FRIENDS OF ASOR WEBINARS
What Makes Jerusalem Special?
Friends of ASOR present the first webinar of the 2024-2025 season on September 4, 2024, at 7:00 pm EDT, presented by Prof. Jodi Magness. This webinar will be free and open to the public thanks to partial sponsorship by Oxford University Press. Registration through Zoom (with a valid email address) is required.
“Holy City of God, Jerusalem, how I long to stand even now at your gates, and go in, rejoicing!” Around 600 CE, Sophronius, a monk from a monastery near Jerusalem who had been posted to Egypt, Sinai, and North Africa, composed a poem expressing his longing to return to the holy city – a wish that was fulfilled thirty years later when he was appointed patriarch. For Sophronius, not even Alexandria, the cosmopolitan cultural capital of the Mediterranean, could compete with Jerusalem. Sophronius’ words echo Psalm 122:1-3, which was written hundreds of years earlier and attributed to King David: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem – built as a city that is bound firmly together.”
Throughout the ages, pilgrims have shared Sophronius’ desire to stand in the gates of Jerusalem. Why has this poor and isolated mountain town exerted such a powerful hold on billions of people worldwide over the course of millennia? The simple answer is that for followers of the three Abrahamic faiths, Jerusalem is the place where the presence of the God of Israel dwells, and the Last Judgement will take place. It is the meeting point of heaven and earth – the locus of divine and human interaction. In this talk, Prof. Magness explores how these beliefs came to be associated with Jerusalem.
This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will be sent a link to view the recording.
Jodi Magness (www.JodiMagness.org) is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2002, she has been the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. in Archaeology and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania. Magness’ research interests focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world. 
Her most recent books are Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades (New York: Oxford University, March 2024); and Ancient Synagogues in Palestine: A Reevaluation Nearly a Century After Sukenik’s Schweich Lectures. The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 2022 (London: The British Academy/Oxford University Press, anticipated publication July 2024). Three of Magness’ books have won awards: Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton: Princeton University, 2019); The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002; revised edition 2021); and The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003). Magness has participated on 20 different excavations in Israel and Greece, including co-directing the 1995 excavations in the Roman siege works at Masada. Since 2011, she has directed excavations at Huqoq in Galilee (www.huqoq.org). Magness is an Honorary President of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), having served as President from 2017-2020), a member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.
