from a variety of historical
and theological perspectives which have been
debated for centuries. It is considered the most sacred
place on Earth, The Holy Land. The land of milk and honey. Zion. BART EHRMAN: God promised that
the descendants of Abraham would be the ones who
would possess this land. NARRATOR: It has
also been carved up, subdivided, and fought over
by three of the world's great religions for
thousands of years. You've got all sorts
of people fighting over this piece of land. NARRATOR: But was the area known
as The Promised Land really given by God to a chosen people? And is the proof really found in
the pages of the Old Testament? Once a spot is deemed
sacred, it's always sacred. NARRATOR: It is one of the most
important books ever written. Its contents have been studied,
debated, and fought over for thousands of years. But does the Bible
also contain secrets? Secret prophecies? Secret characters? Secret texts? Now, for the first time,
an extraordinary series will challenge everything we
think, everything we know, and everything we
believe about the Bible. [music playing] Israel, 2013. As far as its citizens
are concerned, this is sacred ground. And Jerusalem, its largest city,
is its epicenter, its heart. It is the place where a boy
named David became a king, and where the mighty Solomon
built his great temple. But Jews are not the only people
who view this land as sacred. For Christians, it is the
land of Jesus, the birthplace of their faith. And for Muslims,
it is the land that Muhammad, the place from
where he ascended into heaven. For this reason, the
holiest place on Earth he is also one of
the most contested, the most fought over,
and the most dangerous. JAMES HOFFMEIER: You're talking
about a small, narrow piece of land, less than 150
miles, somewhat compared to the size of New Jersey. It's not a huge area, but it has
attracted tremendous attention by many cultures over-- over the centuries. CANDIDA MOSS: God
made the promise that this land was flowing
with milk and honey, this sort of paradise on Earth. It's sort of ironic that for
the past at least 1,000 years, people have fought brutally
and viciously over it. NARRATOR: The Holy Land we know
today is riddled with bullet holes, divided by barbed
wire, and patrolled by armed military. Conflict as marred
the enduring beauty of this landscape with the
scars of war and bloodshed. But why? Some say the answer may be
found in the very first pages of The Holy Bible, in
what is commonly referred to as the Old Testament. According to the
Book of Genesis, God sent a great flood to
wipe sin and corruption from the ancient world. When it was over,
a merchant named Abraham was summoned by God to
start a new kingdom on Earth, a so-called Promised Land
where he and his descendants could thrive and live
in peace and prosperity. ALVIN KASS: Judaism
began at a time when religions were
connected to countries. And indeed, every
country had its own God. The Jews were the
first to believe in this omnipotent deity. And this omnipotent deity
called upon Abraham, and he told him,
leave this country and go onto a different land
that I'm going to show you. That land was the
land of Canaan, which became The Promised Land,
the land that we call Israel today. God tells Abraham that-- that his descendants
will possess the land between the river
of Egypt and the Euphrates. And so it is now what we
would think of today as the area of Israel,
and part of Egypt, and part of Jordan,
part of Syria. NARRATOR: But a close
examination of the Bible also reveals many
surprising passages. Here, God orders his
chosen people, the Jews, or Israelites as they were
then known, to take control of the Promised Land, not by
peaceful means, but by any means necessary. There were already
people living in Canaan, but God promised that-- that the
descendants of Abraham would be the ones who would
possess this land. REZA ASLAN: God's
commandment to the Israelites was not just to conquer
the land of Canaan, but to slaughter every last
inhabitant of the land, every man, woman, and
child, every ox, every goat, every farm, every
blade of grass, the Lord says, has to be
destroyed as an offering to God before the land can be
purified and given to the Jews as their promised inheritance. NARRATOR: Did an
almighty God really compel the Jews to a violent
takeover of the land? And could this be the reason the
land known as Israel remains so fought over, even today? Temple Mount in Jerusalem. According to the Bible, it was
near this picturesque hilltop that Abraham and his
