Lod (Lydda), 22km/14mi southeast of Tel Aviv and 3km/2mi northeast of Ramla, is now known mainly for its international airport, but it reaches far back into the past in history and myth.
The town was founded by the tribe of Benjamin after the Israelite occupation of the Promised Land (1 Chronicles 8,12). It was destroyed by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C., rebuilt in the fifth century and occupied from the fourth century onwards by Greeks, who named it Lydda. The Hasmoneans captured the town in 143 B.C. (1 Maccabees 11,34). There was a Christian community here at a very early stage.
Paul visited Lydda and healed a man who had been bedridden for eight years (Acts 9,32-34) before going on to Joppa (Jaffa) and Caesarea. The Romans took the town during their advance on Jerusalem (A.D. 67) and renamed it Diospolis (City of Zeus). It still bears that name in the sixth century Madaba map.
After the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 there were still a few Jewish schools in the town, but in the second century the rabbis left it because of its pagan character. In the time of Constantine (fourth century) it was predominantly Christian. It acquired special importance from its association with St George, who according to tradition was born in Lydda, served as a tribune in the Roman army and was martyred in 303, in the reign of Diocletian. His remains were brought back to Lydda, where from the fifth century onwards pilgrims were shown his tomb. The portrayal of the saint as a dragon-slayer seems, according to T. F. Meysels, to go back to the older myth of the dragon slain by Perseus when he freed Andromeda at Jaffa, farther up the coast; and it would appear that behind the dragon of the Perseus myth lurks the Philistine god Dagon.
St George, a megalomartyr of the Eastern church, also became a holy man revered by the Muslims - the bright spirit El-Chodr, who on the day of judgment will vanquish the demon Dajal outside the gates of Lod.
In Byzantine times a basilica dedicated to this warrior saint was built in Lod, but this was lost when the Omayyad Caliph Abd el-Malik destroyed Lod. The church was rebuilt by the Crusaders in the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion, and St George became the patron saint of England.
In the 13th century the Mamelukes used the church as a quarry of building stone for the El-Chodr Mosque, dedicated to the same St George as an Islamic holy man. Later the town sank into insignificance. In 1870 the Greek Orthodox community acquired the remains of the church and built a modern church on the site. Most of the Arab inhabitants of the town left it in 1948 and were replaced by new Jewish immigrants. Lod now has a population of 4,000 Arabs and 34,000 Jews. During the British Mandate an airfield was constructed a few kilometers north of Lod, and soon after the foundation of the new Jewish state, in November 1948, this began to be used for civil aviation. In the following year the Israeli national airline, El Al, was established, and Lod became an international airport, which from 1975 bore the name of Israel's first prime minister, Ben-Gurion.
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