Jerusalem Tracker 13.1: New Publications about the Holy City
Helpful lists of new material about Jerusalem
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NOTICE: Building these lists has become an enormous task and resulted in a ton of material to read through. So I have decided to split the format into two posts sent on two different days:
Jerusalem Tracker 13.1 will contain new publications about Jerusalem (books and articles).
Jerusalem Tracker 13.2 will contain new pop/social media and blogs, digital resources, developments, and upcoming events about Jerusalem.
I will use this format going forward.
This is the 13th installment of Jerusalem Tracker, a quarterly list of every new publication I can find about historical Jerusalem. I also include relevant new media, developments, and events. To make these lists, I manually comb through hundreds of periodicals, publishing house websites, newsletters, popular outlets, blogs, social media feeds, and other online spaces. I also scoured the book hall at the ASOR and SBL annual meetings in November for material hiding in book chapters, collected essays, festschrifts, etc. See the archive of previous lists here.
The following criteria apply to the items listed below:
They must deal with an aspect of historical Jerusalem, whether its direct study, appropriation, or something else.
Material about Jerusalem’s hinterland is included only when there is a direct connection to the historical basin.
Forthcoming publications, even if available for preorder, are not included. This list only includes titles that have been released.
Open-access (*OA) works are noted.
Works in languages other than English are noted or their titles are left untranslated.
Most publications below were issued after August 2025, but some older ones may appear if I omitted them from previous lists by accident.
The study of Jerusalem is inherently variegated. Material or publication outlets listed below do not imply an endorsement of the views they express unless stated otherwise.
If you sense that any relevant resources are missing, please feel free to leave a comment or send an email to approachingjerusalem@gmail.com.
New Articles and Book Chapters about Jerusalem
Book Reviews
Review of An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem before and After 1948 by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi in International Journal of Middle East Studies by Pelle Valentin Olsen
Review of Jewish Piety in Islamic Jerusalem: The Lamentations Commentary of Salmon ben Yerūḥīm by Jessica Andruss in The Journal of Religion by Meira Polliack
Review of From the Passion to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Memories of Jesus in Place, Pilgrimage, and Early Holy Sites over the First Three Centuries by Jordan J. Ryan in Review of Biblical Literature by Joshua Schwartz
Review of Schon stehen wir in Deinen Toren, Jerusalem: Pilgerwesen und Jerusalembild am Vorabend des Ersten Kreuzzuges by Elisabeth M. Richenhagen in Church History by Alexander Marx
Review of Frankish Jerusalem: The Transformation of a Medieval City in the Latin East by Anna Gutgarts in Speculum by Adrian J. Boas
History of Jerusalem: Ancient Periods
“If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem” (book chapter) in Love, War, and Diplomacy
The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed by Eric H. Cline
“Sennacherib’s Throne-Room Reliefs: On Jerusalem and the Misplaced City of Ushu” in Journal of Near Eastern Studies by Stephen Compton
“The Historical Development of Temple and State Administration in Persian-Period Yehud” in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel by Peter Altmann
“Hadrian’s Policy in Jerusalem and Underlying Imperial Discourses” in Narratives of the Roman Empire: How to Make Rome with Words and Rituals by Pedro Giménez de Aragón Sierra
“Urban water security and the historical pools of Jerusalem” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America by Guy Bar-Oz and Gideon Avni
Several chapters in The King and the Land: A Geography of Royal Power in the Biblical World by Stephen C. Russell *OA
Chapter 1: Solomon’s Temple: On Space, Power, and Ancient Evidence
Chapter 2: David’s Threshing Floor: On Royal Dedication of Land to the Gods
Chapter 5: Hezekiah’s Tunnel: On Royal Shaping of the Water Supply System
Three sections on Jerusalem appear in Archaeology and the World of Jesus: A Visual Guide by David deSilva:
Part 3.25 Jerusalem: Herod’s Temple
Part 3.26 Jerusalem: The City
Part 3.27 Jerusalem: The Via Dolorosa
History of Jerusalem: Late Antiquity and Medieval Periods
