncritical and pantheistic in nature. At the same time, all this was a reflection of the Israeli and all-human expectation of the peoples (prosdohia ethnon), as the forefather Jacob predicted - Israel (Gen. 49:10; 2 Pet. 3:12-13). This was the time of waiting for the Messiah - Christ, as many biblical and extra-biblical testimonies eloquently speak about. This messianic expectation of both the Jews, the Hellenes, and other peoples of the East was generally expressed in the first half of the 2nd century A.D. by Justin the Philosopher (who was from Samaria and lived in Rome) with the words: “Jesus Christ is new law And New Testament and the hope (prosdohia) of all those who from all nations expect Divine blessings" (Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew, 11, 4).
The time of Christ in Palestine and Jerusalem is reflected in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Today's holy places in the Holy Land in most cases represent the geography of the biography of Christ, as St. Cyril of Jerusalem noted. Palestine and Jerusalem are the materialized (objectified) earthly biography of Christ, the earthly topography of His heavenly biography. This, among other things, is confirmed by modern archaeological research and finds in Palestine, which Christian and Israeli archaeologists and biblical scholars have jointly done in recent years.
The Roman conquerors destroyed many biblical monuments and traces of the Old Testament and Christian times in the Holy Land: the son of Vespasian, the military commander Titus, destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 (in 73, the fortress of Metsanda - Masada, famous for the tragedy of the Jewish people, on the shores of the Dead Sea was captured); In 133, Emperor Hadrian completely destroyed Jerusalem and founded it in its place. new town"Aelia Capitolina" (with the temple of Jupiter on the site of the temple of Yahweh!).
Already during the first conquest of Jerusalem, Christians left the city and fled to Transjordan (Transjordan), from where in the first half of the 2nd century they slowly began to return to Palestine and Jerusalem. When Jerusalem was sacked by Emperor Hadrian in 133, the Jews were scattered into the diaspora (which for many of them began even earlier). In subsequent centuries, they were forbidden to return to Jerusalem and for them there was only one sad pilgrimage to the Western Wall - the remnant of the last glorious temple of King Herod, which Christ visited and whose destruction was predicted with sorrow (Matt. 23, 37-38; 24:1- 2). However, a Jewish population still remained in Galilee, and during the Byzantine period there were dozens of synagogues throughout Palestine.
The number of Christians in Palestine was constantly growing, and especially since the proclamation of Christian freedom under Constantine the Great (the famous Edict of Milan in 313 on religious tolerance). The Holy Queen Helen, mother of Constantine, went in 326 from Nis and Nicomedia to the Holy Land and began great work there to renovate the holy places. With the help of Constantine, she erected dozens of churches in Palestine, in places of the Nativity (her basilica in Bethlehem still exists today), the life, exploits and sufferings of the Savior (the Church of the Resurrection on the Holy Sepulcher, with its outbuildings, still exists). Recently, on the mosaic floor of one of the churches in Palestine, a map of this country was discovered with the temples of these first Christian emperors, Saints Constantine and Helen, depicted on it. The later tradition of Zadužbinarism, among the Byzantine and Serbian rulers, and among the rulers of other Christian nations, originates from the Holy Land. The construction of Helena in the Holy Land was continued by Empress Eudoxia, the wife of Theodosius II, as well as Emperor Justinian. Emperor Heraclius in 628 returned what was captured by the Persians Honest Cross Christ, found in due time by the holy Queen Helena and revered by all Christians from time immemorial.
The pious pilgrimage to the Holy Land continued uninterrupted for centuries and, with the changes and difficulties brought by each historical era, continues to this day. (One of the oldest books dedicated to pilgrimage, “Description of a Journey to Holy Places” of Etheria, IV century). The most significant and authentic holy places to this day belong to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Zion “Mother of all Churches” of God, and then to the Roman Catholics, Copts, Protestants, etc.
In 637, the Muslim Arabs occupied Jerusalem, and then the heirs of the conqueror Caliph Omar, on the site of the Solomon and Justinian temples, erected two now existing mosques, which, like the two-thousand-year-old Orthodox church The newly formed Jewish state of Israel did not touch the Resurrection and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Calvary. From the end of the 11th to the 13th centuries, Western Christians, the Crusaders, temporarily liberated Jerusalem, but at the same time heavily plundered it and other holy places, so that even the initiator of the Crusades, Pope Innocent III, criticized them for plundering shrines that Muslims at least to a certain extent respected . However, the pope overstepped this and installed his puppet Uniate “patriarchs” throughout the enslaved Orthodox East.
From the Arabs, rule in Palestine passed to the Seljuks, then to the Mamluks and finally to the Ottomans. Only in 1917 was Turkish power finally removed from Palestine, and control was transferred to the British, who in a certain way contributed to the Jews in the formation of the current state of Israel in 1948. At the end of the 19th century, the Zionist movement, founded in Switzerland, moved to Jerusalem. Not long before this, tsarist Russia founded the Russian Palestine Society in Palestine to study the Holy Land, which was also done by Western Roman Catholics and Protestants, whose biblical and archaeological schools in Jerusalem are now world famous. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has its own “Seminary of the Holy Cross” in Jerusalem.
And now the focus of attention of the inhabitants of the Holy Land and the whole world is primarily on holy places. In fact, all of Palestine is one big holy place. Here, centuries-old biblical history is materialized (objectified), to a certain extent, our entire Old Testament-New Testament civilization, the material and spiritual culture of Europe and the Europeanized peoples of the world. Enough has been written about these holy places in our time, and everything essential is basically known. Each of these shrines has its own special spiritual significance, a multifaceted heritage that can only be felt and experienced at the scene. This would be a truly special personal story about each of the holy places and their relived history, but we will not dwell on this. Let’s just briefly say something about the historiosophical significance of the Holy Land and Jerusalem within the framework of the Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition, that is, on the basis of the biblical-Christian vision of the world and humanity.
From the Bible, from the view of the Holy Land captured in it, it is clear that at first it was a “foreign land,” the land of polytheists and pagans. Then God promised and gave it as an inheritance to Abraham and his descendants Israel, old and new. However, the inheritance of this " promised land", from a historical point of view, was of a changeable nature. The biblical narrative itself about the initial days of the Holy Land, the historical accuracy of which has been confirmed (the Bible is primarily a historical book, although its message is also metahistorical), contains one universal truth.
Namely, the Bible initially closely connects man and earth. The first man Adam is “from the earth” - “Adamah” (earthly!), and the name of the earth itself is “Adam” (Gen. 2.7; 3.19). But according to the Holy Scriptures, man is simultaneously characterized as the image of God, he is the bearer of the inalienable image and likeness of God, both as an individual person and as a society of the human race, and his calling and mission on Earth to become the son of God, and to make the earth his Paradise, but and God's, habitat and home. Thus, man was given the Divine (Theanthropic) Oikonomia. (The Greek word oikonomia is very well translated into Slavic as Domostroy (House Construction), just as the Greek concept of Ecology in Slavic is translated as “Domo-logy”, Domo-logy - care and concern for the human place of stay and dwelling, about home and abode , about the environment and living space, about the “land of the living”; as the Psalmist would say: “I will be well pleased with the Lord in the land of the living.” - “I will walk before the face of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps. 114:9).
According to the Bible, the Earth and Cosmos were created in exactly the same way and for the same purpose as Paradise and for Paradise. The Bible tells us that man once, at the beginning of history, missed this first chance. But the same Holy Scripture says and testifies that this chance is not completely lost for man. The man fell, but did not die. This is the main message of the biblical covenant or covenant of God with Abraham, and it is given precisely when Abraham was called from Chaldea to come and settle in Canaan, in the “promised land” of Palestine. This is the original promise given by God at the beginning of history, of which He Himself is the guarantor; Man, Abraham and Israel also participate in it, accepting this call and entering into union with God. What happened to the fulfillment of this promise? Let's consider this issue in detail.
