“On That Day, His Feet Will Stand on the Mount of Olives”: The Mount of Olives and Its Hero between Jews, Christians, and Muslims

Abstract

This article examines the changing Jewish attitudes toward the Mount of Olives, and toward the identification of its “hero” to come in the last days, in relation to the mount’s changing jurisdiction under Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim authority. It illustrates how the Christian appropriation of biblical ideas about the mountain—transforming the ascent and future descent of the Shekhinah into the ascent and future descent of Jesus—led the Jews to abandon those notions, and how the Muslim conquest then brought about a reinvigoration and expansion of the mountain’s original associations among Jews by relocating the appearance of the Messiah as well as apocalyptic scenes on the mount. In the first of these developments, the Byzantine prohibition against Jews approaching Jerusalem led to a distancing of the Jewish people from the biblical and postbiblical traditions that had been connected with the Mount of Olives and its environs during the Second Temple period. Subsequently, the Muslim occupation of the area neutralized that tension, allowing Jews to return to the mountain and restoring the traditions associated with it to the Jewish consciousness. The reaffirmation of the Jewish connection with the Mount of Olives and its ancient association with the future hero may be seen in two developments that took place under Muslim rule: its choice as the location for a yearly Hoshana Rabbah ceremony and its renewed identification as the site for the resurrection of the dead at the End of Days.