“Departure and Return: Christians and Jerusalem in the Second to Fourth Centuries” in Scripture in the Search for the Doctrine of God Reading and Receiving the Bible in Christian Tradition. Essays in Honor of D.H. Williams by D. Jeffrey Bingham
“Yearning for Jerusalem and Beyond: Biblical Memories and Christian Expectations in Late Antiquity” in ‘Brouria has Spoken Wisely’: Studies in Christian Late Antiquity and Syriac Literature in Honor of Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony by Lorenzo Perrone
“Mary’s Mount: The Emergence of the Mount of Olives as a Marian Landscape” in ‘Brouria has Spoken Wisely’: Studies in Christian Late Antiquity and Syriac Literature in Honor of Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony by Ora Limor
“A Haven for the Orthodox in Jerusalem”: The Monastery of Mary Magdalene in the Sacred Landscape of Frankish Jerusalem in Visual Culture in Medieval Syriac Traditions by Maria S. Thomas
History of Jerusalem: Ottoman Period
“Middle Arabic traits in legal deeds concerning the custody of the Holy Land in 17th-century Jerusalem sharīʿa court records” in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam by Manuel Capomaccio
“Dilemmas of Heritage, Destruction and Memorial: Two Lost ‘Cathedrals’— The Intertwined Fate of the Great Synagogue of Vilna and the Ḥurva Synagogue of Jerusalem” in Journal of Heritage Management by Jon Seligman
“Theatricality, Theology, and the Sacred: Sabt al-Nur in Protestant Travel Literature in Ottoman Jerusalem” in Jerusalem Quarterly by Marina Johnson *OA
“Intersecting Identities in 18th Century Jerusalem: Conversion to Islam” in Religions by Alaattin Dolu
“Early Armenian Photographic Communities in the Ottoman Empire: The Cases of Abdullah Frères and Yesayi Garabedian” in History of Photography by İdil Cetin *OA
The latest issue of FİLİSTİN ARAŞTIRMALARI DERGİSİ contains several articles on Ottoman and British Mandate Period Jerusalem:
“Imperial Norms in the Urban Space of Jerusalem: From Pluralism to Polarization (1871-1948)” by Yasemin Avci and Mihriban Uçar (Turkish)
“Continuity and Resistance in the Historical Transformation of Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate (Urban Identity, Administrative Actions, and Conflicts)” by Hasan Hüseyin Güneş (Turkish)
“Tracing Property Ownership in Ottoman Jerusalem: Land Registration Processes in Bab al-Hitta and Bab al-Khalil Neighborhoods (1875-1917)” by Zekeriya Kurşun and Elif Fatma Erbil (Turkish)
“Property Valuation and Formation of the Real Estate Market in Jerusalem Under the Influence of Foreigners” by Ali İhsan Aydin (Turkish)
“The Servants of Thālith-i Ḥaramullah: The Repair Activities of the Ottoman Sulṭāns in the Ḥaram of Jerusalem” by Abdullah Çakmak
“The Jews of Jerusalem in the Late Ottoman and British Mandate Periods: Encounters of Ottomanism, Zionism and Imperialism” by Yasemin Avci and Yunus Emre Akyol (Turkish)
History of Jerusalem: British Mandate Period and Following
“Accumulating Visitors: Examining a Multilingual Private Guestbook from Twentieth-century Jerusalem” in Accumulating Notes: Note-taking and Multilayered Written Artefacts by Sebastian Schirrmeister *OA
Several chapter sections are relevant to Jerusalem in Past Perfect? The Archaeologies of Mandate Palestine 1917–1948 by Raz Kletter *OA:
Section 9.4 The Ophel, Jerusalem
Section 9.5 The Palestine Archaeological Museum (1928-1937)
Section 9.7 The Garden Tomb, Jerusalem (1944-1948)
Section 13.2 A Polish War Memorial in the Old City, Jerusalem
Jerusalem in Ancient and Medieval Literature
“Place Attachment and Zion in Isaiah and Jeremiah” in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly by Natalie F. Mylonas and David A. Bosworth
“Jerusalem’s Demise as a Cultural Trauma in the Book of Jeremiah” in Readings of Trauma: Hermeneutical Perspectives on Biblical and Modern Trauma Narratives by Christl M. Maier
“Did Postexilic Judaism Really Abandon Jerusalem and the Temple? A Discussion with Jean Louis Ska on the Absence of Zion Theology from the Pentateuch” in Exploring the Composition of the Pentateuch, Volume 2 by John S. Bergsma
“Dogs in Jerusalem: A New Reading in Miqsat Maʿase Ha-Torah (4QMMT) and Its Ramifications” in Performance, Space, and Time in the Dead Sea Scrolls Papers from the Eleventh Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Zürich 2022 by Vered Noam
“Reconsidering the “City of the Sanctuary” in the Temple Scroll” in Performance, Space, and Time in the Dead Sea Scrolls Papers from the Eleventh Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Zürich 2022 by Molly M. Zahn