Undoubtedly, there is some special dialectic, but not Platonic or Hegelian, but biblical, in that for a person the earth is both joy and sadness, a source of life and death, blessed happiness and prosperity, but at the same time a source of curse, misfortune and loss. This is clear from the very God's word to Israel: the land “flowing with honey and milk” is given to the Israeli people - the symbol of humanity - as an inheritance (Deut. 15:4), but at the same time this very people is indicated that they are a stranger and a settler on this land, a temporary resident ( Lev. 25:23). From a historical point of view, for centuries, Palestine was essentially that for the Israelis. And this is not just a metaphor. Moreover, it was the same for Christians. This Holy Land, which is a symbol of the Earth in general, is most often associated with Judaism and Christianity, but also with all of humanity, and they are also associated with it. It is in this connection that a certain dialectic lies. Because the same God-given Holy Land is also necessary in order to liberate from convulsive human attachment to the earth, to the earthly kingdom, and only to it, so that human life is not reduced only to the earthly and is not identified only with it. For the earth is not the salvation of man, but man is the salvation of the earth.
We can see the dialectics of this, or, more precisely and closer to the biblical language, the historical paradox of this, in a couple of examples. Even the forefather Jacob - Israel gave the name of God to some key places in the Holy Land: Bethel - “the house of God” (Gen. 28:17-19) and Penuel - “the face of God” (Gen. 32:30). In the same way, Jerusalem became the Holy City of God, the “navel of the Earth,” according to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 38.12), that is, the center of the world, and therefore Solomon built the temple of the Living God in Jerusalem, in which God loves to promise and manifest His glory. At the same time, meanwhile, the Holy Scripture says that sometimes, in vicissitudes human history, that is, due to human variability, in the same places there were also temples, serving not the True God, but Baal and Molech! The “Holy Place” turned into the “abomination of desolation” and the Lord of glory was crucified in the Holy City (Matthew 24:15; 1 Cor. 2:8). The prophets from Elijah the Tishbite to John the Baptist and Baptist and to Christ Himself and the apostles so openly testify to this whole tragic paradox.
This paradox contains enough elements of that biblical apocalypticism, according to which the idea of ​​the Holy City bifurcates and stratifies. Two cities are polarized and opposed to each other: the Holy City - Jerusalem and the demonic city - Babylon (F.M. Dostoevsky, Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov and others spoke a lot about this, after the Apocalypse and St. Augustine). In history, in fact, the temple of God and the “den of thieves,” the Church of God and the Tower of Babel are divided and contrasted (Matt. 21:13; 2 Cor. 6:14-16).
Yet this polarized, black-and-white, apocalyptic vision and perception of the world and human history in connection with the Holy Land and the Holy City is not the only vision and perception that we find recorded in the Holy Book of God. There is another vision, biblically deeper and more complete, biblically more realistic, and this is a genuine Old Testament-New Testament vision of the earth and man on it, as if through the prism of the Holy Land of Israel - Palestine and the Holy City - Jerusalem.
It is about an eschatological vision and experience of the earth and human history on it. It must be emphasized that this eschatological vision and perception is not yet ahistorical or ahistorical. On the contrary, it was the biblical, Old Testament-New Testament eschatological vision that opened and made possible a true vision and understanding of history not as a cyclical return of everything to the beginning (even if it were a primeval “Paradise” or prehistoric “happy times”), as it happens everywhere in extra-biblical surroundings of the ancient world, but a progressive, dynamic and creative vision and perception of the Earth and Man on it. The eschatological is not ahistorical; it is more than just the purely historical. This is a metahistorical, Christ-centric vision and perception of earthly reality and human history. Let us trace this briefly through the Bible itself.
If we go from the Holy Scriptures, from the Bible as a predominantly Palestinian geographical and historical book, we will see that in the very name of Canaan, the land promised to Abraham and his descendants (Heb. 11:9), in reality there is more than simple geography and bare history. It is better to say: this name already contains both eschatological history and eschatological geography of the Holy Land.
Namely, Abraham and then David were promised and given the land of Israel as an inheritance, as meek (sincere and honest before God and people). For the Bible says: “The meek will inherit the earth” (Ps. 36:11). And yet, both the forefather Abraham, and the king and prophet David, with all this inheritance of the earth, lived on it with the consciousness and feeling that they were strangers and temporary settlers. (Ps. 38, 13: “For I am a stranger (temporary settler) with You, and a sojourner, like all my fathers”; Heb. 11, 14: “For those who speak like this show that they are seeking a fatherland”). These same words of the Old Testament are repeated by Christ in the New Testament: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). The Apostle Paul and Gregory of Nyssa interpret these Old Testament and New Testament words about the inheritance of the earth as an eschatological inheritance, that is, the inheritance of the Heavenly Earth and Heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. 4: 25-30; Heb. 11: 13-16; 2nd Discourse on the Beatitudes of the Saint Gregory of Nyssa).
Such a paradoxical eschatological vision and perception is not a denial of history, but, on the contrary, it is the comprehension and transformation of history, the leavening of history with metahistory, that is, eschatology. This is a kind of judgment on history, but at the same time it is also the salvation of history from evil and sin, from the mortal and corruptible in it, this is the gospel truth that “a grain of wheat, falling into the ground,” must die, but not in order to perish, but so that it “bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
This will be clearer to the Serbian reader if we recall that it was precisely this interpretation of our human history and geography that was given by the Christian folk, Orthodox genius, when the Kosovo definition of the holy prince Lazarus was called the choice of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us recall what is said in the Serbian folk song of the Kosovo cycle:
"The gray falcon bird flew
from the holy place from Jerusalem"
The song goes on to say that in reality it was the prophet Elijah (a representative of God's prophets and apostles), and Jerusalem was in reality the Mother of God (a symbol of the heavenly Church); so that at the decisive moment in our history, the Kingdom of Heaven from Christ’s Jerusalem appears to the Kosovo martyrs. Consequently, it is not so much the “Jerusalem of today” from Palestine, but rather that Jerusalem above, which is free and “the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22). That Jerusalem on High called upon King Lazar and the Kosovo Serbs to make an eschatological choice in their history. This tradition of vision and interpretation of history and geography, given in the Serbian folk song, came to the Serbs not only from Saint Sava (who, having become a monk, chose the Kingdom of Heaven, and thereby did no less for the history and geography of his people and country. Let us add that he especially loved the Holy Land and “God’s desired city of Jerusalem”, visited them as a pilgrim twice), but this is a biblical, Old Testament-New Testament tradition, vividly present in the Serbian people and their historiosophical and spiritual understanding of the life and destiny of man on earth.
Therefore, it is necessary to once again clearly say and emphasize that the eschatological vision and interpretation of biblical history and geography, that is, the Holy Land and its sacred history as a symbol of the whole Earth and our single chronotope (that is, the geographical and historical center of our civilization, or the “navel of the earth” ", as the prophet Ezekiel says), does not mean denying the history and geography of the Holy Land of Israel - Palestine, and through it our planet Earth. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
Let us summarize: in the center is the true - the biblical typological (mystical, hesychast, liturgical) perception and vision of the world, human and earthly history, visible and viewed always in the transforming light of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was precisely this vision that the first forefather Jacob, Israel, had: a ladder that connects Heaven and Earth (Gen. 28:12-18). This is the vision and perception of the earth and the history of the race of Adam on it in the light of the presence of the Lord on this Earth and in history. Here we mean both the first parousia of Christ in Palestine, and that eschatological parousia of the Kingdom of Heaven, as Christ Himself speaks and testifies more fully in the same way, but in the New Testament (Gen. 28:12-18; John 1:14 and 49-52) . The same theme is developed more extensively by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 7-9, 11-13), where he interprets the total sacred history and sacred geography of the old and new Israel in an eschatological manner. Following the Apostle Paul, this vision and understanding is expounded and shown in life-liturgical practice by all patristic theological thought, exegesis, hymnography, historiosophy, and, above all and everything, the Holy Liturgy of the Orthodox Church itself.
So, if we unite the greatest Old Testament prophet Isaiah and the greatest Christian apostle John and unite together their truly biblical, prophetic vision of the Holy Land and its history as a symbol of the entire earth and the history of the human race, then this will be the only biblical, Old Testament-New Testament vision, message and the gospel of the Christ-centric movement and feat of transformation of this heaven and this earth into the New Heaven and New Earth (Isa. 65.17; Rev. 21.1-3), which, in essence, is one single all-collective Tabernacle (House, Church) of God with people and people with God. Heaven on earth and earth in Heaven.
The Holy Land of Israel and the Holy City of Jerusalem belong to all humanity, both in the earthly and in the Heavenly Kingdom.
Translation from Serbian by Andrey Shestakov.

