Jerusalem
as the Navel of the Earth
Borrowing
from a saying from James Joyce, the navel of us all leads us back from whence
we came. In the ancient world, locations
such as Delphi[1]
and Zion[2] were
sometimes called the “navel of the earth.”
It is not too surprising to see an ancient map that looks a little
different than the ones seen today. To
my surprise, I took the above picture on a map I saw in Jerusalem. Its center can easily be identified and the
trifold symmetry is evident. Its
simplicity is remarkable, especially in light of the complexity of the maps
today that represent the many nations, tongues, tribes, and kingdoms. Perhaps we have come to a bottleneck and we
will soon return and rediscover where all of us have come from.
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