query: country tomb of the virgin mary
supports: Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the world's largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, known as Christians. Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah (the Christ) was prophesied in the Old Testament. Canaan (Northwest Semitic: ""; Phoenician: ; Biblical Hebrew/ Masoretic: ["; nan]") was a Semitic-speaking region in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. In the Bible it corresponds to the Levant, in particular to the areas of the Southern Levant that provide the main setting of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., the area of Israel, Philistia, Phoenicia, and other nations. The Acts of the Apostles ("Práxeis tôn Apostóln"), often referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman Empire. Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary , also Tomb of the Virgin Mary , is a Christian tomb in the Kidron Valley -- at the foot of Mount of Olives , in Jerusalem -- believed by Eastern Christians to be the burial place of Mary , the mother of Jesus . The Temple Mount ("Har HaBáyit", "Mount of the House [of God, i.e. the Temple]"), known to Muslims as the Haram esh-Sharif ("al-aram al-Šarf", "the Noble Sanctuary", or , "al-aram al-Quds al-Šarf", "the Noble Sanctuary of Jerusalem"), a hill located in the Old City of Jerusalem, is one of the most important religious sites in the world. It has been venerated as a holy site for thousands of years by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The present site is dominated by three monumental structures from the early Umayyad period: the al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock and the Dome of the Chain, as well as four minarets. Herodian walls and gates with additions dating back to the late Byzantine and early Islamic periods cut through the flanks of the Mount. Currently it can be reached through eleven gates, ten reserved for Muslims and one for non-Muslims, with guard posts of Israeli police in the vicinity of each. Judaism (from , derived from Greek , originally from Hebrew , "Yehudah", "Judah"; in Hebrew: , "Yahadut", the distinctive characteristics of the Judean ethnos) encompasses the religion, philosophy, culture and way of life of the Jewish people. Judaism is an ancient monotheistic religion, with the Torah as its foundational text (part of the larger text known as the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible), and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship that God established with the Children of Israel. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth-largest religion in the world. Islam (' ;) is a religion articulated by the Quran, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God ('), and, for the vast majority of adherents, the teachings and normative example (called the "sunnah", composed of accounts called "hadith") of Muhammad (5708 June 632 CE). It is the world's second-largest religion and the fastest-growing major religion in the world, with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population, known as Muslims. Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion that upholds that God is one and incomparable and that the purpose of existence is to worship God. Muslims consider Muhammad to be the last prophet of God. Biblical Hebrew ("Ivrit Miqra'it" or "Leshon ha-Miqra"), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of Hebrew, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken by the Israelites in the area known as Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term "Hebrew" was not used for the language in the Bible, which was referred to as Canaanite or Judahite, but the name was used in Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. Biblical Hebrew is attested from about the 10th century BCE, and persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in the siege of Jerusalem (AD 70). Silwan is a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood on the outskirts of the Old City of Jerusalem. Forty Jewish families also live in the area. Silwan is located in East Jerusalem.
  After the 1948 war, the village fell under Jordanian occupation. Jordanian rule lasted until the 1967 Six-Day War, since which it has been occupied by Israel. Silwan is administered as part of the Jerusalem Municipality, and is part of the J1 sub-district of the Jerusalem Governorate.  Wadi al-Joz, also Wadi Joz, meaning Valley of the Walnuts, is an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, located at the head of the Kidron Valley, north of the Old City. The population of Wadi Joz is 13,000. The West Bank ("" "HaGadah HaMa'aravit") is a landlocked territory near the Mediterranean coast of Western Asia, forming the bulk of the Palestinian territories. The West Bank shares boundaries (demarcated by the Jordanian-Israeli armistice of 1949) to the west, north, and south with Israel, and to the east, across the Jordan River, with Jordan. The West Bank also contains a significant section of the western Dead Sea shore. Religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organisation that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called "an order of existence". Different religions may or may not contain various elements, ranging from the "divine", "sacred things", "faith", a "supernatural being or supernatural beings" or "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life." Jerusalem , is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. One of the oldest cities in the world, Jerusalem was named as ""Urusalima"" on ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity, during the early Canaanite period (approximately 2400 BCE). During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 9th century BCE (Iron Age II), and in the 8th century the city developed into the religious and administrative center of the Kingdom of Judah. It is considered a holy city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet ("Har ha-Zeitim" "Jabal al-Zaytun", "Al-Tur") is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City. It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes. The southern part of the Mount was the Silwan necropolis, attributed to the ancient Judean kingdom. The Mount has been used as a Jewish cemetery for over 3,000 years and holds approximately 150,000 graves, making it central in the tradition of Jewish cemeteries. Several key events in the life of Jesus, as related in the Gospels, took place on the Mount of Olives, and in the Acts of the Apostles it is described as the place from which Jesus ascended to heaven. Because of its association with both Jesus and Mary, the Mount has been a site of Christian worship since ancient times and is today a major site of pilgrimage for Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants. The Kingdom of Judah ("Mamlekhet Yehudh") was an Iron Age kingdom of the Southern Levant. The Hebrew Bible depicts it as the successor to a United Monarchy, but historians are divided about the veracity of this account. In the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE the territory of Judah appears to have been sparsely populated, limited to small rural settlements, most of them unfortified. Jerusalem, the kingdom's capital, likely did not emerge as a significant administrative centre until the end of the 8th century, prior to this archaeological evidence suggests its population was too small to sustain a viable kingdom. In the 7th century its population increased greatly, prospering under Assyrian vassalage (despite Hezekiah's revolt against the Assyrian king Sennacherib), but in 605 the Assyrian Empire was defeated, and the ensuing competition between the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian Empire for control of the Eastern Mediterranean led to the destruction of the kingdom in a series of campaigns between 597 and 582, the deportation of the elite of the community, and the incorporation of Judah into a province of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Jesus (; c. 4 BC  c. AD 30/33), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, was a Jewish preacher and religious leader who became the central figure of Christianity. Christians believe him to be the Son of God and the awaited Messiah (Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.
  Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically, although the quest for the historical Jesus has produced little agreement on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the biblical Jesus reflects the historical Jesus. Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was baptized by John the Baptist and subsequently began his own ministry, preaching his message orally and often being referred to as "rabbi". He was arrested and tried by the Jewish authorities, and was crucified by the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect. Jesus debated fellow Jews on how to best follow God, performed healings, taught in parables and gathered followers. After his death, his followers believed he rose from the dead, and the community they formed eventually became the Christian Church. The Judaean Mountains or Judaean Hills ("Harei Yehuda", "Jibal Al Khalil"), is a mountain range in Israel and the West Bank where Jerusalem and several other biblical cities are located. The mountains reach a height of . The Judean Mountains can be separated to a number of sub-regions, including the Mount Hebron ridge, the Jerusalem ridge and the Judean slopes. These mountains formed the heartland of the Kingdom of Judah, where the earliest Jewish settlements emerged. Nazareth ("Narat" "Narath" "an-Nira") is the capital and the largest city in the Northern District of Israel. Nazareth is known as "the Arab capital of Israel". In its population was . The inhabitants are predominantly Arab citizens of Israel, of whom 69% are Muslim and 30.9% Christian. Nazareth Illit (lit. "Upper Nazareth") is built alongside old Nazareth, and had a Jewish population of 40,312 in 2014. The Jewish sector was declared a separate city in June 1974. A Christian (or ) is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. "Christian" derives from the Koine Greek word "Christós" (), a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term "mashiach". The Kidron Valley (classical transliteration, "Cedron", from , "Naal Qidron"; also Qidron Valley "Wadi al-Joz" for the upper segment near the Temple Mount, and "Wadi an-Nar" for the rest of it) is the valley on the eastern side of The Old City of Jerusalem, separating the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives. It continues east through the Judean Desert in the West Bank, towards the Dead Sea, descending 4000 feet along its 20-mile course. The settlement Kedar, located on a ridge above the valley, is named after it. The neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz bears the valley's Arabic name. The Hebrew Bible calls it "Emek Yehoshafat", the "Valley of Jehoshaphat". It appears in Jewish eschatologic prophecies, which include the return of Elijah, followed by the arrival of the Messiah, and the War of Gog and Magog and Judgment Day. Elijah (meaning "My God is Yahu/Jah") or Elias ("Elías"; "Elye"; Arabic:  or , "Ilys" or "Ily") was a prophet and a miracle worker who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Ahab (9th century BC), according to the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Books of Kings Elijah defended the worship of Yahweh over that of the Canaanite deity Baal. Yahweh also performed many miracles through Elijah, including resurrection (raising the dead), bringing fire down from the sky, and entering Heaven alive "by a whirlwind". He is also portrayed as leading a school of prophets known as "the sons of the prophets". After his death, Elisha his disciple and most devoted assistant took over his role as leader of this school. The Book of Malachi prophesies Elijah's return "before the coming of the great and terrible day of Yahweh", making him a harbinger of the Messiah and of the eschaton in various faiths that revere the Hebrew Bible. References to Elijah appear in the Mishnah and Talmud, the New Testament, the Quran and the Bahá'í writings. Israel , officially known as the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest. The country contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel's financial and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state's sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem is internationally unrecognized. The Dead Sea (lit. Salt Sea), is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and Palestine to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, Earth's lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 34.2% salinity (in 2011), it is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean, and one of the world's saltiest bodies of water. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is long and wide at its widest point. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley and its main tributary is the Jordan River.
candidates: cemetery gaza strip israel jerusalem jordan judah middle east neighborhood palestinian territories roman empire west bank world
answer: israel