Lecture 14:

Todays topic was Byzantine Jerusalem. It was professors birthdays so he brouht us diddy!!! it was so good! Byzantine Jerusalem came after the Roman Rule and before the Persian Captured Jerusalem. Its rule was from 312-637CE. Christianity began to rise during this time. As well as the metaphysical Jerusalem. We also start to see Jesus and his role in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where Jesus was said to have been crucified, buried and resurreced. We can see stroys this in Matthew 27: 33-40.In the Byzantine empire, there was a division between the east and the west. On each side, they had both an Augustus and a Caesar to rule. Constantine was one of the great rulers during the Byzantine empire. He ruled from 312-337CE. He legalized Christianity at the Edict of Milan in 313. It was said that he used Christianity in order to uite the emipre. In 330, Byzantium was renamed Constantinople. Helena was Constantine's mother. She came to Jerusalem in  324. She was the lead the first christian Pilgrimage and created teh church of nativity as well as the church of the ascension. She also rededicated the church of the Holy Sepulcher.
We then looked at the Madaba Map from 6th century CE. The Madaba was a mosaic on a church floor that is a map of the holy land with Jerusalem as its center.On it are the six gates, The Damascus gate, the stephan gate, the dung gate, the zion gate, the jaffa gate and the golden gate. We saw pictures of all of these and where they were located on the map. We also looked at the church of the holy sepulcher. It was said that it was the place in which adam was buried. Abraham also bound issac for sacrifice there. It is considered the symbolic cneter where divinity touches humanity in a unique way. We finished the lecture by going over the Nea church. IT was a Christian church that was built by Justinian. It copies the layout of the ancient temple with "two columns in the front".