Response 4

I wanted to start off by talking about when the tomb of Jesus was found under the pagan temple. Okay, I found it amusing by how awe inspiring and sort of a religious revival had happened before Christianity had even been around for a long time occurred when the tomb was found. I like how Armstrong wrote of how even though the Christians did not accept the idea that they needed some physical sight on earth how even to find such a thing and related them to primal myths of going back to human origin. I also like how the chapters focused on how Jews and Christians were able to sort of realize wholly that their faith and worship can be from anywhere and not just Jerusalem. Even after the city had been completely changed it was astounding to me for people to still hold it at such a holy place in their hearts and to their religion, and am starting to see the importance of the city to the people. I never knew anything about Jerusalem and was shocked to read how many times it was destroyed and created, and I had no idea that the Jews were completely exiled and banned from practicing in Jerusalem for some time. I could not imagine how painful it would be to see the city they loved so dearly completely destroyed and turned into a modern Greek or Roman area. I sort of feel like Christianity being so closely related and not necessarily accepted, but was able to b integrated into the political and economic system to quickly was astounding. At times I thought the book was a little or very so much complex and confusing with all the historical content. It is somewhat hard for me to understand also such a close tie with the land. For me living in America I feel that we do not as a society have such associations with land and a sense of identity of who we are since there is not one place I hold dear, or can think of that as a group is seen as an admirable land or holy area for us here. Taking on this new perspective of Jerusalem is giving me a better understanding of how things have come to where they are today, even though I only know such a small amount, my understanding is better than where it was a few weeks ago but I still have so much more to learn.