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Jerusalem. People United in a Prayer
Sezione 1
Sezione 2
Tomb of King David
David. 970 BC
PLAY ME
I was the king of Judah and Israel,
a strong warrior and a sensitive poet.
A man who could use his wits, as when I defeated Goliath, but who did not disdain brute force in decimating the Philistines... My cult united the Christian, Jewish and Islamic religions: for the Jews, I was the one from whom the Messiah would descend. Christianity remembers me as a descendant of Joseph,
while Islam sees me as a prophet. When I died, I was buried on Mount Zion, just outside the walls of Jerusalem. My tomb is in the ancient Byzantine church Hagia Zion, now destroyed, in a corner on the ground floor, but the site was not officially recognised until at least the XII century AD. Of course,
the Crusaders went to great lengths and removed my original location by placing my remains under a stone sarcophagus, which now lies on a 14th-century floor. Many events took place in this place while I was resting there, but today it is recognised as a stronghold of religious worship and there is a sublime spirituality. Over the centuries,
I have heard Franciscan friars pray intensely over my tomb, Muslims gather in contemplation in the same place and Jewish pilgrims climb over my tomb to pray closer to the Old City; different cults, but a single aspiration towards the divine, a continuous search for contact with God, with the Most High, with the universal Demiurge.
Sezione 3
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