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Jerusalem. People United in a Prayer
Sezione 1
Sezione 2
Mount of Olives
Solomon. 930 BC
PLAY ME
I was then an old man
and the third king of Israel,
when, intoxicated by the charms of my many wives, I began to take an interest in the worship of foreign gods. To satisfy the tastes of my women, I had tall idols built on the Mount of Olives, south-east of Jerusalem, to worship the new religions. Unfortunately, King Josiah, the seventeenth king of Judah,
had them all destroyed, claiming that I was an idolater... The mountain has always been full of olive trees, with whose oil kings and high priests have always been anointed. The place is, however, symbolic, especially for the Jewish religion; my father, King David, for example, climbed it to escape his son Absalon,
who was conspiring against him. In the period of the Second Temple, bonfires lit on the top of the mountain announced the new moon of the religious new year to the Jews of the diaspora; a relay of lights lit on the heights spread the announcement as far as Babylon. According to the declarations of the prophets,
the mountain will be the place chosen by God for the Day of Judgement and the resurrection of righteous men, when all the nations will be brought down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat and when the Lord will lay his feet by splitting the mountain in two. Hence, the decisive funerary vocation of the mountain.
Sezione 3
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