This collection of essays, part of a series devoted to the study of ancient Mediterranean places and stemming from a 2017 workshop held in Castle Munchenwiler, examines the city of Jerusalem from the second through the seventh century CE, starting with the transformation of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina by Emperor Hadrian, continuing with Byzantine Christian rule, a brief period under the Sasanian Persian Empire, and ending with the aftermath of the Islamic conquest and transition to Islamic rule in the seventh century, with some essays looking back to the Hellenistic era and some looking forward into the eighth century. This volume, titled Jerusalem II, is the second of a pair; Jerusalem I is devoted to the city during biblical times, from the “City of David” to the “City of Jesus,” but has not yet appeared in print.

The book is divided into three sections, the first devoted to urban development; the second to the city's diverse populations, daily life, and the challenges and realities of living together; and the third to claims and connections to the city made by different groups and communities, especially by emperors, bishops, and other powerful figures. Joining several recent collections of essays about Jerusalem's history, among them Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb's Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016); Suleiman A. Mourad, Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Bedross Der Matossian's Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem (Routledge, 2018); and Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire's Ordinary Jerusalem 1840–1940: Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City (Brill, 2018), this volume's focus on the Roman-Byzantine period from several different disciplinary vantage points, and encompassing the city's different religious communities, offers an additional contribution to this growing field.

The book's introduction lays out the parameters of the volume and emphasizes particular themes and contradictions related to Jerusalem's history and its Jewish, so-called pagan, Christian, and Muslim inhabitants: the city as a contested place; the city as a place of permanent residence and a pilgrimage destination for transient travelers; the city's architectural monuments and its human population; the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem; a real and symbolic place. It also notes that each religious community interpreted watershed moments in the city's history according to their own historical and theological framework, and thus that the city's history itself is composed of competing narratives. Another theme that emerges, both in the introduction and in several of the book's essays, is the gradualness of change, even when the city's rule changed hands, and the persistence of traditions, institutions, and sites across long spans of time.

The chapters, half of which are written in English and the other half in German, offer an array of interdisciplinary approaches to the history of the city. Topography, urbanization, economy, military, charity, water infrastructure and uses, bureaucracy, and other earthly concerns are interwoven with discussions of religious and cultic life, including pilgrimage, imperial and religious leadership, monastic networks, liturgy, legends and stories, mosaics and other iconography, memories of the city in various media, and representations of the city in a wide array of sources. The book thus navigates between topics that apply to all ancient cities and those that are relatively unique to Jerusalem, and this intersection is particularly important. The epilogue, which consists of two chapters, explores the city during the early Islamic period, focusing in particular on Jerusalem in the Qur'an as well as on the themes of continuity and transformation in the city after the Islamic conquest.

The volume contains helpful maps, images of archaeological sites and artifacts, charts, an extensive bibliography, and several helpful lists of ancient sources and indices of passages, names, places, and subjects, making it a useful resource for research and teaching.