EVEN SHETIYYAH, tannaitic term which was understood in two ways in talmudic times: "the rock from which the world was woven" and "the foundation rock." Both meanings presuppose the belief that the world was created from the rock which, placed at the center of the world in the Holy of Holies (Devir) of the Temple in Jerusalem, constitutes the focal point of the world. The Holy Ark was placed upon this rock, and during the Second Temple period the high priest rested the fire-pan on it when he entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. The Mishnah (Yoma 5:2) states that the rock had been at the site of the Devir since "the time of the early prophets" (i.e., David and Solomon); that it was three finger breadths higher than the ground; and that it was called shetiyyah. However, R. *Yose b. Halafta (Tosef., Yoma 3:6) explains the term as having cosmogonic significance and the subsequent Midrash is based on this view. The Mishnah clearly dates the placing of the stone to the time of the Temple's construction and ignores the mythological dimension; other tannaitic views similarly deny that the creation was initiated at Zion (Yoma 54b). The mishnaic source may have antedated the cosmogonic belief; it may have postdated it and rejected it; or it may have assumed that it was the cosmogenetic rock that was brought to the Temple site. The later Midrash states that the entire Temple was founded upon the rock, and that the stone was possessed of magical properties.

The relationship of the even shetiyyah to the rock presently housed under the Dome of the Rock (the "Mosque of Omar") built on the Temple Mount is not fully clear. Muslim tradition identifies the two, and this is the view most widely held today. The major difficulty here is the size: the rock housed in the Dome of the Rock measures approximately 58 by 51 feet, an area larger than the entire Holy of Holies in which the even shetiyyah was found. The later Midrash does state, though, that the entire Temple was based on this rock, which, it implies, merely broke through in the Holy of Holies. In medieval times it was thought that the ground around the rock had been worn away by violence and the erosion of centuries, revealing it in its present magnitude (cf. Radbaz, Responsa, 2 (1882), nos. 639, 691). A second theory states that the rock under the Dome is not the even shetiyyah but the foundation-rock of the great altar of holocausts; the cave under the rock would then have served to collect ashes and other sacrificial refuse. In that case, the Holy of Holies would have stood to the west of the present Dome of the Rock, which presents architectural and topographical difficulties.

THE EXTRA-HISTORICAL CITY. The history of Jerusalem begins with an aggadah on the creation. "At the beginning of the creation of the world the Holy One blessed be He made as it were a tabernacle in Jerusalem in which He prayed: May My children do My will that I shall not destroy My house and My sanctuary" (Mid. Ps. to 76:3). Eliezer b. Jacob held that Adam offered a sacrifice "on the great altar in Jerusalem" (Gen. R. 34:9). According to one view Adam was created from a pure and holy place, the site of the Temple (PdRE 12; Gen. R. 14:8; TJ, Naz. 7:2, 56b: "he was created from the site of his atonement"), while another maintained that all the world was created from Zion (Yoma 54b).

In an extension of the vision of Isaiah (2:2) "that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills," Jerusalem is pictured by a Diaspora Jew of the second century B.C.E. as "situated in the center of the land of Judah on a high and exalted mountain" (Letter of Aristeas, 83). In a baraita. the view of the Temple as the highest place is connected with the verse (Deut. 17:8): "Then shalt thou arise, and get thee up unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose," which shows that the Temple is higher than the rest of Erez Israel, and Erez Israel than all other countries (Kid. 69a). Associated with this description of the Temple and Jerusalem is the idea that the place is also the center of the world and the tabbur ha-arez ("the navel of the earth"), a well-known Greek concept. Philo also described Jerusalem "as situated in the center of the world" (Legatio ad Gaium, 294) and Josephus states that Judea "stretches from the River Jordan to Jaffa. The city of Jerusalem lies at its very center, and for this reason it has sometimes, not inaptly, been called the 'navel' of the country" (Wars, 3: 5 1-52). This idea is also found in the Midrash: "As the navel is set in the middle of a person so is Erez Israel the navel of the world, as it is said: 'That dwell in the navel of the earth' [Ezek. 38: 1 2]. Erez Israel is located in the center of the world, Jerusalem in the center of Erez Israel, the Temple in the center of Jerusalem, the heikhal in the center of the Temple, the ark in the center of the heikhal, and in front of the heikhal is the even shetiyyah ["foundation stone"] from which the world was started" (Tanh. B., Lev 78; and see Sanh. 37a; Song R. 7: 5 no. 3). The antiquity of this aggadah is attested by a parallel in the Second Book of Enoch (23:45, Cahana's edition) in which the metaphor "the navel of the earth" is connected with the site of Adam's creation ("And that Melchizedek will be priest and king in the place of Araunah saying, In the navel of the earth where Adam was created . . ."). These aggadot and others like them make Jerusalem the place where the decisive events in man's history, as recounted in the book of Genesis, occurred (see Gen. R. 22:7; PdRE 23, 31). The identification of Mount *Moriah, on which Solomon built "the house of the Lord" (11 Chron. 3: 1), with "one of the mountains" in the land of Moriah, on which Abraham bound Isaac on the altar, predates the special holiness of Jerusalem and its choice as the site of the Temple to before David's capture of the city and connects this with the promise given to the patriarch Abraham. To the name by which it is first mentioned, Salem ("peace" or "perfection," Gen. 14: 18) was added -yirah ("reverence," in Gen. 22: 14) after the Akedah, both combining to form the name Jerusalem (Gen. R. 56: 10).