Jerusalem as the 'omphalos' of the world: on the history of geographical concept

Judaism, Spring, 1997 by Philip S. Alexander

A consideration of the general program of the Jubilees map confirms the impression that its assertion of the centrality of Jerusalem is essentially polemical and political. We must recall the historical setting of the book. Jubilees dates to the mid-second century B.C.E. Its appearance coincided with the Hasmonean revolution, which caused a profound intensification of religious life in Palestinian Judaism. The Hasmoneans redefined the concept of Jewish territoriality, the relationship of Israel to the Diaspora, and possibly even the concept of what it meant to be a Jew. They re-drew the political map of the Middle East in two ways. First, they established the independence of the Jewish territory from Greek hegemony. Second, they expanded Jewish hegemony over neighboring non-Jewish territory and created a greater Israel. Jubilees attempts to give de jure justification for both these de facto developments. Note, first, its treatment of the Greeks on its world map. Javan (Greece) is a son of Japhet, and so his patrimony, according to the Jubilees schema, belongs to Europe, which ends at the Bosphorus. The Greeks, therefore, have no right of residence in Asia, and in usurping land there they are breaking the solemn agreement entered into by the sons of Noah after the Flood. Positing Jerusalem as the omphalos of the world is of a piece with this: it is a political gesture of great symbolic significance.(5)

Jubilees also seems to have tried to underpin the legitimacy of the territorial expansion of the Hasmonean state. In this context its treatment of Canaan is noteworthy. As a son of Ham, Canaan had to be assigned on the Jubilees schema a patrimony in Africa (the area round Carthage was cleverly chosen for him).(6) However, in migrating from Ararat after the Flood Canaan saw the so-called "Land of Canaan," liked it and seized it, thus violating the covenant between the sons of Noah. The "Land of Canaan" was, in fact, allotted to Arpachshad, the ancestor of Abraham. We have here a polemical reversal of the "Canaanite" "Joshua the brigand" traditions, which claimed that it was the Jews who had usurped the Land.(7)

The author of Jubilees used the Medes as a foil to the Canaanites. The Medes, as sons of Japhet, were assigned territory in Europe - the British Isles, in fact - but having migrated to their patrimony they did not like it (the weather may have been a problem), and so they returned to the Middle East and settled in the allotment of Shem. There was, however, a difference. The Medes occupied their new territory amicably, by negotiation and agreement. This story about the Medes is otherwise unknown. The author of Jubilees probably made it up as a telling contrast to the violence of the Canaanites. Maps, even modern scientifically surveyed maps, are ideological constructs. What features are selected for representation, how they are named, the choice of meridians, the projections used, and the resultant distortions of size and relationship are not value free, but often involve political statements. The Jubilees map is no exception. It was, arguably, propaganda for the Hasmoneans and embodied their political aspirations in much the same way as Marcus Agrippa's "map" erected in the Forum at Rome embodied Augustus's vision of the Roman world order.(8)