THE HOLY LAND THROUGH THE EYES OF RUSSIAN PILGRIM (Mikhail Yakushev)
Mikhail Yakushev, historian-orientalist, vice-president of the Central Scientific Research Center

For the young state of Kievan Rus, the concept of “Holy Land” began to acquire increasingly meaningful meaning after the adoption of Christianity in 988, which it received from the Ecumenical (Constantinople) Church. Then at the end of the 10th century. Byzantine Constantinople sent the Syrian Metropolitan Michael the Syrian (f 992) to the service of the Kyiv prince Vladimir, who baptized Kyiv, Novgorod and Rostov the Great, combining the functions of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in contacts with foreign courts and churches.
After the fall of New Rome, or Constantinople, in 1453, the entire Byzantine, or Orthodox Church, consisting of the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch (Damascus) and Jerusalem, was included in Ottoman Empire. In 1472, Moscow Prince Ivan III married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, who brought with her from Rome the coat of arms of the Eastern Roman Empire (in the form of a double-headed eagle), which became the coat of arms of Moscow. This is where the idea of ​​“Moscow - the Third Rome” stems: to replace the Old and New Romes, by divine providence Moscow is destined to become the Third Rome, “and there will not be a fourth.” From the 16th century Eastern patriarchs and hierarchs from the Ottoman provinces of Constantinople, Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem came to Moscow, the capital of the only Orthodox, or “Romean kingdom,” for alms.
As Russia grew stronger, the idea of ​​the “Third Rome” became an integral part public policy. Emperor Peter the Great, who became the first of the Russian monarchs to demand from the Porte in the Treaty of Constantinople to provide unhindered and free access for Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem to worship the Holy Places and the need to respect the rights of the Greek clergy of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem. The “Greek project” of Empress Catherine the Great strengthened the vector of Russia’s movement towards the Arab Orthodox East. This largely stimulated and organized the pilgrimage movement both from Russia to the Holy Land, which became from the end of the 10th century. a new phenomenon in the social and spiritual life of Kievan Rus, which was moving from paganism to monotheism. The one who set out on a long, long and dangerous journey was popularly called wanderers, pedestrians, pilgrims and worshipers of the Holy Places on St. Mount Athos, in Syria, Palestine, in Egypt. The pilgrims sought to visit Christian places associated with the earthly life of Jesus Christ and his disciples (ar-rusul) in Bethlehem, Galilee, Jericho and Jerusalem. Before the Egyptian occupation of Syria and Egypt (1831 - 1840), the Ottoman authorities imposed a special type of duty on Christian pilgrims - kaffar, the proceeds of which went to the treasury of the pashas, ​​and then to the needs of Muslim charities.
The Institute of Holy Places in Palestine was created in the 1st half of the 4th century. through the efforts of the Emperor of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire Constantine the Great (306 - 337) and the Bishop of Jerusalem of the Antiochian Orthodox Church Macarius. From the 4th century Written sources have reached us mentioning the miracle of the descent of the Holy Fire, or litany, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Pilgrims and travelers of all times and peoples dreamed of seeing this miracle. It is noteworthy that in 1095, on Mount Clermont, even Pope Urban II, who called on all of Europe to unite in a “crusade” against the “Saracens” (local Muslim Arabs) in order to “liberate the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,” mentioned the “Holy Fire” in Jerusalem.
The crusaders, who captured Syria and Palestine with Jerusalem for 88 years in 1099, destroyed the entire Muslim and Jewish population, turning other people's shrines into their own property: the al-Aqsa mosque with the Dome over the rock was rebuilt into a Catholic church. This is how Russian pilgrims found Jerusalem as the capital of the Latin Kingdom. One of the pioneers of the pilgrimage movement from distant Rus' was Abbot Hegumen Daniel (beginning of the 12th century). The “Walkings” of Abbot Daniel became one of the earliest descriptions of the Holy Places of Palestine, securing the author of the book the nickname “Nestor of Russian pilgrims.” It is from his work that we learn that in Jerusalem the Russian monk Daniel was kindly received by King Baldwin I of Latin, who allowed the abbot to participate in the solemn procession of the retinue of the clergy ahead of Baldwin, and also to place his censer (from Arab, kandil) on St. Holy Sepulcher from the entire Russian land. After the descent of the Holy Fire, Daniel was allowed to take his burning censer to his native Russian land. This tradition has survived to this day. In the future, 2006, Russia will celebrate the anniversary date - 900 years since the writing of the “Walking” of Abbot Daniel, which has become the oldest description of holy places in the Holy Land and one of the first works of ancient Russian literature. The book of Daniel was followed by hundreds and thousands of legends, wanderings and walks, many of which have survived to this day with valuable information about the life, way of life and customs of the local population. Among these authors: A.N. Muravyov (1830), A.S. Norov (1835), N.V. Gogol (1848), I.A. Bunin (1907), etc.
The pilgrims from Russia traveled by sea or along its shores on foot to Constantinople, where the Holy Land began for them. The Russian resident minister in Constantinople received for them in the Porte a Sultan's firman, or “safe-conduct,” with which pilgrims could freely travel through the Archipelago, Asia Minor, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine to Egypt and return back to Constantinople. They could make this journey by sea if they had the money for it. As a rule, Russian pilgrims were poor people, so until the 2nd half of the 19th century. more often they used pilgrimage paths along which both Christians and Muslims walked (darb al-hajj). Thus began their centuries-long “dialogue of civilizations” without understanding local languages ​​and customs. The Christian pilgrim and pilgrim aroused feelings of sympathy and respect even among the Muslim population. He behaved in an appropriate manner so that on his way back he could be received just as cordially in the same house, with the same owners. Traveling around the Middle East dragged on for 2-3 years. To die on pilgrimage was considered the highest grace. There were simply unique cases. Thus, the Russian pilgrim Vasily Grigorovich-Barsky spent almost a quarter of a century on pilgrimage to Holy Places (from 1723 to 1747), having received monastic vows from the Patriarch of Antioch. Without money in his pocket, he managed to learn to speak Italian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic and even teach philosophy to Greek children for food. Over the years of his long pilgrimage to the main Christian shrines in Italy, the provinces of the Ottoman Empire (Archipelago, Asia Minor, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt), the “pedestrian” Barsky left behind the richest and most famous description Holy places, which was appreciated by the public of Tsarist Russia, foreign orientalists, and now by the modern Russian public.
Pilgrims flocked to Jerusalem to the main shrine of Christianity - the Church of the Holy Sepulcher - for the great holiday of Easter. According to those that have come down to us from the 4th century. According to written sources, every year on Holy Saturday many people gathered in the church (from 10 to 14 thousand) to attend the miracle of the descent of the Holy Fire during a ceremony led by the Orthodox patriarch or bishop of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem. The fire fell only on Orthodox hierarchs (even during the occupation of Jerusalem by the Crusaders). According to legend, if the fire does not go away, the End of the World will come. It is noteworthy that with the inclusion of Jerusalem into the Arab Caliphate (638) and after the fall of the Byzantine Empire ( mid XVI c.) Muslim authorities in the person of Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab, Sultan Salah ad-Din and Padishah Salim III were able to quickly transfer the situation from the category of a “conflict of civilizations” (dar al-harb) to a “dialogue of civilizations” (dar al-Islam) . It is noteworthy that the system of inviolability of the millets, or religious autonomous communities of dhimmi (Christians and Jews), they introduced gave them greater independence than was the case even under the Byzantine authorities. With the end of the era of the Arab patriarchate in the Jerusalem Church in 1534 and the advent of the Greek patriarchate in the “Mother of All Churches,” Armenian and Franciscan monasticism began to encroach on the rights of the Orthodox clergy.
Until the 16th century Catholics and Orthodox Christians had one calendar - the Julian, according to which everything Religious holidays Christians coincided and were celebrated on the same day. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced his a new style chronology, Gregorian, abandoning the old Julian calendar, which was used by all Christians since 45 BC. e. With the change in the calendar, Catholics began to celebrate holidays on other days, so since then, following the example of the Jews, they began to ignore the miracle of the Holy Fire, accusing the Orthodox clergy of using some kind of “Greek trick.”
Interestingly, Muslims did not deny divine origin Holy Fire, or Light, being present with Eastern Christians at the ceremony of its descent. As the diaries of pilgrims from Russia testify, the Muslim Arabs did not hide the emotions that overwhelmed them and, when flames appeared inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (qiyamat al-Masykh), together with their Arab-Christian fellow tribesmen, they exclaimed: “Oh, Lord! (D Allah)”, and at the end of the ceremony they took home with them physical proof of Heavenly Grace - bunches of burnt candles. In 1834, on Easter, the son of the Egyptian Pasha Muhammad Ali Ibrahim Bey attended the litany, accompanied by his armed guards, in a crowded temple where approx. 14 thousand people. After the fire appeared from the Edicule, the jubilant people slightly moved towards the retinue of Ibrahim Bey, who, without understanding what was going on, with weapons in their hands, cut through the living mass of people a safe corridor for their military leader from the temple to the outside. Sad outcome Easter day There were 300 people stabbed, hacked to death and crushed as a result of the turmoil that arose.
There were also bloody clashes between the Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic clergy for the right to own Christian shrines in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in which pilgrims present from all over took part. Christendom. The apogee of the so-called or inter-Christian communication was the Question of the Holy Places of Palestine, which served as the reason (casus belli) for the Crimean War. The conflict that broke out in 1847 between the Catholic and Greek clergy quickly grew political. The Franciscans demanded greater rights for themselves at the expense of the historical rights of the Jerusalem Orthodox Church, or the “Mother of all Churches.” France, Belgium, Austria, Sardinia and Great Britain stood up for the Franciscans. The Porte supported the Catholics. Ecumenical Patriarch Herman on behalf of all eastern patriarchs turned to the Russian Emperor for help as the patron of Orthodoxy in the Holy Land. Emperor Nicholas demanded from Sultan Abdul Majid and Emperor Napoleon III not to violate the status quo of the pre-emptive rights of the Jerusalem Orthodox Church as the historical custodian of the holy places since the decree of Emperor Constantine the Great and subsequent firman caliphs and sultans who succeeded the Byzantine authorities in the Holy Land. As a result, a “crusade” was declared to the “eastern schismatics” (that is, Russia), in which the “neo-Crusaders” (France, Great Britain and Sardinia) participated in it together with the “neo-Saracens” (Ottoman Empire). Its victims were approx. 1 million people.
Another religious celebration associated with the annual Muslim celebrations of Nebi Musa (“Prophet Moses”), which always fell on Orthodox Easter according to the old Eastern calendar, could also be attributed to the “clash of civilizations” on interreligious grounds. This holiday symbolized the triumph of Muslims over the crusaders, from whom Salah ad-Din al-Ayyubi recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. After the abolition of the kaffars, the Ottoman government decided, as an adequate response to the mass Christian pilgrimage, to encourage Muslims to visit (ziyaru) the third shrine of Islam, al-Haram aghi Sharif, in order to increase the revenues of the treasury of the pasha of Jerusalem (mutasarrif). Upon the return of the caravan of pilgrims from the hajj (pilgrimage) to the two shrines in Mecca and Medina, the authorities tried to encourage pilgrims to enter Jerusalem to the third Muslim shrine. The lack of reliable information about who was fighting whom in the Crimean (Eastern) War in 1854 (even after the Porte, England and France declared war on Russia) led to massive clashes between Muslims and Jews and Christians of all faiths. Moreover, it was not only the Orthodox Arab Christians who supported Russia, but also the Catholics and Protestants who entered the war against the “Third Rome” on the side of the Ottoman Empire. Despite Russia's defeat in Eastern war The West failed to oust it from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, since diplomats, pilgrims and the Russian clergy were the first to go there. Russian Emperor Alexander II strengthened the Russian spiritual, consular and public presence through the development of Russian institutions in the Holy Land. In 1882, on the initiative of the emperor Alexandra III The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society was established, headed by the Tsar's brother, the Grand Duke
Sergius Aleksandrovich, who was involved not only in the pilgrimage of Russian believers (Christians, Muslims and Jews), but also in the organization of schools in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, where teaching was conducted in Arabic. At the end of the 19th century. In the southern province of Syria, a new supranational concept arose - “Russian Palestine”. In Jerusalem, on a huge plot of land, the walled city of “Muscovy” (al-Moskobiyya) with its own autonomous infrastructure was built for Russian pilgrims. Due to the huge number of Russian pilgrims, the city authorities decided to break through the “New” or “Russian” gates in the walls of the Old City, after which the centuries-old practice of locking the doors of the Old City of Jerusalem was abolished. Up to 18-20 thousand people came to Jerusalem from Russia for Easter. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and the overthrow of the monarchy in Russia, organized mass pilgrimages from Russia practically ceased. It was restored in the late 80s - early 90s. XX century and did not stop even after the start of the intifada in 2000. At that time, tourists from Western Europe and the United States preferred not to risk their safety. Once again, as at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, in Jerusalem and the Holy Land the Russian language became easily recognizable in the mass of local eastern dialects.
In 1991, the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IPOS), founded in 1882 by Sultan's firman in the Holy Land, was revived, when there were no such states as Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
In 2003, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Center of National Glory (CNS) and the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation (FAP) V.I. Yakunin supported the initiative of the President of the Central Tax Service and the FAP A.V. Melnyk about holding an international program of inter-Orthodox prayer “Ask for Peace in Jerusalem”, in which representatives of a number of local churches take part. Since then, for the third year in a row, a representative Russian pilgrim delegation has been implementing this program in the Holy City: after reading a prayer in the throne room of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, members of the delegation go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to witness the miracle of the descent of the Blessed Light, a piece of which is then delivered in a special container on board plane to Moscow to the main cathedral of the country, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and is handed over to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II for subsequent distribution throughout Russia and other countries of the post-Soviet space. If previously Russian pilgrims on foot spent 2 to 3 years returning with the Holy Fire in their hands, now it takes 5-6 hours to return from Jerusalem to Russia.
After an eighty-year period of atheism and religious nihilism, the legacy left to us by Russian pilgrims over a thousand-year period is being studied in the highest educational institutions and scientific centers of oriental studies, including the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University. Russian scientists M.S. play a significant role in this. Meyer, F.M. Atsamba, S.A. Kirillina, K.A. Pancheko, D.R. Zhantiev, T.Yu. Kobishchanov and others. If earlier, when visiting the Arab East, pilgrims from Russia mainly communicated with the local population on their fingers, now the Arabic language has become accessible not only to Middle Eastern experts, but also to a considerable number of Orthodox and Muslim pilgrims from Russia.
By the way, within the framework of the dialogue between civilizations, it would not be amiss to emphasize the fact that Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs use many words with almost the same meaning. A modern Russian pilgrim, a reporter, as well as any person interested in the Middle East would do well to know these words and never use them in a negative sense, so as not to transfer the “dialogue of civilizations” from the “territory of the world” (dar al-Islam) to “ territory of war" (dar al-harb).

