Territorial supersessionism: dispossessing יהודים YEHUDIM to show religious authority.

The Aelia Capitolina study examines a Roman colony and the reported exclusion of יהודים YEHUDIM from their ancestral city. A later Christian interpretation gave the political arrangement another function. In Samuel Lee’s English translation from the Syriac transmission of Eusebius’s Theophania, the decisive comparison is between an empty city and one inhabited by others:

But, if the city itself had been utterly desolated, and without inhabitants, men would have thought that this was the cause (of their exclusion from it).

Now however, that the place is inhabited by foreigners, the descendants of a different race, and that it is not allowed to them alone even to set a foot in it, so that they cannot view even from a distance the land of their forefathers; the things foretold of it are fulfilled, in exact accordance with the prediction: […]

These are successive sentences, presented separately to expose his comparison. Eusebius’s evidence is selective exclusion: others inhabit the city while its ancestral people are barred. That condition becomes proof of Christian prophecy. This is an argument made by Eusebius, not an authenticated statement of Hadrian’s religious purpose. The Syriac manuscript has not been freshly collated; the linked companion records the checked printed translation and foundation debate. ¹

Miriam Ben Zeev Hofman’s study of Eusebius explains why his narrative sequence itself needs scrutiny. She identifies the pairing of alleged wrongdoing by יהודים YEHUDIM and righteous punishment as a recurring organizing pattern. Her analysis supports studying his theological use of exclusion while preventing his narrative from becoming an unquestioned foundation record. ²

Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho already interprets devastated land of עם ישראל AM YISRAʾEL and exclusion from ירושלים YERUŜALAYIM as punishment associated with rejection of Jesus by יהודים YEHUDIM. The source establishes the author’s justification of dispossession; its collective accusations remain his claims. ³

Origen moves from the duration of suffering of יהודים YEHUDIM to a prediction about the future. In the nineteenth-century English translation of Against Celsus, he contrasts earlier returns from exile with the continuing loss of Temple worship:

Now it has never been recorded, since the Jewish nation began to exist, that they have been expelled for so long a period from their venerable temple-worship and service, and enslaved by more powerful nations; for if at any time they appeared to be abandoned because of their sins, they were notwithstanding visited (by God), and returned to their own country, and recovered their possessions, and performed unhindered the observances of their law.

He then calls their suffering evidence for Jesus’s divinity and predicts that their former condition will never be restored. The argument makes political and religious losses of יהודים YEHUDIM serve Christian proof. It is a prediction framed by collective guilt, not an imperial order instructing officials to prevent return. ⁴

The fifth discourse of John Chrysostom, then a Christian presbyter preaching at Antioch, makes the threatened restoration concrete. This is a religious leader’s argument to his congregation. TJD’s retained Greek transcription reads:

φέρε ἐκ περιουσίας καὶ τοῦτο ἀποδείξωμεν πάλιν, ὅτι οὔτε ἀναστήσεται λοιπὸν ὁ ναὸς, οὐδὲ εἰς τὴν προτέραν ἐπανήξουσι πολιτείαν.

TJD translation of this selected passage:

Come, let us again demonstrate this too, beyond what is required: that the Temple will no longer rise again, nor will they return to their former order of life.

The Greek politeia can carry senses of civic order, constitution and way of life. Here it belongs to an argument joining city, Temple and ancestral observance; translating it as a fully specified modern nation-state would add more than the passage supplies. The source nevertheless denies the recovery of collective institutions of יהודים YEHUDIM in their homeland. ⁵

Julian’s authorization of rebuilding shows that restoration could become an undertaking supported by an emperor. Ammianus Marcellinus reports the allocation of resources, Alypius’s supervision and fires that stopped the work. That non-Christian narrative supports the project’s existence; its report of extraordinary events does not authenticate a divine prohibition. ⁶

Chrysostom portrays attempted restoration as opposition to God’s decree and makes repeated failure a victory for the Church. This identifies what was at stake for the preacher. It does not independently establish that Christians physically stopped the work. Nor does it settle Julian’s motives: Jan Willem Drijvers argues that restoring sacrificial worship within Julian’s wider religious program explains the project better than the anti-Christian motive attributed by hostile writers. The conceptual finding survives that challenge because it concerns the Christian interpretation, which is directly present in the sermon. ⁷

Drijvers also explains why the project’s failure mattered to Christian polemic:

It was an ideal way to show that the Christians and not the Jews had God on their side and were in the right.

