|
|
 |
 The Resurrection Site
The
last chapters of the Four Gospels have scanty information about the site of the Crucifixion, burial and Resurrection of the
Lord. But these are the first sources we have to look at in order to get a clear idea about this site.
The Gospels call this site Golgotha. (Greek "Kranion" (skull), from which we get Calvary, from
the Latin root "calva", the scalp without hair. Our common word Mount is not used (Mount started
to be used only in the 4th century, when the surrounding rock was removed, leaving the rock of the crucifixion an isolated
knoll about 6 meters high). It is simply called a place: a place called Golgotha to indicate the spot where the cross was
raised and the nearby rural property of Joseph from Arimathea:
"They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull)"
(Mark. 15:22; Mt. 27:33; Luke 23:33; John 19:17)
The
Gospels also affirm that at the site there was a Garden:
“At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever
been laid" (John 19:41).
This Garden of Golgotha lied outside
the city but close enough to allow passers-by to read the notice prepared by Pilate and fastened to the cross: (That it was outside the city is confirmed
by the well-known fact that the Jews did not permit burial inside the city
except in the case of their kings.)
"Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the
city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek" (John 19:20).
The Gospels affirm also that close to the "Skull" where Jesus was crucified there was a new tomb
hewn in the rock:
"Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock" (Mt. 27:59; Luke 23:53).
The
entrance to the tomb was sealed by a stone.
"He rolled a big
stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away" (Mt. 27:61).
"When the Sabbath was over, Mary
Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early
on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who
will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was
very large, had been rolled away" (Mark 16, 1-4; Luke 24:2).
The
Gospels also provide a description of the inner chamber of the tomb. From this description some scholars deduct that the tomb
might have been of the arcosolio type and not the kokhim (oven-shaped) tombs. Here is what the
Gospel says about this space:
"Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels
in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot". (John 20:11-12)
"As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the
right side, and they were alarmed". (Mark 16:5).
The last information we deduct from
the Gospels is that the tomb in which the Lord was laid belonged to Joseph from Arimathea
"Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a
clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb" (Mt. 57:59-60).
No further mention of the place of the Holy Sepulchre is found until the beginning of the fourth
century. But nearly all scholars maintain that the knowledge of the place was handed down by oral tradition, and that the correctness of this knowledge was proved by the investigations made in 326 by the Emperor
Constantine, who then marked the site for future ages by erecting over the Tomb of Christ a basilica, in the place of which, according to an unbroken written tradition, now stands the
church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Looking at today's monument, it is difficult to imagine
how the site presented itself almost 2000 years ago. Christians and Muslims have erected upon this site various monuments
and churches that have transformed completely the "bare" area outside the city walls of the first century Jerusalem.
Since the fourth century, this site has become the focal point of the whole city as well as the focal point of the
history of Palestine. It was the site of many protracted wars between Christian and Moslem powers.
History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
In the early second century, the site of the present Church had been a temple of Aphrodite (Venus). The site had originally been a Christian place of veneration, but Hadrian had deliberately covered these Christian
sites with earth, and built his own temple on top, due to his alleged hatred for Christianity.
Emperor
Constantine I ordered in 325/326 that Hadrian’s
temple be demolished and the soil - which had provided a flat surface for the temple - be removed. Constantine
directed his mother, Helena, to build churches upon sites which
commemorated the life of Jesus Christ; she was present in 326 at the construction of the church on the site, and involved
herself in the excavations and construction.
During the excavation of the earth, Helena is alleged
to have rediscovered the True Cross, and a tomb, which according to Eusebius
exhibited a clear and visible proof that it was the tomb of Jesus. Constantine's
church was built as two connected churches over the two different holy sites, including a great basilica enclosed colonnaded atrium (the Triportico) with the
traditional site of Golgotha in one corner, and a rotunda, called the Anastasis ("Resurrection"),
which contained the remains of a rock-cut room that Helena and Macarius had identified as the burial site of Jesus. The rockface
at the west end of the building was cut away, although it is unclear how much remained in Constantine's time, as archaeological
investigation has revealed that the temple of Aphrodite reached far into the current rotunda area, and the temple enclosure
would therefore have reached even further to the west.
The Church was damaged by fire in 614
when the Persians under Khosrau II invaded Jerusalem and captured the
Cross. In 630, Emperor Heraclius marched triumphantly into Jerusalem
and restored the True Cross to the rebuilt Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Under the Muslims it remained a Christian church. The
early Muslim rulers protected the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction and their use as living quarters.
In 966 the doors and roof were burnt during a riot.
On October 18, 1009, under Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr
Allah, orders for the complete destruction
of the Church were carried out as a general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The
"mighty pillars resisted destruction up to the height of the gallery pavement, and are now effectively the only remnant
of the fourth-century buildings." Some minor repairs were done to the section believed
to be the tomb of Jesus almost immediately after 1009, but a true attempt at restoration would have to wait for decades.
European reaction was of shock and dismay, with far-reaching and intense consequences. Ultimately, this
destruction provided an impetus to the later Crusades in
1099. There
have been explorations and some restoration through the centuries, especially in 1555 by the Franciscan friars.