Allah is Lord, God. The word is a derived form of the Hebrew word "Elachim", borrowed by Judah from the native Canaanite inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Jebusites. They called the Almighty "El Elyon".

Al-iman - Faith (in one God).

At-tawhid - monotheism, or monotheism.

Al-jihad - vow; spiritual feat; obedience with an oath to the Almighty.

Ar-pyx al-quds - Holy Spirit (among Christians); ar-ruh-Spirit (among Muslims).

Shahid is a great martyr who fell for the faith. Ash-shahid Jurjus al-labis an-zafr (Great Martyr George the Victorious among Christians); ash-Shahid Uthman (martyr of Caliph Uthman among Muslims).

Hajj is a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to worship shrines (the Russian word “walking” is phonetically and lexically similar to it). Hajj - pilgrim, hoja, pilgrim, worshiper of holy places.

Darb al-Hajj - pilgrimage trail. The path of Christian pilgrims ran through the Caucasus, Constantinople, Damascus to Jerusalem, then to Mount Sinai in Orthodox monastery St. Catherine and back. Muslims followed a similar route: from the Caucasus, through Istanbul, Damascus (bypassing Jerusalem) along Transjordan (East Bank of the Jordan River) to Mecca and Medina. The pilgrimage procession was led by Emir al-Hajj, who was met near Damascus and accompanied by armed guard by the Pasha of Damascus, as well as the Mutasarrif of Jerusalem with his retinue.

In conclusion, I would like to once again especially emphasize the importance of those that have survived to our time. written documents and testimonies of pilgrims who visited Holy places many centuries ago. The annual inter-Christian clashes in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the right to be the first to enter the Edicule cause confusion among pilgrims and television viewers, but not among local monks. Apparently, it is no coincidence that since 2005, the Old City police have been substantively studying the “walks” of Russian pilgrims who described the ceremony of the descent of the Holy Fire, the actions of the local clergy and local authorities. God grant that with the help of these materials, disputes and “conflicts of civilizations” in the Holy Land and Jerusalem, for whose peace the whole world should ask for peace, will forever be settled.

The Holy Land: History and Eschatology

Holy Land called the territory of present-day Israel, or Palestine. Literally expression holy Land found in the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 2:12) and in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon (12:3), where it is also called the most precious land for God of all others (“the land most precious of all with You”) (Wisdom 12:7) .

The name is Palestine, in Hebrew Paleseth, means the land of the Philistines, who at the end of the 13th century BC. occupied this territory and gave it a name, which was later reported by the Greek historian Herodotus.

However, the oldest biblical name for this territory is Canaan(Judges 4, 2), land of Canaan or land of the Canaanites(Gen. 11:31; Exod. 3:17). Somewhat later in the Old Testament it is called borders of Israel(1 Samuel 11:3) and the Lord's land(Os. 9, 3) or simply Earth(Jer.). Therefore, predominantly - Earth. Hence, in modern colloquial language in Israel, it is simply called Eretz, or Haaretz = Earth(Ps. 103.14: “Hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz" = "to produce bread from the earth").