His interpretation separates the emperor’s undertaking from the religious use of its failure. TJD’s conclusion concerns that latter use, directly documented in Chrysostom’s sermon. Drijvers’s reconstruction of Julian’s motives remains a scholarly argument, while the preacher’s denial of restoration can be examined in his own text. ⁸

The disagreement also protects the agency of יהודים YEHUDIM. Restoration by יהודים YEHUDIM cannot be reduced to a device in an emperor’s quarrel with Christians. At the same time, hostile Christian descriptions cannot establish how many יהודים YEHUDIM participated or what every authority of יהודים YEHUDIM thought of the project. Drijvers questions the breadth of participation inferred from those accounts. ⁹

Herzl’s diary account of his audience with Pius X supplies a later, separately documented use of religious reasoning against restoration by יהודים YEHUDIM. In Harry Zohn’s published translation, Herzl attributes this explanation to the pope:

The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.

The account also contrasts toleration of existing Turkish possession of holy places with refusal to support acquisition by יהודים YEHUDIM. It therefore makes the rulers’ identity as יהודים YEHUDIM relevant to the objection. Herzl’s account is evidence of what he recorded; it is not an independently authenticated verbatim Vatican transcript. ¹⁰

The reproduction’s introduction dates the audience 26 January while the diary begins by saying it occurred the previous day. That conflict must be resolved against the diary edition before creating a new exact-day event. The conceptual comparison does not depend on concealing it.

The comparison with Origen and Chrysostom is an identifiable similarity of reasoning: refusal by יהודים YEHUDIM to accept Christianity becomes a reason to oppose restoration. It is not yet a demonstrated citation chain from either ancient writer to this conversation. TJD distinguishes recurring mechanisms from direct transmission, and theological refusal from a state’s implemented restriction.

Al-Tabari transmits an assurance attributed to Umar for the Christian inhabitants of Aelia, the Roman name for ירושלים YERUŜALAYIM. It protects Christian churches and property while including an exclusion directed at יהודים YEHUDIM. The Arabic text reproduced by the scholarly RELMIN project reads:

ᴏʀɪɢɪɴᴀʟ:

ولا يكرهون على دينهم ولا يضار أحد منهم. ولا يسكن بإيلياء معهم أحد من اليهود. وعلى أهل إيلياء أن يعطوا الجزية كما يعطي أهل المدائن.

TJD translation of this selected passage:

ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ:

They shall not be compelled in their religion, and none of them shall be harmed. No Jew shall reside with them in Aelia. The people of Aelia shall pay the jizya as the people of the other cities do. ¹¹

The speaker in this transmitted document is the caliph. The surviving witness, however, is a later historian’s text, not Umar’s signed order. The clause expressly distinguishes protected Christians from excluded יהודים YEHUDIM; it supplies no explanation that Jewish exclusion proves Islam’s truth. Nor does its appearance in al-Tabari by itself establish implementation in the seventh century.

Abd al-Fattah El-Awaisi disputes the exclusion clause. His 2018 study states:

None of the versions preceding al-Tabari’s mentions or supports this addition.