“The Tears of Jesus and the Daughters Of Jerusalem” (book chapter) in Weeping and Tears in Luke’s Gospel Narratives: Between Ancient and Modern Commentators by Sue Ann Mark
“Crime, Misfortune or Fate? The Destruction of the Second Temple as Depicted by Josephus” in Strategies for Responding to Catastrophe: Examples from Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature by Eberhard Bons
“Past in the Present: Temporal Discontinuity and the Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical Writing” in The Third Crusade (1189-1192)
New Interpretations by Katarine Funding Hojgaard
“Al-ʿUlaymī’s Al-Badr al-Munawwar Manuscript and His Account of the Ottoman Sultan Selim’s Visit to Jerusalem” in Journal of Islamic Manuscripts by Abdullah M. Ömer
Dictionary and Encyclopedia Entries
“Jerusalem” in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Late Antique Art and Archaeology by Oren Gutfeld
Inscriptions from Jerusalem
“Alphabetic Writing in Jerusalem in the Early Monarchical Period” in Semitica by Nadav Na’aman
“La coupe à l’inscription « cryptique » du mont Sion à Jérusalem :
des théonymes au rite” in Divine Names on the Spot III Naming and Agency in Ancient Greek and West Semitic Texts by David Hamidović *OA
Digital Humanities
“The Lithic Journey of Jerusalem Stone: New Evidence of Ancient Quarries” in Heritage by Adi Sela Wiener, Laura Medeghini, and Gabriele Favero *OA
“The Virtual Illés Initiative: Remediating architectures of information within a 3D real-time visualisation of 19th-century Jerusalem” in Mobile Heritage Practices, Interventions, Politics by Maryvelma Smith O’Neil and Andrew Yip *OA
Archaeology of Jerusalem
“First demonstration of underground muon imaging at an archaeological site in ancient Jerusalem” in Journal of Applied Physics by Y. Benhammou, E. Etzion, Y. Gadot, O. Lipschits, G. Mizrachi, Y. Shalev, Y. Silver, A. Weissbein, and I. Zolkin *OA
“Jerusalem, the Old City, Bet Ha-Bad Street” in Hadashot Arkheologiyot by Annette Landes-Nagar *OA
“Jerusalem, Sultan Suleiman Street” in Hadashot Arkheologiyot by Rina Avner *OA
“New Discoveries in Excavations of the Silwan Pool” in City of David Studies of Ancient Jerusalem by Nahshon Szanton, Itamar Berko, and Filip Vukosavović *OA
“Rooted in power: the transformation of the palmette motif from an elite symbol to a marker of royal authority in Iron Age Judah” in Levant by Reli Avisar *OA
“The Eastern Route of the Third Wall in Light of Archaeological Excavations” in City of David Studies of Ancient Jerusalem by David Yeger and Nahshon Szanton *OA
“The Changing Character of Iron Age Jerusalem as Revealed in the Ophel Excavations” in Palestine Exploration Quarterly by Greg J. Wightman
Collected articles from the New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Region conference held on Oct 22-23. Many thanks to the authors who have made their papers available on Academia [dot] edu.
“Archaeological and Conservation Activities in the Jerusalem District in 2024” by Yiftah Shalev and Yossi Vaknin (Hebrew)
“Desperately Seeking Berenice: Finding a Rare Gold Coin of an Egyptian Queen in Third-Century-BCE Jerusalem” by Robert Kool, Haim Gitler, Yonah Maor, Efrat Bocher, Yiftah Shalev and Yuval Gadot
“The Pork Consumption Taboo in the Southern Levant: A Textual and Archaeological Perspective” by Guy Darshan and Lida Sapir-Hen (Hebrew)
“Children and Childhood in Jerusalem during the Early Islamic Period” by Ari Levy, Anna de Vincenz and Shani Samai-Moskovich (Hebrew)
“A Neo-Assyrian Cuneiform Inscription from Jerusalem: Direct Evidence of Imperial Communication with Iron Age Judah” by Ayala Zilberstein, Peter Zilberg, Filip Vukosavović and Anat Cohen-Weinberger (Hebrew)
New Books about Jerusalem
Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem: The Village of Beit Mazmil, its Occupants and their Industry over Five Centuries, edited by Bethany J. Walker
Woman Zion, Out of Hand: A New Materialist Investigation of Zion’s Movement by Cindy Dawson
Christian Music in Jerusalem: The First Two Thousand Years by Alexander Rosenblatt
Sous tes pierres, Jérusalem quand l’archéologie fait l’histoire by Marius Schattner and Frédérique Schillo
Defeat and Deliverance: Prefigurements of the Jewish Revolt Against Rome in Josephus’ Depictions of Past Invasions of Jerusalem by Jordan Henderson
Jaffa Gate and its Place in the History of Jerusalem by Joshua N. Tilton
Stay tuned for part 2!
This material was 100% human composed. We do not use AI at any stage of research or writing.
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