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Where is wise King Solomon when we need him? Where is the voice of reason, the voice of fairness, that can at last bring peace to the bloodstained streets of Jerusalem?
For Jews, Jerusalem is the City of David, the capital of a glorious past where Solomon's Temple stood as the great house built to honor the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For Christians it is the site of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the Savior of humanity. It was here that Jesus was crucified by the Romans and rose from the dead three days and three nights later just as He had foretold. To Muslims it is the site of the holy Dome of the Rock.
When Abraham, the father of both the Jews and the Arabs, traveled the land of Canaan as a wandering nomad, this city was already well known. Caravans from the civilizations that sprung up along the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile wound their way to Jerusalem.
Abraham's descendants: key players in the story
The God of the Hebrew Scriptures promised Abraham and Sarah a son, but as the years wore on and the couple remained barren, it seemed that God would not fulfill His promise. Struggling with the seeming impossibility of having a child, they devised a plan to produce the promised heir through a surrogate mother.
Sarah gave to Abraham her servant girl Hagar, and from that union Ishmael, the father of many Arab nations, was born.
But God had other plans, and eventually Abraham and Sarah gave birth to a son, Isaac. Ishmael was driven into the wilderness and the seeds of future strife between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael were sown.
Two generations later another family feud, this time between the two sons of Isaac—Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, and Esau—would create further bad blood in Abraham's family lineage.
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