In the New Testament it is called land of Israel And land of Judea(Matt. 2:20; John 3:22), and also promised land y, which the patriarch Abraham “received as an inheritance” from God (“he had to receive as an inheritance”) and “by faith he dwelt in the promised land as in a stranger” (Heb. 11:8-9). These last words contain the highest historical, metahistorical meaning of the Holy Land, but more on that later.

So there is Palestine Earth biblical - earth sacred history And sacred geography three great world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Let's look at it first from a geographic point of view.

Today, biblical scholars refer to the large geographic area of ​​the Middle East, including Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, by the appropriate term for it: the “Fertile Crescent.” This geographical space stretches out in the form of someone Luke or arcs over the Syro-Arabian Desert and connects the Persian Gulf with the Mediterranean and Red Seas. On the upper side of this geographic arc are the mountain ranges of Iran, Armenia and Asia Minor Tavros, and on the lower side are the Syrian and Arabian deserts. Four large rivers flow through the territory of this arc: the Tigris, Euphrates, Orontes and Jordan, and on its very border is the Nile River. The eastern end of the Fertile Crescent is Mesopotamia, while the western end includes the valley between the Judean Desert and the Mediterranean Sea and extends down to the Nile Valley. Palestine is the southwestern extremity of this large geographical territory, connecting Asia and Africa, and, through the Mediterranean, also Europe.

This key place at the junction of the old continents of our planet Earth has been inhabited since ancient times and represents a center of civilization. For Europe, this territory was in fact primarily East. She was and remains, because, undoubtedly, without this she would be so Middle There is no East and no Europe itself.

So Palestine, being a connecting link between Mesopotamia and Egypt, was at the same time the connection and center of East and West. This Middle Eastern territory, or, otherwise, the space of the Eastern Mediterranean basin, is the cradle of European civilization, and in its geographical and spiritual content is neither East nor West. Both from a geographical and spiritual point of view, this territory was never closed, but was in constant contact with Arabia and Mesopotamia, through Iran (Persia) with India, then through Egypt and Nubia with Africa, as well as through Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands with Europe. Consequently, Palestine was in constant contact with the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and also, from very early times, with the Aegean and Hellenic-Roman civilizations and cultures. But how holy Land, Palestine has its own special biblical civilization, which includes all three of the above.

Geographically, the Holy Land of Palestine itself consists of different regions. In the central part this is the Judean Plain, or, in biblical terms, Ezdrilon. It stretches from the Negev, or Negib, desert in the south, i.e. from the Sinai Peninsula, to Mount Carmel in the northwest and to Mount Hermon in the north, that is, to the mountain range of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. The height of this central plateau reaches more than 1000 meters above sea level, and at the Dead Sea it drops 420 meters below this level. To the west of the central part there are lowlands that descend to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, while the eastern part of Palestine is made up of the Jordan River Valley, which carries its waters from Dan (a source under Mount Hermon) and Lake Galilee to the Dead Sea. The eastern side of this valley, called Transjordan (Transjordan), adjoins the Syrian and Arabian deserts.

The northern part of Palestine is called Galilee, the central Samaria, and the southern part Judea. The length of this entire geographical territory is 230-250 km in length and 60 to 120 km in width. In Galilee there are Mount Carmel and Tabor, beyond Lake Gennesaret the Golan Heights, in Samaria - Ebal and Gerizim, and in Judea Nebi Samuel near Jerusalem and Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and to the east of it the Mount of Olives. There are other mountains in the Judean Hills.

The climate in Palestine is varied: Mediterranean, desert and mountainous, and so is the fertility of its land. It varies from abundance to scarcity, and therefore in the Bible this land is called both “a good and spacious land, where milk and honey flow”, and “a empty, parched and waterless land” (Ex. 3, 8; Ps. 62:2 ). The geographical and climatic diversity of Palestine seemed to predict the complexity of its history, about which we will say a few more words.

The oldest inhabitants of Palestine were the Amorites and Canaanites, who lived here around the 20th century BC. Then come the Arameans, who lived in Palestine and Syria around the 13th century, from about the same time - the Philistines, after whom the land itself received its name, as well as many other ethnic groups mentioned in the Bible.

Patriarch, Forefather of the Jewish people Abraham comes to this land in the 19th century BC (about 1850 BC) from Mesopotamia, from Ur of the Chaldeans (Sumerian) in the southern reaches of the Euphrates. At the call of God, he sets out from there through Harran (north of the Euphrates), from where Patriarch Jacob then came, the first to be named Israel(one of the etymologies “He who saw God”, “who came face to face with God”) (Gen. ch. 32, 28), according to which the entire Jewish people received the name Israel.. Abraham and his descendants were promised land by God Canaan, named after its then inhabitants. This land is named after this promise of God. promised land, as the great Jew and great Christian Paul of Tarsus reminds us of this (Heb. 11:9).

The descendants of Abraham, and in addition to this promise, soon descended from Palestine to Egypt, at the time when it was owned by the Hyksos (Hiks) (c. 1700-1550 BC). The presence of Jews in Egypt is clearly attested during the times of the pharaohs Akhenaten (1364-1347) and Ramses II (c. 1250), when the entire people slavishly served this powerful pharaoh, engaged in "plinfurgy" (brick production Ex.5,7-8) and building pyramids. In view of the heavy exploitation of Israel, the great Moses- a prophet called by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob during his wanderings in the desert, who saw under Mount Sinai Bush on fire(a well-known theme of Orthodox iconography “The Burning Bush”) and the voice heard from it Yahweh: “I am who I am” and “the place on which you stand is holy land” (Ex. 3:5), led the Jews from Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula (in the middle of the 13th century BC). Here, under the rocky Sinai and Horeb, Moses received the Law from God: the Ten Commandments and other religious, moral and social institutions Covenant or more precisely Union, concluded between God and Israel (Ex. 7 - 24).

After forty years of wandering in the desert, the people of Israel, led by Joshua, settled in Palestine (c. 1200 BC). The next two centuries cover the period of the Judges, and then comes the era of the Kings. Around 1000 BC, the strong and glorious King David, poet, musician and prophet, occupied Jerusalem, which later became the capital of Israel. From this time throughout the centuries Holy City Jerusalem becomes a symbol of all Palestine as Saint Earth and a symbol of the Earth and all humanity in general.

Jerusalem was also an ancient Canaanite city. Even in ancient Egyptian texts (c. 1900 BC) it is mentioned as Urusalem. Around the same time that the patriarch Abraham came to Canaan, Jerusalem was the city of Melchizedek, king of Salem, whose name in the Bible means “king of righteousness and king of peace” (Gen. 14; Heb. 7), which again is a sign of a great future , that is, messianic eschatology. The oldest inhabitants of Jerusalem, starting from approximately 3000 BC, were the Amorites and Hittites, who were also called Jebusites; David later took it from them Jerusalem(this name most likely means home of the world, but history shows that world it is the same as the entire history of the earth and the human race). In Jerusalem, David built a royal tower on Zion, the highest place of the Holy City, and his son Solomon erected a magnificent temple of God, on Mount Moriah. Here, according to legend, the forefather Abraham, according to God's commandment, wanted to sacrifice his son Isaac, and nearby is Mount Golgotha, on which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was sacrificed for humanity.

In the context of the Old Testament, Jerusalem, as we have already said, is understood as a symbol of the Holy Land and Israel as a people, and further - as a symbol of the whole earth and all humanity. Therefore, God, through the great prophet Isaiah, says to Jerusalem: “Will a woman forget her suckling child, so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb? But even if she did forget, I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on My hands; your walls are always before me.” By me." (Isa. 49:15-16). The strength of this covenant, or promise, of God, according to the Holy Scriptures, is the strength of God’s love for man and the entire universe. This Yahweh conveys to Israel and through Jeremiah the prophet, thus anticipating his New Testament(= union) with humanity: “I have loved you with everlasting love, and therefore have shown favor to you.” (Jer. 31:3).

Here, in connection with the idea of ​​Jerusalem as the Holy City and Palestine as the Holy Land, there is a certain Divine, or rather Divine-human, dialectic. It is still relevant now, but more on that later, but first let’s complete the excursion into history.

