During the approximately 400-year period from the entrance of the Jewish people into the land, through the period of the Judges, Jerusalem remained a non-Jewish city. 1,000 BCE) that Jerusalem was captured from the Canaanites (2-Samuel 5) and converted into the political/spiritual capital of the Jewish people.
(Archaeologists agree that the original Canaanite city and the City of David was located in what is now the Arab village of Silwan, a few meters south of the "modern" walls of the Old City.) David purchased the peak of Mount Moriah (2-Samuel -25) as the site for the future Temple and gathered the necessary building supplies. 6-8) describes in great detail how David's son, King Solomon, built and dedicated the Temple: "And it came to pass after the 408th year after the Children of Israel left Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel...
Abraham chooses the site specifically because he sensed how God's presence is strongly connected to this site. This is the metaphysical center of the universe, the place from which spirituality radiates out to the rest of the world.
Later patriarchal stories in Genesis are also connected with the site: We see from here that for thousands of years, the Jewish people have always associated Mount Moriah as the place where God's presence can be felt more intensely than any other place on earth.
Indeed, the last Camp David Summit floundered over Arafat's uncompromising position on the issue of controlling the site.
Israeli leaders, on the other hand, say that Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty, even as Barak offered significant autonomy over the Temple Mount and Palestinian Authority control over Arab sections of Jerusalem.
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The Jews of Israel are currently locked into a conflict with their Palestinian Arab neighbors.
After the Babylonian destruction, most of the Jewish population of Israel was forcibly exiled from the land.
This forced exile on the road to Babylon is mentioned in the famous verse from Psalm 137: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." Fifty years later, after Babylon was captured by Persia, the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem.
While all archaeologists agree that it stood on Mount Moriah, probably on the site of the present Gold Dome of the Rock, its exact location is unknown.
Four hundred and ten years after its completion, it was utterly destroyed by the Babylonians when they besieged Jerusalem and no trace of it remains.