Jerusalem – The Biography By Simon Sebag Montefiore [Featured Review]

Page 2 – Jerusalem: The Biography

Beyond the family interest, however, Simon Sebag Montefiore brings a historian’s curiosity and a gift for storytelling to the impossible task of telling a 3,000 year history.  He is usually careful to tread lightly in areas of religious narrative, but admits that much of the primary source material for Jerusalem’s early history is found in the Bible.  He privileges clear plots and interesting characters over historical argument, a choice the general reader will appreciate.  It’s only when you pay attention to the copious and eclectic footnotes that you realize how much more complex the story really is.

As a practicing Christian clergyperson, I discovered how much I didn’t know about Jerusalem as I read this weighty (688 pages in its hardback form) but readable history, which Montefiore curiously calls a biography.  The Bible gives us small windows of that history, such that major events in Jerusalem’s history like the Jewish Revolts of the late 1st century and the Crusader kingdoms of the medieval period can seem entirely fresh.  The history also gives the lie to several myths that guide contemporary narratives about the region.

For instance, it is often said that the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for centuries in one form or another and that there is no cause for hope that it could ever be different.  Montefiore shows, however, that, while conflicts have been common, they are by no means static, unchanging and inevitable.  The actors change.  The interests change.  And there are long periods during which the three religions found ways to coexist and interact.

Other modern myths claim that the Jews were not present in the land before the Zionist movements of the 19th century or that the Palestinians are an “invented” people – a belief that made it into the American political campaign a few months ago.  Montefiore is a measured enough historian to relay a history that resists such errant interpretations.  “If this book has any mission,” he says, “I passionately hope that it might encourage each side to recognize and respect the ancient heritage of the Other.”

If there is one thread holding Montefiore’s Jerusalem together through time, it is the all-too-human characters who dominate its history.  He has an eye for the salacious detail and he spreads these liberally through the narrative but devotes particular attention to them in the footnotes.  He happily shares reports of sexual proclivities and open marriages, a tendency underlined by his regular use of the word ‘priapic.’

Despite Montefiore’s idiosyncratic interests, his book is worth the read.  He is at his best in describing the first Israel, the Roman period and Crusader spirituality.  He wisely collapses the last 45 years of Jerusalem’s history into a hasty epilogue.  The interpretive work on this period following the 1967 War will have to wait.  And he concludes the narrative as I began this review, with a picture of morning in Jerusalem as representatives of the three faiths begin their day, living in the shadow of ancient conflicts and fully committed to the city’s magnificence.

————

Alex Joyner teaches at the Course of Study School at Perkins School of Theology, SMU, and is pastor of Franktown United Methodist Church on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.  He is the author of Hard Times Come Again No More: Suffering and Hope [Abingdon, 2010].