Holy Sites are hot topics, this one more than any. The church has, for centuries, accepted the fact that
Constantine discovered the burial tomb of Christ in the 300s AD and built a church over it, for its
preservation. He and his mother actually preserved many holy places in this fashion. They also
searched for the burial places of the Apostles and transferred the relics they found to Rome,
installing them in special churches designed for their protection. These churches then became sites
for pilgrims to visit. Those visits have never ceased.
In the 1800s though, some Protestant scholars visited Jerusalem and claimed that the Catholics were wrong and they had found the true site of the crucifixion and the tomb. That place is known today as the Garden Tomb.
In 1841, Dr Edward Robinson’s work, Biblical Research in Palestine, was considered the standard work on Topography and Archaeology of the Holy Land. He argued that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and its nearby Golgotha would have been inside the city walls in the time of Jesus, therefore, cannot be authentic. But he was careful not to suggest a different site, only that it would need to be near the Damascus Gate.
The following year, Otto Thenius, a German Theologian and Biblical Scholar visited Jerusalem and found a hill, just north of the Damascus Gate, that looked like a Skull. Being that Golgotha means skill in Aramaic, he concluded that this must be where Jesus died. And nearby he found a place called Jeremiah’s Grotto, which he considered to be the tomb of Christ. This last assertion was never taken seriously.
In 1850, Fisher Howe, one of the founders of Union Theological Seminary in New York, visited the Holy Land. Claiming that he had never heard of Otto Thenius, he made the same assertians about Jeremiah’s Grotto. Later came HB Tristam, Claude Conder, Selah Merrill, Samuel Gobat, Conrad Schick and Ernest Renan.
The most famous was General Charles Gordon. He proposed several Theological theories that even he called fanciful. Although the guidebooks claim that he made the discovery of Skull Hill, he was in fact very much influenced by Condor and Schick. But the place is now called Gordon’s Golgotha. In the second half of the 19th century, a number of tombs were discovered near Gordon’s Golgotha, along with an ancient wine press and cistern. This was taken as evidence that the area had once been a garden. A tomb alongside the cistern, which had a stone groove where a rock could be slid across, was identified as the Tomb of Christ by Gordon.
Soon a Society was formed in England, and they purchased the spot they believed to be the Tomb of Jesus. A fund was set up and people were hired to maintain the area. The site soon became a popular spot for Protestants to reflect and worship.
As time went on though, archaeologists dated the tomb to the 7th-8th centuries BC. The stone groove was dated to the time of the Crusades. As beautiful as the place is, it is no longer considered to be a contender for the burial place of Jesus. In addition, Dr Robinson was incorrect when he said that the Catholic's site would have been inside the city at the time of Jesus.
The traditional site, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, went through some fascinating changes in 2016/2017. It was very much in danger of falling down on the pilgrims and the police were threatening to close the site. A Greek team from the National Technical Institution was hired by the Israel Antiquities Authority along with National Geographic, to restore the site. They were led by Professor Antonia Moropoulou. This can all be seen on the NatGeo channel.
In 2016, in order to complete the restorations, they needed to open up the tomb. According to the church, it had not been opened since Constantine’s time. Permission was given but they had a few surprises. They first dismantled the walls around the bench. What they did not expect was to see the original walls of Jesus’ tomb, as they believed Constantine had removed them. Now they had much more of a tomb than they first believed.
Next they removed the top slab of marble cladding. Underneath that was a lot of debris. Once the debris was removed, the original marble bed of the tomb was found, with a cross engraved on it. They were not sure if it was from the Crusader Era or Constantine’s, as both used crosses. If it were from the Crusader’s time, then this would indicate that this was not the tomb of Christ, but a fraud, because it would contradict the historical accounts. If it was from Contantine’s time, it would confirm everything that he had reported.
To test this, the Greek team used Optically Stimulated Luminescence, or OSL. This technique will indicate to the team the last time this quartz was exposed to sunlight. It was a very tense time as the stakes were pretty high. The results came back to 345 AD, fitting in exactly with the reports from Constantine.
Now we can be sure that the reports through the ages, that the tomb was not opened, were revealed to be true. The reports of how the Crusaders found the tomb were accurate. Is there a way to go back from Constantine’s time? Before his time, the tomb was covered by the Temple of Venus.
In the 130s AD, there was another Jewish revolt. The Church Fathers are unanimous in their opinion that the Roman Governor, Rufus, was responsible for its instigation. It resulted in the Emperor Hadrian wanting to stamp out everything Jewish. He built a Roman Colony on the site of Jerusalem. The Jews were expelled from the city on pain of death and pig’s heads were hung up near the site of the destroyed Temple. Circumcision was banned and any circumcised person was forced to pay taxes to a Roman temple, of which he built three, where the Jewish Temple had been. Hadrian had the tomb of Jesus filled in, a foundation laid on top of that and a temple to Venus built. The name Jerusalem was taken off the map and Syria Palestina was used instead. And so it stayed there, until Constantine tore it down 200 years later.
Can we go back further? Eusebius reports that after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Christians came back and built a church on Mount Zion, outside the city. Between the death of Simeon of Jerusalem in 115 AD or so and the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130s, there were 13 Jewish Bishops in Jerusalem. He made a list of their names, but almost no details about the men. At the beginning of the revolt, the Christians supported Bar Kokhba, until he proclaimed himself the Messiah. They ceased their support and a permanent schism was formed between the Jewish Christians and the Greek Christians. All further Bishops of Jerusalem were Greek.
However, during the sixty years between the two revolts, it’s not hard to imagine that the Jewish Christians wanted to preserve the place of the death and resurrection of Jesus after the Romans destroyed the city. The site would still be in living memory in 70 AD and passed down to those who lived sixty years more.
Given all this information, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the traditional site is really where Jesus died and rose again.
What do you think?
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