The Christian Quarter
The reason why Christians saw Jerusalem as their holy city wasn’t
because it was the city where Jesus lived, but rather, being destroyed it
was proof to them that Jesus was the Messiah, because the prophecy
He had made that Jerusalem would be destroyed had been fulfilled.
The fact that Jerusalem lay in ruins was proof that the prophecy that
Jerusalem would be destroyed, which He had made on the Mt. of Olives
and to the women of Jerusalem had been fulfilled (Matthew 23:36-39,
Luke 23:28).
The site of the original city from the time of the 2nd temple is at Mt.
Zion, where David’s Tomb is and where the City of David is and where
the Jewish Quarter stands today.
The part of Jerusalem where the Christian Quarter stands today is the
site of a city built by Hadrian in 132 CE and known as Aelia Capitolina, a
Pagan city built to commemorate the victory of Jupiter over the Jewish
God.
The fact that Aelia Capitolina stood in all its glory and Jerusalem lay
in ruins was considered by the Pagan Roman, the Christians and later
the Moslem as proof that God had rejected the Jewish People and had
chosen another nation instead of them.
The Roman emperor Constantine the Great built the church of the Holy
Sepulchre, and it forms the center of the Christian Quarter. Originally this
was a beautiful Roman temple dedicated to Aphrodite, a very popular
Roman god.
Aphrodite was the goddess of love. The Romans must have thought the
Jews very strange because they hated Aphrodite.
Naturally they didn’t hate Aphrodite because she wasn’t appealing
or attractive but she simply contravened the first 3 of the 10
commandments (to worship only God, not to have any other gods and
not to make any graven images).
Constantine built a church of Jesus in place of Aphrodite’s temple in the
hope that the Jews would prefer to worship Jesus rather than Aphrodite.
After all according to them he was Jewish.
