THE JERUSALEM SYNDROME
Before going to Jerusalem, I occasionally had conversations
with friends who told me about “the Jerusalem Syndrome.” I have to admit that I had heard about an
episode from The Simpsons in which
Homer is on vacation with his family in Israel.
Although he is not impressed at first, Homer gets lost in the desert and
after a state of dehydration awakens in a hospital where he tells his family
that he is the chosen one, the messiah, who wants to unite all the faiths of
the Holy Land. Homer is suffering from “the
Jerusalem Syndrome.” He sets out to the
Dome of the Rock to proclaim his message.
One of the most famous real life examples of Jerusalem
Syndrome is Denis Michael Rohan. On
August 21, 1969 he set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem. He believed that if the
mosque was destroyed this would launch God’s plan. Rohan would build the third temple and God
would “set him up as king over Jerusalem and Judea.” Although the fire did not entirely destroy the
Al-Aqsa Mosque, the incident did spark an international concern that a holy war
might ensue. Rohan was arrested in
Israel, tried, and found insane. After
spending time in a mental institute in Israel, he returned home to Australia apparently
under psychiatric care. He died later in
1995.
I have included three links below. The first gives a description of the Jerusalem Syndrome. The second provides information, an audio file, and a transcript on the story of Denis Michael Rohan. The third is a link to a video of the 1969 Al-Aqsa fire. The video is from a site that calls Rohan a Zionist. However, he is generally understood as a Christian (either protestant, evangelical, or a fundamentalist) who was influence by, though not endorsed by, the Worldwide Church of God and its magazine The Plain Truth.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-jerusalem-syndrome
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/rohan-and-the-road-to-the-apocalypse/3070866#transcript
http://178.32.255.194/hispantv/20160821/alaqsa.mp4
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