descendants settled. But God continued to test
the faith of his followers, even perhaps asking
the unthinkable. Bible scholars believe this is
the place referred to as Mount Moriah in the Book of Genesis,
where Abraham was commanded to kill his son, Isaac,
as a sacrifice to God. According to the
text, it was here that Abraham bound his
son's hands and feet and placed him on a sacrificial
altar on top of the mountain. But when Abraham raised
his knife to slay Isaac, an angel of God appeared
and stopped him. God tested Abraham's faith. Abraham passed the test of faith
by complying with God's will, as should we all, we're told. And thus, Isaac was
allowed to live. NARRATOR: This story of
Abraham's absolute faith marks this site, also
known as the Temple Mount, as the most holy site
in all of Judaism. PETER LANFER: Mount
Moriah's the mountain that's found in Genesis 22 as the
mountain where Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son. It established Mount Moriah
as a center of the universe, the idea there being that
there's a place where the connection between
the heavens the Earth and the underworld is
particularly strong. [music playing] NARRATOR: But the
Book of Genesis also reveals that
Canaan was not always a land of milk and honey. A drought forces the Israelites,
Abraham's descendants, to seek refuge in the
fertile Nile Delta in Egypt, where, according
to the Old Testament, they were enslaved by the
pharaohs for 400 years. In the second book of
the Bible, Exodus, God appears to the prophet Moses
at a burning bush in the desert and instructs him to free
his people from slavery and lead them to
the Promised Land. ROBERT MULLINS: So Moses goes
to Egypt and confronts Pharaoh. He isn't going to
just any ruler. He is going to a ruler who is
viewed as the God incarnate. He stands before
Pharaoh and demands Pharaoh to let his people go. Pharaoh refuses to
let the people go. NARRATOR: According to the
story Moses' request to free the Israelites is rejected, so
Moses returned to the Pharaoh and rains down onto Egypt a
series of 10 deadly plagues. BART EHRMAN: God empowers
Moses to do plagues against the Egyptians. Finally, the Pharaoh
relents, lets the people go. This showed that
the people of Israel were God's chosen people,
and that when necessary, he would intervene
on their behalf. NARRATOR: But in the
chapters of Exodus, the migration out of
Egypt to the Promised Land is not an easy one. During the harsh
journey, God enables Moses to perform miracles
to provide food, water, and shelter. Although it seems that God has
protected them from all harm, the Israelites doubt
they are strong enough to capture the territory
from the Canaanites. The story recounted in the
fourth book of the Bible, the Book of Numbers, says that
Moses sends a team of scouts to survey the Promised Land. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: Moses
had been commissioned by god to send in 12 spies to
see what the land was like and to be motivated
to then take it over. But the end result is, is
that 10 of those 12 spies say that it's impossible
to take this land over, that those who live there are
too menacing, too threatening, and that they didn't believe
that God could give them that Promised Land. NARRATOR: According to the
traditional interpretation of the Exodus from Egypt,
God forced his chosen people to wander the desert for 40
years as a test of their faith. But some biblical scholars offer
a different interpretation, that the 40 years was actually
a death sentence imposed by God, a punishment for
those who doubted him. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN:
The Israelites aren't wandering around in
the wilderness for 40 years because they got lost. They're wandering around in
the wilderness as a punishment from God for not having the
faith to take the Promised Land when they had the opportunity. JONATHAN KIRSCH: That
generation has to be purged. It has to be eliminated so a
strong, new, young generation of believers and
fighters can take over. That's quite a shocking moment. NARRATOR: Was the Israelites'
40-year exile in the wilderness really God's way of ensuring
that only their children would enter the so-called
Promised Land? Or is there an even greater
secret behind this epic story, one that may reveal that the
Exodus never happened at all? [music playing] The Plains of Moab, at the
foothills of Mount Nebo in what is now Jordan. This picturesque plateau
overlooking the Dead Sea might have been the Israelites'
first tantalizing glimpse of the so-called Promised Land. It was here, after 40 years