He argues that the clause was added and revises his own earlier acceptance of it. That is an identifiable scholarly challenge, not a settled verdict on the document. Earlier omission and competing traditions require comparison; later permission to return, by itself, would not disprove an earlier ban. TJD therefore retains the clause as evidence of a transmitted exclusion claim while withholding a verified exclusion event under Umar. ¹²

Aharon Layish’s study of Deir al-Asad examines a transmitted imperial endowment, later court evidence and biographical narratives. He connects the establishment of a resident Sufi household to imperial security and religious consolidation:

It seems that the settling of the Ṣūfī shaykh at Dayr al-Biʿna on the initiative or with the assistance of the sulṭān must be understood as part of a drive for the colonization and Islamization of recently conquered areas sensitive in regard to security (the inhabitants of Dayr al-Asad believe that the reason for the establishment of the Ṣūfī settlement and the waqf was that the population of the area had a reputation for rebelliousness). ¹³

Layish’s opening qualification and his attribution of the village explanation matter. His interpretation is supported by the combined residence, religious-leadership and economic provisions; the parenthetical account of rebelliousness is a local belief he reports. The companion distinguishes the deed’s attribution to Selim from the biographer’s attribution of Christian removal to Süleyman, and preserves the later copies and uncertain arrival sequence. Those differences cannot be erased by calling the whole narrative a single imperial order. ¹⁴

This case supplies a mechanism of imperial religious settlement and reported displacement of Christians. It supplies no Jewish-exclusion clause in the passages examined here. Its role in the argument is therefore comparative: it shows how a religious household and endowment could establish durable outside authority, while the Western Wall documents below must independently establish restrictions directed at יהודים YEHUDIM. Colonization, religious replacement and antizionism remain separately proved claims.

At the Western Wall, a later documentary chain is more concrete. The Maghrebi Quarter companion traces an endowed Muslim residential institution beside the Jewish sacred site. The 1930 international inquiry reproduced an English translation of a directive bearing Muhammad Sharif’s seal and addressed to Ahmad Agha Duzdar, governor of ירושלים YERUŜALAYIM. It relays a khedivial decision through the military command, identifies the disputed ground as part of the Abu Madyan waqf, and invokes religious law before ordering:

therefore the Jews must not be enabled to carry out the paving, and they must be cautioned against raising their voices and displaying their books (or utterances) and (informed) that all that may be permitted them is to pay visits to it as of old. ¹⁵

The reproduced text conveys a prohibition for enforcement, rather than a later preacher’s interpretation. It denies the requested paving and constrains the manner of Jewish worship while preserving visits. It does not order the expulsion of every Jewish resident or prove that the medieval endowment was originally created to impose these restrictions. The original-language register has not been inspected; the quotation is the inquiry’s published English translation. The inquiry records that Jewish counsel contested authenticity on the ground of the khedivial title; Muslim counsel answered with a diary said to attest earlier use of that title. The companion preserves both positions. Neither that exchange nor TJD’s inspection of the reproduction amounts to independent authentication of the original register. ¹⁶

A separate 1911 decision makes the institutional objective explicit. The endowment trustee petitioned to stop chairs being brought by Jewish worshippers in order to prevent a future ownership claim. The reproduced decision records support from the mufti, the Awqaf Department and the religious court, followed by the Administrative Council’s decision to prevent articles indicating ownership. Its conclusion is quoted in full in the Maghrebi companion. This joins a named endowment, religious authorities and administrative power to a specific restriction on יהודים YEHUDIM. ¹⁷

These orders establish exclusion from particular acts and claims at a sacred site. Neither says that Jewish suffering proves Islam true. Their relevance to territorial supersessionism is narrower and material: inherited Muslim religious possession is used to prevent Jewish worship from becoming a competing institutional or proprietary foothold. The Christian prophetic argument and this legal mechanism can be compared without pretending that they use identical reasoning.

The 1988 Hamas covenant supplies a movement’s own declaration against Jewish sovereignty. Article 11 begins, in the English translation archived by Yale:

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. ¹⁸

The article denies kings, presidents and organizations the authority to relinquish any part of that claimed endowment. It invokes conquest and a decision attributed to Umar to explain permanent Muslim title while allowing occupants the use of the land’s produce. Article 6 places interreligious coexistence under Islamic rule; article 15 calls for religious mobilization and fighting against the Jewish possession it condemns. Read together, these provisions assert a religiously permanent territorial authority incompatible with sovereignty by יהודים YEHUDIM over ארץ ישראל EREẒ YISRAʾEL. They establish Hamas’s declared program in 1988, not an authenticated seventh-century deed or the intentions of every earlier Muslim settler. ¹⁹

This is a different source from a ruler’s implemented order: a movement covenant specifies an aim and its religious justification. Proving an operation, expulsion or attack requires the corresponding operational evidence. The movement’s own invocation of Umar is evidence that it claimed that precedent; it does not authenticate the precedent or establish a transmission chain from the Western Wall orders.

