Jerusalem in Christianity

At the end of each of the gospels, there are accounts of the Last Supper in an "Upper Room" in Jerusalem, Jesus Christ's arrest in Gethsemane, his trial, his crucifixion at Golgotha, his emtombment nearby, his resurrection and ascension, and his prophecy to return.

[citation needed] The Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles show James the Just, the brother of Jesus, as a leader of the early Jerusalem church.

Biblical archaeologist Bargil Pixner[6] claims to have found three walls of the original structure still extant today.

[citation needed] Jerusalem historian Dan Mazar reported in a series of articles in the Jerusalem Christian Review on the archaeological discoveries made at this location by his grandfather, Professor Benjamin Mazar, which included the 1st-century stairs of ascent, where Jesus and his disciples preached, as well as the mikvaot used by both Jewish and Christian pilgrims.

The exclusion of Jews from the new city of Aelia Capitolina meant that gentile bishops were appointed under the authority of the Metropolitans of Caesarea and, ultimately, the Patriarchs of Antioch.

Helena is remembered as the patron saint of archaeologists and (according to the church historian Socrates of Constantinople[9]) claimed to have found (with the assistance of bishop Macarius of Jerusalem) the True Cross, after removing a temple to Venus that had been built over the site.

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 raised the Bishop of Jerusalem to the rank of the patriarch, together with Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch.

However, Byzantine politics meant that Jerusalem simply passed from the Syrian jurisdiction of Antioch to the Greek authorities in Constantinople.

On the other hand, the ancient notion of the primacy of the Church of Jerusalem was preserved in several texts, like the early medieval list known as the Limits of the Five Patriarchates (Greek: Γνώσις και επίγνωσις των πατριαρχών θρόνων).

In 638, Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, handed over the keys of the city to Caliph Umar's Muslim forces.

The Muslim authorities in Jerusalem were not kind to their Christian subjects, forcing them to live a life of "discrimination, servitude, and humiliation".

Sultan Abd-ul-Mejid I (1839–1861), perhaps out of despair, published a firman that laid out in detail the exact rights and responsibility of each community at the Holy Sepulchre.

Five Christian communities currently have rights in the Holy Sepulchre: the Greek Patriarchate, Latins (Western Rite Roman Catholics), Armenians, Copts and Syriac Orthodox.

This view is notably advocated in Augustine of Hippos's The City of God, a popular 5th-century philosophical opus that was written during the decline of the Roman Empire.