of wandering in the desert, that Moses would finally
lead his people to salvation, or would he? Close examination of the
fourth book of the Bible, the Book of Numbers,
reveals a little-known fact. Moses would never step foot
on that hallowed ground. But why? Israelites are
wandering in the desert, and they need water. They're in desperate
circumstances. They're gonna die of thirst. God tells Moses to bring
forth water from a rock. God very explicitly tells
him to speak to the rock, not to strike the rock. Moses does so by striking
the rock with his rod, and for this act of
disobedience, where God says, you did not treat me as
holy before the people, Moses is shut out of
the Promised Land. And so, really, the only view
that Moses had of the Promised Land was from the
top of Mount Nebo, and see the hills of the
Promised Land before him. NARRATOR: But why
would God inflict such a severe punishment on
Moses, especially after Moses served him so loyally
and for so many decades? Was it because God viewed
the error as disobedience? If so, what other secrets
about the Exodus from Egypt might we find hidden in the
pages of The Holy Bible? And could modern
archeology shed new light, not only on this biblical story,
but on the Jews' very claim to the Promised Land? [music playing] The Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. Although speculation regarding
the exact route the Israelites took while wandering
40 years in the desert has been widely debated by
scholars, the Book of Exodus indicates that Moses led the
freed Jewish slaves south out of Egypt across the Red Sea,
and then east to Mount Sinai and the wilderness. But although archeologists
and biblical scholars have excavated and explored
this area for centuries, no physical evidence of
the Exodus has been found. One of the biggest
discrepancies that we have between archeology
and the biblical text is the question of Israel. But when we look at the
archeological record, there's a big question of
whether or not there actually was an Exodus. [music playing] ROBERT MULLINS: Given the
biblical numbers of around two million people total
going into the wilderness, you would expect to find
camps and other traces of their wandering. In surveys that have
been done in the Sinai, they have evidence of nomadic
groups going back to 10,000 BC, but nothing from the
time of the Exodus. Absolutely nothing. ROBERT CARGILL: The
problem that we have is when our faith tells us
one thing, and the evidence, and the data, and the facts
tell us something else. Do I cling to my faith and deny
the reality, the experience, the facts, the evidence? Or do I embrace my
experience, my reality, and do I rethink the
way I think about God? NARRATOR: Some scholars
believe the lack of evidence can neither confirm nor deny the
validity of the Exodus texts, and that there may, in fact,
be a simple explanation for this lack of physical proof. Some people have an
unrealistic expectation that we ought to be able to
find some evidence of Israel in the wilderness. The sorts of containers
they would have used, tents they would
have lived in are not gonna leave permanent
marks of their presence. JODI MAGNESS: I don't believe
that even if there was an Exodus, that we
would find archeological remains, because it's people
wandering through the desert, and they've been doing
that for millennia, so that's just not the sort of
thing that would leave traces in the archeological record. NARRATOR: Is it really possible
that the 40-year Exodus as described in the Old
Testament never happened at all? Or can the answer be found
by taking a closer look at the actual religious texts? BART EHRMAN: We're told that
there are 600,000 men prepared for war, so if you add the women
and children, it's 2 and 1/2 or three million people. There's no way that three
million people left Egypt who had been enslaved in Egypt. In fact, the entire
population of Egypt probably was barely
three million itself. DAVID WOLPE: The
likeliest scenario is that there was a small
group who left Egypt, felt their deliverance was
miraculous, and came to Israel and somehow created
this new society based on ancient traditions. [music playing] NARRATOR: But even
if there are those who believe that the
story of the Exodus might have been exaggerated,
wouldn't the discovery of a piece of physical
evidence prove them wrong? What if a relic of
their journey, one described in great detail, could
prove the biblical accounts to be true? Wouldn't it also
prove the validity of the Israelites' claim to
a so-called Promised Land? The Ark of the Covenant