A fire severely damaged the structure again in 1808, causing the dome of
the Rotunda to collapse. The Rotunda and the Edicule's exterior were rebuilt in 1809–1810 by
architect Komminos of Mytilene in the then current Ottoman Baroque style. The fire did not reach the interior
of the Aedicule, and the marble decoration of the Tomb dates mainly to the 1555 restoration, although the interior of the
ante-chamber, now known as the Chapel of the Angel, was partly re-built to a square ground-plan, in place of the
previously semi-circular western end. The cladding of red marble applied to the Aedicule by Komminos has deteriorated badly
and is detaching from the underlying structure; since 1947 it has been held in place with an exterior scaffolding of iron
girders installed by the British Mandate. No plans have been agreed upon for
its renovation.
The current dome dates from 1870, although it was restored during 1994–1997,
as part of extensive modern renovations to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which have been ongoing since 1959.
Present Day
After the renovation of 1555, control of the church oscillated
between the Franciscans and the Orthodox, depending on which community could obtain a favorable firman from the Sublime Porte at a particular time, often through
outright bribery, and violent clashes were not uncommon. In 1767, weary of the squabbling, the Porte issued a firman
that divided the church among the claimants. This was confirmed in 1852 with another firman that made the arrangement
permanent, establishing a status quo of territorial division among the communities.
The primary custodians are the Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Roman Catholic Churches, with the Greek Orthodox Church
having the lion's share. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox acquired lesser responsibilities, which
include shrines and other structures within and around the building. Times and places of worship for each community are strictly
regulated in common areas.
Establishment of the status quo did not halt the violence,
which continues to break out every so often even in modern times. On a hot summer day in 2002, the Coptic monk who is stationed
on the roof to express Coptic claims to the Ethiopian territory there moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade.
This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians, and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fracas.
In another incident in 2004 during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of
the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was
left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but
no one was seriously injured.
On Palm Sunday, in April 2008, a brawl broke out due
to a Greek monk being ejected from the building by
a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers. A clash erupted between Armenian
and Greek monks on Sunday 9 November 2008, during celebrations for the Feast of the Holy
Cross.
Under
the status quo, no part of what is designated as common territory may be so much as rearranged without consent from
all communities. This often leads to the neglect of badly needed repairs when the communities cannot come to an agreement
among themselves about the final shape of a project. Just such a disagreement has delayed the renovation of the edicule, where the need is now dire, but also
where any change in the structure might result in a change to the status quo disagreeable to one or more of the communities.
A less grave sign of this state of affairs is located on a window ledge over the church's entrance. Someone placed a
wooden ladder there sometime before 1852, when the status quo defined both the doors and the window ledges as common
ground. The ladder remains there to this day, in almost exactly the same position. It can be seen to occupy the ledge in century-old
photographs and engravings and is in our pictures.
None of the communities controls the
main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned responsibility for it to two
neighboring Muslim families. The Joudeh were entrusted with the key, and the
Nusseibeh, who had been the custodians of the
church since the days of Caliph Omar in 637, retained the position of keeping the door. This arrangement has persisted into
modern times. Twice each day, a Joudeh family member brings the key to the door, which is locked and unlocked by a Nusseibeh.
|
|
|
Challenges to Authenticity Relationship to the Temple of Aphrodite As noted above, the site had been a temple of Aphrodite prior
to Constantine's aedifice being built, a detail that Christian tradition puts down to Hadrian deliberately siting the
temple over Jesus' tomb (while taking care to avoid destroying it).
However, Hadrian's
temple had actually been located there simply because it was the junction of the main north-south road with one of the
two main east-west roads (which is now the Via Dolorosa), and directly adjacent to the forum which is at the junction of the main
north-south road with the (other) main east-west road (which is now El-Bazar/David Street. The temple and forum together took
up the entire space between the two main east-west roads.
From the archaeological excavations
in the 1970s, it is clear that construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure, and that the Triportico
and Rotunda roughly overlapped with the temple building itself; the excavations indicate that the temple extended at least
as far back as the Aedicule, and the temple enclosure would have reached back slightly further. Virgilio Canio Corbo, a Franciscan priest and archaeologist,
who was present at the excavations, estimated from the archaeological evidence that the western retaining wall, of the temple
itself, would have passed extremely close to the east side of the supposed tomb; if the wall had been any further west any
tomb would have been crushed under the weight of the wall (which would be immediately above it), if it had not already been
destroyed when foundations for the wall were made.
Other archaeologists have criticised
Corbo's reconstructions. Dan Bahat, the former official City Archaeologist
of Jerusalem, regards them as unsatisfactory, as there is no known Temple of Aphrodite matching Corbo's design, and no
archaeological evidence for Corbo's suggestion that the Temple Building was on a platform raised high enough to avoid
including anything sited where the Aedicule is now; indeed Bahat notes that many temples to Aphrodite have a rotunda-like
design, and argues that there is no archaeological reason to assume that the present rotunda wasn't based on a rotunda
in the temple previously on the site.
