Simon Sebag Montefiore on Jerusalem

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2015

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jerusalem. How did this small, remote town became the Holy City, the desire of every empire, and the key to Middle East peace? In this dazzling talk from February 2011, Simon Sebag Montefiore revealed the ever-changing city through its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem’s biography was told through the wars, adventures, love-affairs and messianic revelations of the men and women – kings, empresses, saints, conquerors, prophets and whores – who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in the Holy City. Its cast varies from Solomon and Saladin to Churchill, Cleopatra and Caligula, from Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad to Jezebel, Nero, Napoleon, Rasputin, Herod and Nebuchadnezzar, from the Kaiser, Disraeli and Lloyd George, to Yasser Arafat, King Hussein and Moshe Dayan. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this Intelligence Square podcast.
0:03.3	For more information on our debates, talks and discussions,
0:06.5	visit intelligence squared.com and sign up to the newsletter.
0:10.0	Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for having me.
0:13.4	Somehow it seems entirely appropriate to be talking about Jerusalem in a place called the
0:17.2	Tabernacle and and so I'm very pleased to be here.
0:22.4	More than ever at the moment,
0:24.0	Jerusalem seems at the center of the world.
0:27.0	As many of you know, in ancient times, in Byzantine times,
0:31.0	in Crusaders, Jerusalem was regularly described as the center of the world.
0:37.4	To all three religions, it's the universal city.
0:40.7	All of us have a vision of Jerusalem, all of us feel we know what we want Jerusalem to be,
0:46.0	and all of us want to make that Jerusalem in the real Jerusalem.
0:51.0	Oftentimes, this expectation, this love of Jerusalem, has led to grave
0:56.9	disappointment. And from that comes madness, of course. And this is what is known as the Jerusalem Syndrome. Jerusalem
1:06.4	Syndrome is a is a genuine form of madness created by the disappointment or the gap between the heavenly Jerusalem
1:16.3	that we dream of that we've heard about and the real mess that is the genuine Jerusalem.
1:22.7	And in 2010, the Institute of Psychiatrists
1:28.0	over here produced a paper on the Jerusalem Syndrome.
1:32.0	And very helpfully the doctors who produced this paper made
1:40.0	a list of the things to keep a lookout for in amongst tour guides who were taking
1:46.0	tours to Jerusalem and I thought I'd share that with you because certain writers who have been writing about Jerusalem for many years.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Intelligence Squared, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Intelligence Squared and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.