plays a very important role in Judaism, because, after all,
it housed the Ten Commandments, the law upon which the very
foundation of Judaism is built. DAVID WOLPE: It's the holiest
object that ever existed in the Jewish tradition,
and there are people who, because their
belief somehow needs to be palpable and physical,
feel as though if they could see it, somehow, that would
prove God's will in this world. [music playing] NARRATOR: The Ark
of the Covenant was to be a mobile
symbol of God's presence on the Israelites' journey
to the Promised Land. But if such a great and holy
object existed, where is it? According to the Hebrew Bible,
once in the Promised Land, the Ark of the
Covenant was housed inside a secret inner sanctuary
of King Solomon's temple built in Jerusalem. But around 586 BC,
the temple is said to have been
destroyed in battle, and the whereabouts of
the Ark became unknown. One tradition, of course,
is that simply destroyed by the Babylonians when the
temple was burnt and melted, and that's the end of it. However, because the
Ark never showed up again, people have often wondered, what
really did happen to the Ark? NARRATOR: Throughout
the centuries, the search for the
Ark of the Covenant has consumed both archeologists
and Bible scholars. If it where ever found,
it may prove that not only where the
biblical accounts of Moses based on historical events, but
that the Israelites' covenant with God did, in fact, exist. I'm a great believer in trying
to find out as much as we can archeologically about what
happened in biblical history and the way in which we
can validate it, as long as we're intellectually honest. Some things we'll
be able to prove, some things we will disprove,
and much we will never know. NARRATOR: But given the
controversial nature of the Jewish people's divine
claim to the Holy Land, perhaps the Ark has remained not
lost, but deliberately hidden, protected from those
who would destroy it, or kept away from those
who might wish to exploit its power. But the Ark is not the
only biblical artifact to draw such intense interest. Relics and holy objects are
found every day, objects that might not only validate
Jewish claim to the Holy Land, but also those by Christians and
Muslims, claims that reignite ethnic and religious tension
with every new discovery. [music playing] Sinop, Turkey. August, 2013. While digging at the site
of a seventh century church, archeologists discover
an astonishing object, a small box containing a piece
of wood that some believe might actually be from the
very cross on which Jesus was crucified. According to ancient
historical accounts, the remains of the
so-called True Cross were first discovered
in Jerusalem in 326 AD by Helena Augustus, the
mother of emperor Constantine the Great. Constantine's team's mom
was a devout Christian. And one of the places that
she believes she discovered was the place where
Jesus was crucified. While she was excavating,
she found a piece of what she believed to be
the authentic cross of Jesus. She brought this back to
Constantine and Constantinople. NARRATOR: In this legend,
pieces of the cross were distributed to churches
throughout Constantinople in what is now Istanbul, Turkey. Eager to preserve any
physical evidence of the life and teachings of Jesus,
the early Christian church enthusiastically scoured
the Holy Land for relics such as these, including
drops of Jesus' blood, the goblet from what he
drank during the Last Supper, even the Shroud of his burial. But we don't have any
individual artifacts that we can definitely
associate with Jesus himself. The Holy Grail, you know,
the cup that he drank out of at the Last Supper, or
the clothing that he wore, or something like that. We might actually have a
cup that Jesus drank out of, but we would never know it. NARRATOR: But
objects such as these also validated the
importance of the Holy Land as the epicenter of
Christian worship. It is here, according to the
New Testament, where Jesus was born, where he walked,
where he was baptized, and where he was executed. But of all the places that
are associated with Jesus, perhaps none is more important
or more sacred than Jerusalem. GARY BURGE: Jesus was
crucified in Jerusalem. Jesus was raised in Jerusalem. Jesus ascended from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center
of early Christianity for centuries. So you might say that there's
sort of a gravitational pull of Christian faith back
to the city of Jerusalem. REZA ASLAN: And so, for
Christianity, Jerusalem becomes sort of a navel of