The comparison must also preserve changes in the movement’s public language. Hamas’s 2017 policy document distinguishes its stated conflict with Zionism from hostility to Jews because of their religion. It presents a state on the 1967 lines as a formula of national consensus while retaining rejection of the legitimacy of מדינת ישראל MEDINAT YISRAʾEL and its claim to the entire territory. The later document changes the declared framing; it does not make the 1988 religious argument disappear. Neither declaration, by itself, establishes how particular forces treated civilians. ²⁰

The presence of יהודים YEHUDIM, worship, communal jurisdiction and sovereignty are different relationships. Permission for one does not establish another. Conversely, denying sovereignty does not prove that a ruler barred all residence by יהודים YEHUDIM.

Alongside the exclusion clause transmitted by al-Tabari, the Geniza chronicle T-S Ar.6.1 preserves a competing narrative by יהודים YEHUDIM of negotiated resettlement under Umar: the patriarch proposes 50 households, representatives of יהודים YEHUDIM seek 200, and 70 are permitted. Its account of a golden dome under Umar warns against reading it as a contemporary administrative transcript. The text still matters as a memory carried by יהודים YEHUDIM of return and negotiation under Muslim rule. It contradicts a claim that all such narratives describe permanent Muslim exclusion; it does not establish independent sovereignty. ²¹

Christian teaching also changed. In 1965, Nostra Aetate rejected presenting יהודים YEHUDIM as rejected or accursed by God. That formal intervention prevents the earlier texts from being presented as the timeless position of all Christians. It does not erase the earlier arguments or itself settle sovereignty over ירושלים YERUŜALAYIM. ²²

Religious succession at a sacred site and the installation of an outside population are also different acts. A building inscription can establish construction and a religious claim without establishing a demographic transfer. A village’s later military use can establish a later antizionist role without showing that every founder intended it. The chronology of colonization must identify which relationship each event actually documents.

The name of the modern movement does not exhaust the history of the relationship it addresses. These sources show religious arguments against the recovery of institutions of יהודים YEHUDIM long before modern ציונות ẒIYONUT. TJD uses religious antizionism analytically where the target is restoration of collective authority of יהודים YEHUDIM in ארץ ישראל EREẒ YISRAʾEL, while retaining the sources’ own language and the distinction between a Temple, a city, communal rights and sovereign statehood.

The sources establish several forms of a common political relationship. Christian writers made Jewish loss a proof of religious victory and denied restoration. Muslim administrative decisions used endowed religious property to restrict Jewish worship and prevent ownership claims. Hamas later declared a permanent Islamic title incompatible with Jewish sovereignty. The theological proof, the administrative restriction and the declared political program have different evidentiary foundations. Each makes recovery by יהודים YEHUDIM subordinate to another religious authority.

The connection to antizionist colonization becomes concrete where settlement or an endowed residential institution is joined to exclusion or suppression of Jewish authority, as in the Maghrebi Quarter’s later legal history. The article does not turn the foundation of every non-Jewish settlement into a plan for later violence. It shows where foreign religious possession was justified, defended or mobilized against Jewish recovery, with the responsible institutions and acts visible.

• Why does Eusebius distinguish an empty city from a city inhabited by foreigners who exclude its ancestral people?
• What does Chrysostom’s argument establish about Christian opposition to restoration without settling Julian’s motives?
• How do a transmitted caliphal clause, an administrative order and a movement covenant support different historical claims?
• What do the Western Wall orders establish about worship and ownership without proving the medieval founders’ intentions?
• Which evidence would turn the comparison with Herzl’s diary into a demonstrated history of transmission or policy?
• How does a narrative permitting residence by יהודים YEHUDIM change a claim about exclusion while leaving the question of sovereignty open?