Zion (Hebrew: צִיּוֹן, romanized: Ṣīyyōn,[a] LXX Σιών) is a placename in the Tanakh, often used as a synonym for Jerusalem[3][4] as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole.
The name is found in 2 Samuel (2 Sam 5:7), one of the books of the Tanakh dated to approximately the mid-6th century BCE. It originally referred to a specific hill in Jerusalem, Mount Zion, located to the south of Mount Moriah (the Temple Mount). According to the narrative of 2 Samuel 5, Mount Zion held the Jebusite fortress of the same name that was conquered by David and was renamed the City of David. That specific hill ("mount") is one of the many squat hills that form Jerusalem.
The term Tzion came to designate the area of Davidic Jerusalem where the Jebusite fortress stood, and was used as well as synecdoche for the entire city of Jerusalem; and later, when Solomon's Temple was built on the adjacent Mount Moriah (which, as a result, came to be known as the Temple Mount), the meanings of the term Tzion were further extended by synecdoche to the additional meanings of the Temple itself, the hill upon which the Temple stood, the entire city of Jerusalem, the entire biblical Land of Israel, and "the World to Come", the Jewish understanding of the afterlife.
Over many centuries, until as recently as the 16th century (Ottoman period), the city walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt many times in new locations, so that the particular hill known in biblical times as Mount Zion is no longer within the city walls, but its location is now just outside the Old City and southeast of it. Most of the original City of David itself is thus also outside the current "Old City" wall. Adding to the confusion, another ridge, the Western Hill rather than the original Southeastern Hill (City of David) or the Southern Hill (Temple Mount), has been called 'Mount Zion' for the last two millennia.
- ^ Sion is the spelling in the Vulgate, also adopted in modern French.
- ^ Hebrew Academy 2006 convention for the romanization of Hebrew, Announcements of the Academy of the Hebrew Language Archived 2013-10-15 at the Wayback Machine
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