Holy Land

Good question, Rex. The provenance of a great number of so-called "holy" places goes so far back into pre-historical times that it's impossible to say today why they were originally considered to have special significance. Early Christian churches were frquently built at sites which had previously been places of worship for the so-called pagans who preceded the Christians. Ostensibly, this was by way of an exorcism, an attempt to remove the pagan "evil" spirits from those sites and make them fit for Christian worship. I strongly suspect, however, that in the backs of the minds of the church fathers was a suspicion that if their predecessors and ancestros had worshipped there, then the place must in some way be special.

In the Near East, these early Christian churches were, in time, replaced by Moslem mosques. Again, the ground had already been consecrated to some form of worship. Case in point: the Umayyad Mosque in Damscus, Syria, is the third largest and holiest in all of Islamdom (pardon me for coining that word, but if Christians can refer to 'Christendom' there's no reason not to give Moslems equal billing). The site of that mosque, at the entrance to the Street Called Straight, was originally the site of a temple dedicated to Haddad, the Syrian thunder god. After the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (aka St. Paul) to Christianity, the new religion of the Christians soon spread to Syria and the temple to Haddad was demolished and a Christian church raised in its place. With the spread of Islam from the Arabian peninsula out into the Levant, the church was replaced by the present-day mosque. The remains of el-Sal-al-Din (Saladin) are interred there and persistent rumor has it that the head of John the Baptist may likewise be somewhere on the premises.

I don't doubt that the Hebrews who first raised a temple to house the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem likewise chose a site already known among the locals as "holy land."

Nice post MA,

The act of making land holy is as if some spirit occupies it.

Seems a bit out dated with today's reasoning.

As if ALL land is not created by God and thus being godly and holy...

Or, as if the pagans had the power to render the land unholy.

The measurement of land has four dimensions?

Billions of barrels of oil can suddenly make the land allot holier...

Some claim that one of the reasons for locating churches and christian monuments on pagan holy places was to ease the transition to the new religion. For the same reason christian holidays were placed on the pagan feastdays. The result was that people could go on as they had to an extent, making it easier to accept the changes in religion.

Also, the people were often reluctant to give up old ways, and would incorporate them into the new ways rather than abandon them entirely.

Because men with machines come and poke holes in it?

Bingo!

The term "holy land" was first mentioned in a travellor's book, the so-called Itinerarium Burdigalense (aka Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum).

Later, it was used to justify the crusades.

Bingo, indeed. Has anyone claimed that either Iraq or Afghanistan are "holy" in some sense? The Muslims, of course, consider Mecca -- and, to a lesser extent, Medina -- both in what is now called Saudi Arabia holy.

I am not certain, but I seem to recall that some historically significant places for many religions are located in today's iraq. But I hope someone knows for sure...

Iraq (mesopotamia) has been called the land flowing with milk and honey.

Oil is the milk of the land having the consistency of honey.

nifty

Actually -- unless I misread Scripture -- Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia in search of the land of milk and honey. He and his tribe of Hebrews (Hibaru in some ancient cuneiform tablets) decided on the land of Canaan in what is present-day Israel. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has discovered oil in Israel yet, at least not sufficient for commercial exploitation. There's oil near Abraham's old home town all right, but I haven't heard that his decsendants in the Jewish branch of the family (the Arabs are also decsended from old Abe) are planning to lay any claim on that parcel of real estate. Mesopotamia (later also known as Babylon) is the place the Hibaru wanted to be shut of.

http://www.sunbelt-software.com/stu/iraq/sandstorm.htm