Byzantine Jerusalem

This was a time where the Jews were banned from Jerusalem by the Romans and the Christians took over control of the city. Jerusalem is an important city to Christians because Jesus comes and goes in Jerusalem and the Galilee. Paul goes on his missionary journeys through Turkey and to Rome. A sect from Judaism breaks off and becomes its own religion called Christianity. This new faith originated in Jerusalem but became centered in Rome. In early Christianity Jesus was a Jew and the people that saw Jesus as Messiah thought themselves to be Jews. Christianity rejected the temple. After Christianity becomes its own religion there is obvious conflict between Judaism and Christianity. The rejection of the temple begins with Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the temple. This prophecy gives the idea that faith is mobile. After the center of Christianity became Rome, the Christian council came to Jerusalem to hash out which rules and laws from Judaism the Christians were going to keep. In early Christianity there was a question of whether Jerusalem was important. In John 4:19-26, Jesus declares that a time will come when people don’t need to worship god in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is important to Christians because this was the place where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected. When the Romans ruled Jerusalem they changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.
In 285 CE emperor Diocletian split between east and west creating the tetrarchy. Maxim was the leader of the west. Later Constantine the Great takes control of the entire empire and gets rid of the tetrarchy in 312-337 BCE. In 330 BCE Constantine makes Constantinople the capital. Constantine appointed his mother Helena as Augustas. She made a church to commemorate the burning bush, the holy sepulcher. The holy sepulcher became the axis mundi.
Julian tries to rebuild the temple. He rejected Christianity. The emperor names Christianity the state religion and Jerusalem becomes a Christian empire. The emperor Justinian expands Jerusalem and builds the new church. The church is called the church of holy zion. He also expanded the Cardo.
This was interesting for me because I never learned about Christian Jerusalem in Jewish day school. They never gave us an in depth history about this period.