Destruction of Evidence, Destruction of History

"The Temple Mount was now a heap of rubble. Apart from the western wall of the Devir, only the huge walls supporting the Temple platform had survived the onslaught, Once they had dealt with the Temple, Titus's soldiers began to smash the elegant mansions in the Upper City and pulled down Herod's beautiful palace. Archaeologists have revealed how thoroughly and ruthlessly the Roman troops went about their task. Houses collapsed and lay buried under piles of debris that were cleared away. The Tyropoeon Valley was completely blocked with fallen masonry and silted up by the torrents that poured down the hillsides during the winter rains. The city walls were demolished...Visitors found it difficult to believe that Jerusalem had ever been inhabited." (Armstrong 153)

Destruction removes the possibility of finding some concrete aspects of the past. So much of archaeology is the attempt at understanding destruction - what came before it, what came after, why certain things happened. When a whole time period, so to speak, is destroyed, material evidence turns into "educated guesses". We will never truly and fully have a picture of what exactly the 'Holy City' looked like at the time. We only have hypotheses, which also have the ability to be tainted by bias or false evidence. Destruction creates this possibility.

It is fascinating to think about all the facts about the past that we will never know due to previous destruction. Like the quote above reminds us, archaeologists were left with little evidence about what all was situated within Jerusalem before the destruction by the Romans. We are left with evident destruction and written word about what occurred during the time period. Of course, not everything was destroyed - but we will never have an uninhibited picture of what Jerusalem contained during that period of time. Jerusalem was knocked down and built back up time and time again. 

This passage should remind us that history is not simple - we no longer have certain facts and evidence to prove the stories and mysteries recorded by individuals during the period; because of this, at times it may be difficult to distinguish fact from fiction, history from parable. It may become hard to distinguish the ownership of items and the time period in which things existed. 

Jerusalem is a city that was crushed and put back together more times than one might expect. We must always keep in mind that we may never fully understand how Jerusalem changed over time, especially because of the seemingly constant destruction of buildings and peoples within its walls. Destruction is one of the most prevalent themes in the story of Jerusalem.