the world, this sacred space from which the spirit of God
flows to all of humanity. NARRATOR: According to all four
Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus was crucified on a
Hillside area called Calvary, known in the Bible as Golgotha,
just outside the walled city of old Jerusalem. And it was here,
in the year 326 AD, just after his mother's
discovery of the so-called True Cross, that emperor Constantine
built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. GARY BURGE: The Church
of the Holy Sepulcher is considered the holiest
site in Christianity, for it is positioned over the
place where Jesus is believed to have been
crucified and buried, and then have risen
from the dead. In fact, the mount on
which Jesus is crucified is encased in the church itself. NARRATOR: Rebuilt in
1149 AD, the church is now shared by several
different Christian denominations. GARY BURGE: This is obviously
a very desirable place for Christian sects to
set up shop, so to speak. And we have the presence of at
least six Christian sects who have parts of the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher. ROBERT MULLINS:
The Greek Orthodox, who control the
majority of the church, followed by Roman Catholics
and other Christian groups. And the relations between
these various Christian groups is not all that good, because
they're very territorial. And so you'll get a Roman
Catholic priest cleaning a part of the
floor that intrudes into the zone controlled
by the Greek Orthodox, and they'll get
into a broom fight. Certainly, this
kind of competition between religious groups in the
holiest place to Christianity raises a lot of questions. If these groups can't
get along, who can? NARRATOR: But the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher is only one of many
religious sites that are based on biblical
accounts of the life of Jesus. Located on a hilltop that was
once covered in olive trees, the Mount of Olives lies
on the eastern border of ancient Jerusalem. According to the New
Testament Book of Acts, it was from here that
Jesus ascended into heaven. And many of the
Christian faithful believe that it is also here
that Jesus will first appear when he returns for
the day of judgment ELAINE PAGELS: If you
look in Jerusalem, there's a whole hill of graves
right on the Mount of Olives and right outside
Jerusalem, because it's-- Orthodox believe that
when the Messiah comes, he'll come there first. And so the people buried there
will come out of the graves there. And that's actually said
in the Gospel of Matthew. ROBERT MULLINS: You have
everything from a very literal second coming
of Jesus, returning to the Mount of Olives. You have some that view,
really, this as being a more symbolic return. But it's very difficult to unify
these disparate points of view. GARY BURGE: Jesus is clear
that he is going to return. He doesn't give specifics
when that is going to happen. In fact, he warns us not to
give date and time to that. NARRATOR: Although
Christians, like the Jews, believe they have a
claim to Jerusalem, there is no mention of a
Promised Land in the New Testament. Jesus himself never
mentioned one. Instead, he claimed that his
kingdom was not of this Earth, but was, in fact, in heaven. Nevertheless, in
the 11th century AD, Christian armies
from Western Europe launched a series of
Crusades to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim control. ROBERT CARGILL: So there was
this idea that the Christians need to take the lands back
for Christianity, specifically, Jerusalem. Now, nowhere is
this in scripture. ELAINE PAGELS: Christians
said the Muslims are the power of evil, and
we are God's people. We're gonna go and
destroy the Muslims and we're gonna take
Jerusalem back for God. So that's the initiation
of the First Crusade. NARRATOR: But despite 300 years
of bloody and brutal military battles, the Holy Land
remained under Muslim power. But what was so
important about this land that the Muslims would fight
so fiercely to retain control of it, especially if
Mecca in Saudi Arabia is their most sacred site? The answer may be found
in the pages of the Bible. [music playing] The Temple Mount. Here, can be found the
remains of the Western Wall, the ancient retaining
wall of the Hebrew temple built by Herod the Great
in the first century BC. It is considered the holiest
site in all of Judaism. It was also here where Jesus
threw out the money changers from the temple, leading to
his arrest and crucifixion. And for this reason,
Christians also believe this place