Around 700, the Assyrians, having occupied the northern part of Palestine, besieged Jerusalem, but only the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was able to capture and conquer the city in 587 BC. A month later, the military commander Nebuzaradan destroyed the Temple and the Holy City and took the Jews into Babylonian slavery. Fifty years later (538 BC), the Persian king Cyrus captured Babylon and allowed the Israelites to return from captivity to their homeland. At the same time, both the Temple and the city were restored under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Ezra. In 333 BC, Palestine was occupied by Alexander the Great, and the Hellenistic period began for it, which lasted until 63 BC, when the Roman Pompey took possession of Jerusalem. Roman-Byzantine rule in Palestine lasted until the arrival of the Muslims in 637.

The great and glorious period of the Jewish kings in Jerusalem, covering about half a millennium, was a time of development and rise, but also of the fall of the Holy City and the Holy Land - both material and spiritual. The Assyrian-Babylonian captivity stopped this development. Then came periods of Persian, Greek and Roman rule over Israel and national-religious resistance, which is narrated book of the prophet Daniel And books of Maccabees. All this time in Israel the period of great and small prophets God's, starting with the greatest figure of Israeli sacred history, the prophet Elijah the Tishbite, who was reflected in the person of the prophet John the Baptist in the time of Christ.

Appearance and activity prophets in the Holy Land and Jerusalem became a decisive event in the history of Israel and Palestine and unique in the history of all mankind. Jesus Christ is added to the prophets, Great Prophet from Nazareth of Galilee, Son of God and Son of Man - Messiah, Who, by His death and resurrection in Jerusalem, expands the geographical and historical boundaries of the Holy Land and the Holy City, thus turning history into eschatology. The work of Christ is continued by the New Testament apostles, who interpret and complement the Prophets, and transform the Old Testament tabernacle (synagogue) into the Church. Without prophets and apostles, at the center of which is the Messiah Christ, who unites them, fulfills them and fills them with meaning, the history of Palestine and the entire Old Testament-New Testament civilization, and therefore our European civilization, is incomprehensible and inexplicable.

The appearance of Christ in the sacred history and sacred geography of Palestine was preceded by the period of the Maccabean struggle and the emergence of religious movements and groups in Israel, which were an expression of the attempts of the Israeli people to resist the influence of Hellenistic and Roman religion and culture, syncritical and pantheistic in nature. At the same time, all this was a reflection of the Israeli and universal peoples' expectations(prosdohia ethnon), as the forefather Jacob predicted - Israel (Gen. 49:10; 2 Pet. 3:12-13). It was time waiting for the Messiah - Christ, as many biblical and extra-biblical testimonies eloquently demonstrate. This messianic expectation of both the Jews, the Hellenes, and other peoples of the East was generally expressed in the first half of the 2nd century A.D. by Justin the Philosopher (who was from Samaria and lived in Rome) with the words: “Jesus Christ is the new Law and the New Testament and hope (prosdohia) all those who from all nations expect Divine blessings"(Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew, 11, 4).

The time of Christ in Palestine and Jerusalem is reflected in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Today's Holy places in the Holy Land in most cases they represent the geography of the biography of Christ, as St. Cyril of Jerusalem noted. Palestine and Jerusalem are the materialized (objectified) earthly biography of Christ, the earthly topography of His heavenly biography. This, among other things, is confirmed by modern archaeological research and finds in Palestine, which Christian and Israeli archaeologists and biblical scholars have jointly done in recent years.

The Roman conquerors destroyed many biblical monuments and traces of the Old Testament and Christian times in the Holy Land: the son of Vespasian, the military commander Titus, destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 (in 73, the fortress of Metsanda = Masada on the shores of the Dead Sea, famous for the tragedy of the Jewish people, was captured); in 133, Emperor Hadrian completely destroyed Jerusalem and in its place founded a new city, “Aelia Capitolina” (with the temple of Jupiter on the site of the temple of Yahweh!).

Already during the first conquest of Jerusalem, Christians left the city and fled to Transjordan (Transjordan), from where in the first half of the 2nd century they slowly began to return to Palestine and Jerusalem. When Jerusalem was sacked by Emperor Hadrian in 133, the Jews were scattered into the diaspora (which for many of them began even earlier). In subsequent centuries they were forbidden to return to Jerusalem and for them there was only one sad pilgrimage to Western Wall- the remnant of the last glorious temple of King Herod, who visited and whose destruction Christ predicted with sorrow (Matthew 23:37-38; 24:1-2). However, a Jewish population still remained in Galilee, and during the Byzantine period there were dozens of synagogues throughout Palestine.

The number of Christians in Palestine was constantly growing, and especially since the proclamation of Christian freedom under Constantine the Great (the famous Edict of Milan in 313 on religious tolerance). The Holy Queen Helen, mother of Constantine, went in 326 from Nis and Nicomedia to the Holy Land and began great work there to renovate the holy places. With the help of Constantine, she erected dozens of churches in Palestine, in places of the Nativity (her basilica in Bethlehem still exists today), the life, exploits and sufferings of the Savior (the Church of the Resurrection on the Holy Sepulcher, with its outbuildings, still exists). Recently, on the mosaic floor of one of the churches in Palestine, a map of this country was discovered with the temples of these first Christian emperors, Saints Constantine and Helen, depicted on it. The later tradition of Zadužbinarism, among the Byzantine and Serbian rulers, and among the rulers of other Christian nations, originates from the Holy Land. The construction of Helena in the Holy Land was continued by Empress Eudoxia, the wife of Theodosius II, as well as Emperor Justinian. Emperor Heraclius in 628 returned the Holy Cross of Christ, captured by the Persians, which had been found in due time by the holy Queen Helen and revered by all Christians from time immemorial.

The pious pilgrimage to the Holy Land continued uninterrupted for centuries and, with the changes and difficulties brought by each historical era, continues to this day. (One of the oldest books dedicated to pilgrimage, “Description of a Journey to Holy Places” of Etheria, IV century). The most significant and authentic holy places to this day belong to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Zion “Mother of all Churches” of God, and then to the Roman Catholics, Copts, Protestants, etc.

In 637, Muslim Arabs occupied Jerusalem, and then the heirs of the conqueror Caliph Omar, on the site of the Solomon and Justinian temples, erected two now existing mosques, which, like the two-thousand-year-old Orthodox Church of the Resurrection and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Calvary, the newly formed Jewish state of Israel did not touched. From the end of the 11th to the 13th centuries, Western Christians, the Crusaders, temporarily liberated Jerusalem, but at the same time heavily plundered it and other holy places, so that even the initiator of the Crusades, Pope Innocent III, criticized them for plundering shrines that Muslims at least to a certain extent respected . However, the pope overstepped this and installed his puppet Uniate “patriarchs” throughout the enslaved Orthodox East.

From the Arabs, rule in Palestine passed to the Seljuks, then to the Mamluks and finally to the Ottomans. Only in 1917 was Turkish power finally removed from Palestine, and control was transferred to the British, who in a certain way contributed to the Jews in the formation of the current state of Israel in 1948. At the end of the 19th century, the Zionist movement, founded in Switzerland, moved to Jerusalem. Not long before this, tsarist Russia founded the Russian Palestine Society in Palestine to study the Holy Land, which was also done by Western Roman Catholics and Protestants, whose biblical and archaeological schools in Jerusalem are now world famous. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has its own “Seminary of the Holy Cross” in Jerusalem.

And now the focus of attention of the inhabitants of the Holy Land and the whole world is primarily Holy places. In fact, all of Palestine is one big holy place. Here, centuries-old biblical history is materialized (objectified), to a certain extent, our entire Old Testament-New Testament civilization, the material and spiritual culture of Europe and the Europeanized peoples of the world. Enough has been written about these holy places in our time, and everything essential is basically known. Each of these shrines has its own special spiritual significance, a multifaceted heritage that can only be felt and experienced at the scene. This would be a truly special personal story about each of the holy places and their relived history, but we will not dwell on this. Let’s just briefly say something about the historiosophical significance of the Holy Land and Jerusalem within the framework of the Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition, that is, on the basis of the biblical-Christian vision peace And humanity.

From the Bible, from the view of the Holy Land captured in it, it is clear that at first it was a “foreign land,” the land of polytheists and pagans. Then God promised and gave it as an inheritance to Abraham and his descendants Israel, old and new. However, inheritance of this "promised land", from a historical point of view, was changeable. In the very biblical account of the early days of the Holy Land, the historical accuracy of which has been confirmed (the Bible is primarily a book historical, although her message is simultaneously metahistorical), contains one universal truth.

