David and Solomon
Uniting all Israelite tribes under his command, King David takes the Fortress of Zion, renames it 'City of David,' and makes it the capital of a united kingdom.
The Ark of the Covenant and the temple built by Solomon lay the foundations for the connection between Jerusalem and YHWH, the God of Israel.

 

City of Judah
After the death of Solomon, the united kingdom falls apart. Only Judah retains Jerusalem as its capital.
When, in 722, the Northern Kingdom (Israel) is destroyed and, twenty years later, Jerusalem is spared a similar fate, King and prophet attribute this miracle to YHWH's particular providence.
Judah soars as a border state of Assyria and briefly attains independence, only to be destroyed by the neo-Babylonians (Chaldeans).

City of Temple and Torah
Against the resistance of its current inhabitants, the hill country of Judah and Jerusalem are gradually resettled by the returnees from exile. The walls are rebuilt by Nehemiah. Ezra, priest and scribe, institutes the Torah as the constitution of a priestly theocracy. Jerusalem is the center of the Persian satrapy of Yehud.

Hellenistic Polis
Alexander the Great brings Hellenization. Some Greeks praise the Jews for the sublimeness of their religion, others loathe them for resisting Hellenic style. Under the Seleucids, forced Hellenization leads to the Maccabean revolt and the institution of a second Judahite dynasty, the Hasmoneans.

Jerusalem and Rome
Pompey's arrival marks the beginning of the end of Jewish dominion over Jerusalem, but not before architecture and cultural life attain their greatest level of sophistication yet. Herod enlarges the platform of the Temple to accomodate hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at a time.