Jerusalem both personifies and symbolizes the "sanctity of place" for all religions deriving from or responding to biblical scripture. The thousands of religious expressions, movements, sects, cults, and new religions that have emerged within the "clusters" or categories referred to as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were born of spiritual environments that were formed, in part, through the paradigms established by the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The multifarious expressions of these religious institutions can even be described as part of a general "biblicist" civilization. Some might call this a "scriptural" religious civilization, but other religions include literatures that have sometimes been described as scripture. The generally accepted or paradigmatic concept of scripture itself is strongly influenced by Western biblical paradigms. In any case, this heterogeneous, biblicist religious civilization contrasts with other religious civilizations, for example, those deriving from Hindu-Buddhist...