Namely, the Bible initially closely connects person And land. First man Adam “from the earth” - “Adamach” (= earthly!), and the name of the land itself "Adam"(Gen. 2.7; 3.19). But according to the Holy Scriptures, a person is simultaneously characterized as image of God, he is the bearer of the inalienable image And likeness of God, both as an individual and as a society of the human race, and its calling and mission on Earth to become son of God, and make the earth Paradise - ours, but also God’s, a place of habitation and home. Thus, man was given the Divine (God-human) Oikonomia. (The Greek word oikonomia is very well translated into Slavic as Domostroy(House Construction), just as the Greek concept of Ecology in Slavic is translated as “House-logy”, Domo-word- care and concern for the human place of stay and home, about the house and abode, about the environment and living space, about "land of the living"; as the Psalmist would say: “I am well pleased with the Lord in the land of the living.” - "I will walk before the face of the Lord on land of the living"(Ps. 114:9).

According to the Bible, the Earth and Space were created in exactly the same way and for the same purpose as Paradise and for Paradise. The Bible tells us that man once, at the beginning of history, missed this first chance. But the same Holy Scripture says and testifies that this chance is not completely lost for man. Human fell, But didn't die. This is the main message of the Bible covenant or union God with Abraham, and it was given precisely when Abraham was called from Chaldea to come and settle in Canaan, in the “promised land” of Palestine. This is the original promise given by God at the beginning of history, the guarantor of which is He Himself; Man, Abraham and Israel also participate in it, accepting this call and entering into union with God. What happened to the fulfillment of this promise? Let's consider this issue in detail.

Undoubtedly, there is some special dialectics, but not Platonic or Hegelian, but biblical, in that for man the earth is both joy and sadness, a source of life and death, blessed happiness and prosperity, but at the same time a source of curse, misfortune and loss. This is clear from God’s very word to Israel: the land “flowing with honey and milk” is given to the Israeli people - the symbol of humanity - as an inheritance (Deut. 15:4), but at the same time it is indicated to this very people that they are on this land alien And settler, temporary resident (Lev. 25:23). From a historical point of view, for centuries, Palestine was essentially that for the Israelis. And this is not just a metaphor. Moreover, it was the same for Christians. This Holy Land, which is a symbol of the Earth in general, is most often associated with Judaism and Christianity, but also with all of humanity, and they are also associated with it. It is in this connection that a certain dialectic lies. Because the same God-given Holy Land is also necessary for rid from convulsive human attachment to the earth, to the earthly kingdom, and only to it, so that human life is not reduced only to the earthly and is not identified only with it. For the earth is not the salvation of man, but Human salvation for the earth.

We can see the dialectics of this, or, more precisely and closer to the biblical language, the historical paradox of this, in a couple of examples. Even the forefather Jacob - Israel gave the name of God to some key places in the Holy Land: Bethel - “the house of God” (Gen. 28:17-19) and Penuel- “the face of God” (Gen. 32:30). In the same way, Jerusalem became the Holy City of God, the “navel of the Earth,” according to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 38.12), that is, the center of the world, and therefore Solomon built the temple of the Living God in Jerusalem, in which God loves to promise and manifest His glory. At the same time, meanwhile, the Holy Scripture says that sometimes, in the vicissitudes of human history, that is, due to human variability, in the same places there were temples serving not the True God, but Baal and Molech! The “Holy Place” turned into the “abomination of desolation” and the Lord of glory was crucified in the Holy City (Matthew 24:15; 1 Cor. 2:8). About all this tragic paradox The prophets testify so openly from Elijah the Thesbite to John the Baptist and the Baptist and to Christ Himself and the apostles.

This paradox contains enough elements of that biblical apocalypticism, according to which the idea of ​​the Holy City bifurcates and stratifies. Polarized and opposed to each other two cities: The Holy City - Jerusalem and the demonic city - Babylon (F.M. Dostoevsky, Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov and others spoke a lot about this, after the Apocalypse and St. Augustine). In history, in fact, the temple of God and the “den of thieves,” the Church of God and the Tower of Babel are divided and contrasted (Matt. 21:13; 2 Cor. 6:14-16).

Yet this polarized, black-and-white, apocalyptic vision and perception of the world and human history in connection with the Holy Land and the Holy City is not the only vision and perception that we find recorded in the Holy Book of God. There is another vision, biblically deeper and more complete, biblically more realistic, and this is a genuine Old Testament-New Testament vision of the earth and man on it, as if through the prism of the Holy Land of Israel - Palestine and the Holy City - Jerusalem.

We are talking about eschatological seeing and experiencing the earth and human history on it. It must be emphasized that this eschatological vision and perception is not yet unhistorical or ahistorical. On the contrary, it is the biblical, Old Testament-New Testament eschatological vision opened and made possible true vision and understanding stories not as a cyclical return of everything to the beginning (even if it were a primitive “Paradise” or prehistoric “happy times”), as happens everywhere in the extra-biblical environment of the ancient world, but progressive, a dynamic and creative vision and perception of the Earth and the Man on it. Eschatological is not ahistorical, it is more than just purely historical. This is a metahistorical, Christ-centric vision and perception of earthly reality and human history. Let us trace this briefly through the Bible itself.

If we go from the Holy Scriptures, from the Bible as predominantly Palestinian geographical and historical book, we will see that already in the title itself Canaan the promised land Abraham and his descendants (Heb. 11:9) in reality consist of more than simple geography and bare history. It’s better to say: this title already contains eschatological history, And eschatological geography Holy Land.

Namely, Abraham and then David were promised given as an inheritance the land of Israel is like meek(= sincere and honest before God and people). For the Bible says: “The meek will inherit the earth” (Ps. 36:11). And yet, the forefather Abraham, and the king and prophet David, with all this inheritance land, lived on it with the consciousness and feeling that they were strangers and temporary settlers. (Ps. 38, 13: “For I am a stranger (= temporary sojourner) with You, and a sojourner, like all my fathers”; Heb. 11:14: “For those who speak like this show that they are seeking a fatherland”) . These same words of the Old Testament are repeated by Christ in the New Testament: “Blessed are meek, for they will inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). The Apostle Paul and Gregory of Nyssa interpret these Old and New Testament words about the inheritance of the earth as heritage eschatological e, that is, the inheritance of the Heavenly Earth and the Heavenly Jerusalem (Gal.4, 25-30; Heb.11, 13-16; Discourse 2 on the Beatitudes of St. Gregory of Nyssa).

So paradoxical eschatological vision and perception is not a denial of history, but, on the contrary, is the comprehension and transformation of history, the leavening of history with metahistory, that is, eschatology. This is a kind of judgment on history, but at the same time the rescue history from evil and sin, from the mortal and corruptible in it, this is the gospel truth that “a grain of wheat falling into the ground” must die, but not in order to perish, but so that it “bears much fruit” (John. 12, 24).

This will be clearer to the Serbian reader if we recall that it was precisely this interpretation of our human history and geography that was given by the Christian folk, Orthodox genius, when the Kosovo definition of the holy prince Lazarus was called choosing the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us recall what is said in the Serbian folk song of the Kosovo cycle:

"The gray falcon bird flew
from the holy place from Jerusalem"

The song goes on to say that in reality it was the prophet Elijah (a representative of God's prophets and apostles), and Jerusalem was in reality the Mother of God (a symbol of the heavenly Church); so that at the decisive moment in our history, the Kingdom of Heaven from Christ’s Jerusalem appears to the Kosovo martyrs. Consequently, it is not so much the “Jerusalem of today” from Palestine, but rather that Jerusalem above, which is free and “the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22). That Jerusalem on High called upon King Lazar and the Kosovo Serbs to make an eschatological choice in their history. This tradition of vision and interpretation of history and geography, given in the Serbian folk song, came to the Serbs not only from Saint Sava (who, having become a monk, chose the Kingdom of Heaven, and thereby did no less for the history and geography of his people and country. Let us add that he especially loved the Holy Land and “God’s desired city of Jerusalem”, visited them as a pilgrim twice), but this is a biblical, Old Testament-New Testament tradition, vividly present in the Serbian people and their historiosophical and spiritual understanding of the life and destiny of man on earth.

Therefore, it is necessary to once again clearly say and emphasize that the eschatological vision and interpretation of biblical history and geography, that is, the Holy Land and its sacred history as a symbol of the whole Earth and our one chronotope(that is, the geographical and historical center of our civilization, or the “navel of the earth,” as the prophet Ezekiel says), does not mean denying the history and geography of the Holy Land of Israel - Palestine, and through it our planet Earth. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

To summarize: the truth is in the center - the biblical typological(mystical, hesychast, liturgical) perception and vision of the world, human and earthly history, visible and viewed always in the transforming light of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is precisely the vision that the first forefather Jacob had - Israel: a ladder that connects Heaven and Earth (Gen. 28:12-18). This is the vision and perception of the earth and the history of the race of Adam on it in the light of the presence of the Lord on this Earth and in history. Here we mean the first parousia Christ in Palestine, and that eschatological parousia The Kingdom of Heaven, as it is the same, but in the New Testament, Christ Himself speaks and testifies more fully (Gen. 28:12-18; John 1:14 and 49-52). The same theme is developed more extensively by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 7-9, 11-13), where he interprets the total sacred history and sacred geography of the old and new Israel in an eschatological manner. Following the Apostle Paul, this vision and understanding is expounded and shown in life-liturgical practice by all patristic theological thought, exegesis, hymnography, historiosophy, and, above all and everything, the Holy Liturgy of the Orthodox Church itself.