to be sacred ground. Yet, since the Crusades,
this 35-acre plateau has remained under
Muslim control, and is currently the site of
one of the most sacred shrines in all of Islam, the
Dome of the Rock. For Muslims, Jerusalem is
important because the Dome of the Rock. it's this building that is built
over the spot where Muslims believe Muhammad ascends up
to heaven to encounter God. Muslims used to face in
the direction of Jerusalem when they prayed. NARRATOR: According
to the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad made a
miraculous journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in one night,
arriving at the Foundation Stone from where he ascended
to heaven to meet with God. He goes from Mecca
to Jerusalem, and then from Jerusalem, into the sky
on his winged horse, Barack, and then he flies and takes
a tour of the universe and then comes back to
Mecca all in one night. REZA ASLAN: He meets all the
great prophets of the Bible, including Jesus, where
he, in essence, becomes their successor. And so, in a sense,
what that does is it connects physically
Muhammad and Islam to this Holy Land. NARRATOR: Could the
Muslim connection to this one spot, the rock
known as the Foundation Stone, be a mere coincidence? Or could the Islamic faith and
its association to the Promised Land actually be
based on what some say is a well-known biblical story? According to Muslim tradition,
God revealed the Quran to the prophet Muhammad over two
decades in the seventh century AD through the angel, Gabriel. But to the surprise of
many, the Quran actually tells many of the same stories
as those found in the Old and New Testaments. There's a direct connection
with the biblical texts. There's also a direct
connection, of course, with the New Testament
texts of Jesus, John the Baptist, Mary, are all
important figures in the Quran. Muslims see themselves
in continuity with Jews and Christians. [music playing] NARRATOR: How is it possible
that these three religions, so at odds with one another today,
could have so much in common? A closer look at the
first book of the Bible, Genesis, reveals an
interesting answer. The origins of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam all point to one very
famous biblical figure. You've got Judaism first,
then Christianity, then Islam, and they're all linked
through the family of Abraham, that Muslims, like Jews, like
Christians see themselves as Abrahamic traditions, meaning
they all go back to Abraham and the family of Abraham, which
really is that bloodline that runs through the
three traditions. NARRATOR: In Genesis, when
Abraham was given the Promised Land, his wife, Sarah,
could not have children. But Jewish tradition holds
that there must be a male child to inherit property. Without a legitimate
heir, the Promised Land could not stay in
Abraham's family. When Sarah thought
that she was never going to get
pregnant, she actually gave Abraham her servant, Hagar,
and Abraham slept with Hagar and bore Ishmael. Hagar isn't so much
sort of a slave girl that he's having on the side. She's sort of a stand-in
for Sarah, a way to have legitimate offspring. NARRATOR: Later in
Genesis, God miraculously blesses Sarah with her own
child, who is named Isaac. But only the eldest
son, Ishmael, the son of an Arab slave, would
be the heir to the Promised Land according to Jewish law. This presented a conflict
for Abraham and Sarah. Where Sarah, who at first,
sent Abraham into Hagar's tent, once she was a mother
of her own child, she wanted her child to be the
primary inheritor of Abraham's blessing. She prevails upon
her husband to send Hagar and her son, Ishmael,
into the wilderness to die. NARRATOR: Although exiled by
his father, Ishmael survived. He went on to establish
his own family, and according to tradition,
one of his direct descendants was the prophet Muhammad. And it is through Ishmael that
Muslims trace their ancestry back to Abraham. And it is through Isaac that
Jews trace their ancestry back to Abraham. PETER LANFER: The reason that
Jews, Christians, and Muslims all stake claim to Jerusalem
and to the Temple Mount is that it is one of the
most sacred places for each of those traditions. It's also revered as a place
that was chosen because of its connection to Abraham. NARRATOR: But as profound
as the biblical origins may be concerning the
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic claims
on the Holy Land, could the Bible
also provide clues as to the region's future? Could a land of religious
tension and endless warfare actually become a