Relationship
of the site to the city
The Bible describes Jesus' tomb as being outside
the city wall, but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is in the heart of Hadrian's city, well within the Old City walls. Christian tradition has responded
to this issue by claiming that the city had been much narrower in Jesus' time, with the site then having been outside
the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41–44) is recorded by history
as extending the city to the north (beyond the present northern walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is
traditionally attributed to him as well.
If the western city wall was originally to the east of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, then the western hill, on which it is sited, would have been advantageous to an enemy.
However, a wall would imply the existence of a defensive ditch outside it, so an earlier
wall couldn't be immediately adjacent to site of the tomb, which combined with the presence of the Temple Mount would make the city inside the wall
quite thin; essentially for the traditional site to have been outside the wall, the city would have had to be limited to the
lower parts of the Tyropoeon Valley, rather than including the defensively
advantageous western hill. Since these geographic considerations imply that not including the hill within the walls would
be willfully making the city prone to attack from it, some scholars, including the late 19th century surveyors of the Palestine Exploration
Fund, consider it unlikely that a wall would
ever have been built which would cut the hill off from the city in the valley; archaeological evidence for the existence of
an earlier city wall in such a location has never been found.
Although, in 2007, Dan Bahat stated that Six graves from
the first century were found on the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That means, this place [was] outside of the
city, without any doubt, the dating of the tombs is based on the fact that they are in the kokh style, which was common in first century;
however, the kokh style of tomb was also common in the first to third centuries BC.
The
likelihood of a first century tomb being built to the west of the city is questionable, as according to the late first century
Rabbinic leader, Akiba ben Joseph, quoted in the Mishnah, tombs should not built to the west
of the city, as the wind in Jerusalem generally blows from the west, and would blow the smell of the corpses and their impurity
over the city, and the Temple Mount. Additionally, the Aedicule would be quite close to the city even the west wall of the
city had been to its east; yet Akiba remarks that Jewish law insists that tombs should not be built within 50 cubits of a
city. The archaeological record indicates that the instructions reported by Akiba, for choosing a burial location, were rigidly
adhered to; almost all of the tombs from classical Jerusalem are to the east of the city, on the Mount of Olives, except for a few located over a kilometre
to the west, and those in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Other possible sites
Although the identification of the Aedicule as the site of Jesus' tomb is not a
tenet of faith for any major Christian denomination, many Catholic and Orthodox Christians hold fast to this traditional location.
However, due to the many issues the site raises, several scholars have rejected its validity.
After
time spent in Palestine in 1882–83, Charles George
Gordon (General Gordon) found a location outside
the old city walls, which he suggested to have been the real location of Golgotha. Although the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
has its tomb just a few yards away from its Golgotha, there is no particular reason to regard this close juxtaposition as
a necessity; however, Gordon followed this principle, concluding that his site for Golgotha must also be the approximate location
for Jesus' burial, and therefore identified a nearby tomb, now called the Garden Tomb, as the location for the event. Pottery
and archaeological findings in the area have subsequently been dated to the seventh century BC, so in the opinion of archaeologists
the Garden Tomb site would have been abandoned by the first century. Despite the archaeological discoveries,
the Garden Tomb has become a popular place of pilgrimage among Protestants.
Currently, no
other potential site for the tomb has received much attention or academic support.
Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine by Rabbi Joseph Schwarz, 1850
I believe that I may therefore boldly maintain that it is clearly proved, from what has been said,
that the alleged grave of Christ is quite wrong; as it must have been indisputably without the city, at a distance at least
of 100 paces, or 50 cubits, according to Baba Bathra, ii.; § 9, whereas, the so-called holy sepulchre is pointed out
as being in the city, not far from the ancient temple, exactly opposite to the northwest corner of the temple mount; although
many pious men, who believe in all the Christian legends, take all possible pains to place it beyond the limits of the ancient
city; and maintain, therefore, that this alleged position was beyond the first wall; that Hippicus is the present Kallai,
and that the first wall ran from the Kallai to the temple from west to east. This idea is so ridiculous, that it deserves
no refutation; for Jerusalem must have had, in that case, a truly wonderful shape and size; for it could not have been more
than 150 cubits (300 feet) in breadth from south to north, excluding Zion, if the northern line extended from the Kallai to
the temple. It appears even from 1 Kings 18:17, that the city wall extended in the time of Hezekiah to the vicinity of the
Upper Pool, since those stationed on the wall could hear the speakers who stood there. Any one therefore endowed with common
sense must accordingly acknowledge, that the alleged locality of the so-called holy sepulchre rests on an impossible idea,
and that the whole matter is nothing but a fabulous tradition of the pious but deceiving Empress Helena, and of her equally
deceptive priests, who discovered this grave, and had a structure erected over it. | |
|
|
|
|
As Christians, it does not matter where Jesus
died and was buried. We accept the fact that He did and that on the third day He rose again from the dead. It
was not the Jews or the Romans that put Jesus on that cross, for all have sinned and deserve God's punishment.
It was God's love and amazing grace that sent Jesus, His only Son, into the world, in that special place called Bethlehem,
to redeem the world. And by the work of the Holy Spirit, all who believe in Jesus will have eternal life.
What a hope, what a joy to know that because Jesus lives, we also will live eternally with Him. May our most awesome
God be with you and bless you!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|