Kidron Valley in the context of "City of David (archaeological site)"

Gihon Spring (Hebrew: מעיין הגיחון) or Fountain of the Virgin, also known as Saint Mary's Pool, is a spring in the Kidron Valley. It was the main source of water for the Pool of Siloam in Jebus and the later City of David, the original site of Jerusalem.

One of the world's major intermittent springs – and a reliable water source that made human settlement possible in ancient Jerusalem – the spring was not only used for drinking water, but also initially for irrigation of gardens in the adjacent Kidron Valley, which provided a food source for the ancient settlement.

Ophel (Hebrew: עֹפֶל, romanized: ʿōp̄el) is the biblical term given to a certain part of a settlement or city that is elevated from its surroundings, and probably means fortified hill or risen area. In the Hebrew Bible, the term is in reference to two cities: Jerusalem (as in 2 Chronicles 27, 2 Chronicles 33, Nehemiah 3, and Nehemiah 11) and Samaria (mentioned in 2 Kings 5). The Mesha Stele, written in Moabite, a Canaanite language closely related to Biblical Hebrew, is the only extra-biblical source using the word, also in connection to a fortified place.

The Jebusites (/ˈdʒɛbjəˌsaɪts/; Hebrew: יְבוּסִי, romanized: Yəḇusi) were, according to the Book of Joshua and Books of Samuel from the Hebrew Bible, a Canaanite tribe that inhabited Jerusalem, called Jebus (Hebrew: יְבוּס, romanized: Yəḇus, lit. 'trampled place') before the conquest initiated by Joshua (Joshua 11:3, Joshua 12:10) and completed by David (2 Samuel 5:6–10). According to some biblical chronologies, it was conquered in 1003 BC.

A majority of scholars agree that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value for early Israel and reflects a much later period.

31°46′05″N 35°14′00″E / 31.76806°N 35.23333°E / 31.76806; 35.23333

The St. Onuphrius Monastery (Greek: Ιερά Μονή του Οσίου Ονουφρίου) is an Orthodox monastery for women located in the potter's field (Akeldama in Aramaic) that the Jewish elders purchased with the thirty pieces of silver returned by Judas Iscariot that had been given for betraying Jesus. The location is south of the Old City of Jerusalem and on the southern slope of the Gehenna valley, close to the Kidron Valley. Subject to the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, it is named after the fourth-century anchorite monk Saint Onuphrius.

The Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas Greek: Ἱερὰ Λαύρα τοῦ Ὁσίου Σάββα τοῦ Ἡγιασμένου, romanized: Yerá Lávra tú Osíu Sávva tú Iyazménu, known in Arabic and Syriac as Mar Saba (Syriac: ܕܝܪܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܣܒܐ, romanized: Dayrā d-Mār Sabba; Levantine Arabic: دير مار سابا, romanized: Dēr Mār Sābā; ) and historically as the Great Laura of Saint Sabas, is a Greek Orthodox Christian monastery overlooking the Kidron Valley in the Bethlehem Governorate of Palestine in the West Bank, at a point halfway between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea. The monks of Mar Saba and those of subsidiary houses are known as Sabaites.

Mar Saba is considered one of the world's oldest (almost) continuously inhabited monasteries, and it maintains many of its ancient traditions. One in particular is the restriction on women entering the main compound. The only building women can enter is the Women's Tower, near the main entrance.

Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus, mostly originating in Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, is a collection of nineteen Christian Palestinian Aramaic palimpsest manuscripts containing Old Testament, Gospel and Epistles pericopes of diverse Lectionaries, among them two witnesses of the Old Jerusalem Lectionary, various unidentified homilies along with two by John Chrysostom, hagiographic texts such as the Life of Pachomios, the Martyrdom of Philemon Martyrs, and the Catecheses by Cyril of Jerusalem. The palimpsests manuscripts are recycled parchment material that were erased and reused by the tenth-century Georgian scribe Ioane-Zosime for overwriting them with homilies and a Iadgari (979–980 AD). Part of the parchment leaves (Sin. Georg. 34) had been brought by him from the Monastery of Saint Sabas, south of Jerusalem in the Kidron Valley, when he moved to St Catherine's Monastery and became their librarian. In the nineteenth century most of the codex was removed from the monastery at two periods. C. Tischendorf took two thirds in 1855 and 1857 with the Codex Sinaiticus to St Peterburg and handed it over to the Imperial Library, now the National Library of Russia, and the remaining third left on a clandestine route [so-called collection of Dr Friedrich Grote (1862-1922)] and found its way into various European and later also into US collections, at present in a Norwegian collection. From the New Finds of 1975 in the Monastery of Saint Catherine missing folios of some of the underlying manuscripts could be retrieved (Sinai, Georgian NF 19; 71), with one connected to Princeton, Garrett MS 24.