promised land of peace? [music playing] In virtually all of
its history, the land that was once known as
Canaan, the Promised Land, has been a place of
religious turmoil. [music playing] The Bible itself describes it
as a place of suffering, war, and violence, with
only the promise that one day, God will
bring harmony to this land. But when? Many Jews and Christians point
to the Old Testament Book of Daniel, which foretells
of a final war that must be waged before
the Kingdom of God can be restored on Earth. Some scholars believe that the
last book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation,
identifies the actual place where this battle
will be fought, 100 miles north of Jerusalem. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: According
to the Book of Revelation, the final battle
between good and evil, between God and Satan,
is gonna take place in a place called Armageddon. In the Hebrew, it's
actually Har Megiddo, which means Mountain of Megiddo. Today, Megiddo is this
beautiful, peaceful valley in Israel, and it's hard to
imagine that someday, according to the biblical
authors, there's going to be a cataclysmic battle. But this is precisely
what the Bible describes. ISRAEL FINKLESTEIN:
And the question is why this place
became so important in the writings of
early Christianity, and also, early Judaism as a
location of their final battle between the forces of God
and the forces of evil. NARRATOR: First
inhabited in 7000 BC, the ancient
settlement of Megiddo was once a great walled city. It was located on
a narrow passageway through a mountain valley that
guarded access to the sea. JAMES HOFFMEIER: It's
a strategic place on a broad, rich agricultural
plain known as the Jezreel Valley. And over the centuries, wars
have been fought and fought and fought for
control of Megiddo. It seems to be
connected to this idea of a place of the final
battle, the consummating battle of history. [music playing] NARRATOR: According
to religious scholars, the notion of a final
battle exists for all three of the world's great
monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. And there are many who believe
that, as described in the Books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Matthew,
Thessalonians, and Revelation, this great battle will
only occur after the temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt. For Christians, the
temple has to be there before Jesus can come back. The reason this is a problem
is there is no longer a temple. The temple was destroyed by
the Romans in the year 70. And so you've had the
movements that want to rebuild the temple, to
say, if we do this, maybe then, God will
send the Messiah. JAMES HOFFMEIER: So you
have this long history of destruction, rebuild,
destruction, rebuild, but one thing it
does demonstrate, that once a spot is deemed
sacred, it's always sacred. CANDIDA MOSS: Jews, Christians,
and Muslims all see themselves as the heirs to this land. As a result of that, people have
fought brutally and viciously over it, and massacre
members of the other groups. The sort of competition
over the Holy Land is sort of ironic, because
it's supposed to be paradise. NARRATOR: Is it possible
that God's promise to Abraham of a homeland for the
Israelites was not meant to be an actual
geographical location, but a goal, a
challenge, a place where the resolve of the
Jewish people would be put to some kind of test? DAVID WOLPE: The fact that
Israel is so fought over and so contentious,
in some ways, makes it a perfect place
for a Promised Land. As if God is saying, if
you can work it out here, then you should be able to
work it out everywhere else. ROBERT MULLINS: The clue
to the Promised Land is to understand it as God's
testing ground of faith. And sometimes, we're
called to behave and act in ways that requires us to
move outside of ourselves. And maybe one place
that this can be done, God willing, is
in the Holy Land. ROBERT CARGILL: The Promised
Land is also a state of mind. It's something that gives
you hope for the future, and it gives you an
identity, and it gives you a sense of possession of a
particular land, of your home. [music playing] NARRATOR: Perhaps
God's real promise was not just to Abraham,
but to all of humanity. And that the promise of
a land of milk and honey, a Promised Land, was meant to
be earned, not simply given. If so, then perhaps God's true
gift will only be realized when all of the world's people
put aside their differences and focus their belief,
not only on a Holy Land, but a holy world,
a world as foretold in the pages of the Bible.