So, if we unite the greatest Old Testament prophet Isaiah and the greatest Christian apostle John and unite together their truly biblical, prophetic vision of the Holy Land and its history as a symbol of the entire earth and the history of the human race, then this will be the only biblical, Old Testament-New Testament vision, message and the gospel of the Christ-centered movement And feat transformation of this heaven and this earth into New Sky and New earth (Isa. 65.17; Rev. 21.1-3), which, in fact, is one single universal Tabernacle(House, Church) God with people and people with God. Heaven on earth and earth in Heaven.

The Holy Land of Israel and the Holy City of Jerusalem belong to all humanity, both in the earthly and in the Heavenly Kingdom.

02 / 02 / 2004

Translation from Serbian by Andrey Shestakov

What is the Holy Land? Of course, this is Canaan, aka Palestine, aka the Land of Israel. But on the current globe there is no Canaan - there is only the state of Israel and Palestinian territories with an unclear status. But then the pilgrims open the text of Scripture and read about the prophets and the Savior Himself: “... crossed the Jordan.” That is, they are going... to Jordan.

Remains of a Byzantine basilica at the supposed site of the Baptism of Christ

The Jordan today is a narrow river with muddy water, most which is dismantled for field irrigation. But it's still main river this region, and such rivers do not divide, but unite people. Is it possible to draw a border along the Volga or Dnieper and not cut a single country in two? They walked along the Jordan - and even then, less than a hundred years ago, when the British colonialists shared the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire with the French. Everything to the west of the Jordan was called Palestine, everything to the east was called Transjordan. This is how this border arose, and today’s pilgrims and tourists usually do not think that to the east of the Jordan lies the same biblical Holy Land, and its border was not the main river, but the great desert in the East, which stretches all the way to Mesopotamia.

Pilgrimage tours sometimes include a short visit to Jordan: Mount Nebo, from which Moses saw the Promised Land and where his earthly life ended, the place where the Savior was baptized, where John the Baptist preached and where the prophet Elijah ascended before him, the palace of Herod, where the Baptist was beheaded. It should be immediately clarified that the exact localization is always a little arbitrary; it is based partly on the biblical text, partly on tradition, and partly on guesswork. Where, for example, did Herod Antipas admire Salome’s dance? He had several palaces, the Gospel does not provide references to any of them.


On Mount Nebo

But it was only at Macheron, east of the Dead Sea, that a large dining hall was discovered during excavations - and the caves at the foot of the hill on which this palace stood could have been used as dungeons. Therefore, the most likely place for this event is here, but we cannot say anything for sure.

This is generally the important secret of pilgrimage: we do not end up in biblical history, but only get closer to it. In the same way, on Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, we do not pass along the Savior’s way of the cross at all, but along a street built a thousand years later and now completely touristic, with all these merchants and onlookers - it is simply located approximately in the same place where He passed . And often we generally come not so much to the place where such and such an event took place, but rather to the place where it is customary to remember it.

After all, in any case, the rocky ground under your feet and the bright blue sky above your head are the same as in biblical times, and having been there, you can not just remember biblical events - you begin to see how it all happened.

When my friend Fr. Ilya Gotlinsky invited me to join a pilgrimage and tourist trip he organized in Jordan; at first I hesitated. But when I ended up in this country, I didn’t regret it even once. I will talk about some special places and discoveries separately, inshallah (if God wills), but for now I will give only one observation.

In Israel, of course, there is much more interesting and vibrant - but this seclusion and provincialism of Jordan also has its own huge plus. When you visit holy places on Israeli territory, you are bombarded with wave after wave of pathos and narrative: three main religions and many faiths and groups within each of them, political parties and national minorities, professional guides and home-grown prophets are waging a constant war among themselves for your consciousness. Everyone insists on their own version of Sacred History, everyone cites it as the main argument on the topic: why this land should belong to us, why we are right, why we are offended and humiliated by everyone else. And you can’t escape this pathos.

And this is not to mention the fact that all the holy places were rebuilt many times and passed from hand to hand. It is enough to remember the Church of the Holy Sepulcher: it stands in the very center of the Old City, but Golgotha ​​was once located outside the city walls. Jerusalem itself, as it were, “moved to the side” in order to absorb this shrine - it decorated it, erected a temple on it with many altars and outbuildings (each denomination has its own), and now, coming to the place of the Crucifixion, you see many shrines. But in them it is already very difficult to discern that terrible bald hill near the city wall, that new tomb nearby, where all the most important things happened. Paradox?

In Transjordan (Transjordan, Jordan) everything is simpler: once, in ancient times, there was a crossroads of trade routes, caravans from India and Arabia went here to Damascus and further to the West, but soon after the Arab conquests new trade routes were laid through Baghdad , the cities fell into desolation, and only a few Bedouins settled in their ruins. This means that nothing was rebuilt.


Desert of Mary of Egypt

And monks also lived here. Here, in the footsteps of the prophet Elijah and John the Baptist, Mary of Egypt once went; it was in this desert, far from the shrines, that she talked alone with God.

A tourist trip or even a pilgrimage is, of course, not an ascetic exercise, but rather a satisfaction of curiosity. We did not imitate Mary of Egypt at all in our comfortable air-conditioned bus, in our hotel with paid breakfast and dinner. But we suddenly saw why it was so important for her and for many other monks, prophets, seekers: to cross the Jordan, to get away, at least for a while, from pathos and greatness to where from time to time there are still the same stones and stars, the same springs and palm trees, where the human soul still appears, just as naked and trusting, before the Eternal - if, of course, it manages to strip off the excess.

On a tourist bus on the road through the desert


Jordan Valley


Modern Temple in the Jordan Valley




At the souvenir shop


Sign on one of the temples


Abandoned village


In the cafe

In Christianity

European ideas about the Holy Land

The inhabitants of medieval Europe made pilgrimages to the Holy Land and traded with it. Nevertheless, European knowledge about Palestine was characterized by numerous exaggerations. According to Pope Urban II “that land flows with milk and honey”(words from his speech at the Council of Clermont, where the start of the Crusades was announced). Ideas about the abundance and wealth of the Holy Land are explained by the mythological ideas of Christians. (Similar ideas exist in other religions.) They were convinced that the Holy Land (and above all Jerusalem), as the center of Christianity and the center of the world, is opposed to all other lands as the periphery of the world. And if in Europe (on the periphery) there is hunger, disease, drought and injustice, then in the center of the world everything is the opposite. It is blissful there, the land is fertile, peace and justice reign. This is precisely one of the reasons for the massive scale of the Crusades.

History of the Holy Land

see also

Sources

Literature

• Gusterin V. P. Cities of the Arab East. - M.: East-West, 2007. - 352 p. - ( Encyclopedic reference book). - 2000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-478-00729-4

Links

• Article Holy places in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron

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See what “Holy Land” is in other dictionaries:

Palestine Dictionary of Russian synonyms. holy land noun, number of synonyms: 3 cemetery (30) ... Synonym dictionary

Not to be confused with Holy Land (amusement park). Map of the Holy Land, 1759. Holy Land ... Wikipedia

Holy Land- ♦ (ENG Holy Land) a term denoting the land of Palestine and its holy places. Israel became known as a holy land in the Middle Ages. Christian pilgrimages here began on the 4th... Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms

Holy Land- Holy land (Palestine) ... Russian spelling dictionary

Holy Land- (Palestine) ... orthographic dictionary Russian language

II.2.1. Syria and Palestine (Holy Land)- ⇑ II.2. Crusader States... Rulers of the World

Holy Rus'. Painting by Mikhail Nesterov, 1901 1906 Holy Rus' is the name of Rus' and Russia in Russian folklore, poetry and eloquence ... Wikipedia

PROMISED LAND- [Greek γῆ τῆς ἐπαγγελίας], the biblical name (Hebrews 11.9) of the land (in the territory of Canaan), promised by God to the Old Testament patriarchs and their descendants to the people of Israel, which they received after the exodus from Egypt (see also Art. Ancient Israel). In many... Orthodox Encyclopedia