Where Jesus died and rose again

by Gunther Simmermacher · April 5, 2012

The church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem marks the crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. G�NTHER SIMMERMACHER argues that there are plenty of good reasons to believe that the church is built on the authentic site of these events.

The roof of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which covers the likely site of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. (Photo: Schalk Visser)

Legend has it that Queen Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 326 AD during which she located an astonishing series of sites of the events recorded in the New Testament.
The more mundane truth is that when she pitched up, with a big royal entourage in tow, the local Christians simply pointed out the sites from their collective memory, fostered by an unbroken line of presence in Jerusalem and Galilee, held to be authentic.

In 313 Constantine declared Christianity the state religion of the empire, and since he now took a keen interest in the Church to which he had converted, he facilitated the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Among the Church leaders he met there was the bishop of Jerusalem, Macarius. At some point Macarius and Constantine discussed the possibility of excavating the site of the crucifixion and Resurrection with a view to preserving it in suitable style with a church.

By then a second-century Roman temple dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, stood above Cavalry, signposting the holiest of sites for generations of Christians. Macarius obtained permission from the emperor to dismantle the temple and started digging.

For centuries before the crucifixion, Golgotha had served as a limestone quarry. By the time of the crucifixion, the quarry was disused and now was a cemetery and site of execution�and possibly a garden. John�s Gospel describes it that way (19:41), and ancient sources refer to the area as the �Holy Garden�. The Franciscan archaeologist Fr Virgilio Corbo even found soil that indeed suggests a garden, though it seems unclear whether it was cultivated as such or whether it was a wild creation of nature.

Pilgrims kneel at the stone of unction, which commemorates the anointing of Christ's body before his internment in the tomb. (CNS photo/Debbie Hill)

When Macarius started his excavations � Helena was not yet on the scene � the traditional site of the crucifixion of Christ and of his resurrection were covered with soil, which created a platform for the pagan temple. That way the temple not only kept alive the geographical memory � and with a pagan temple above the site of the crucifixion and resurrection, it probably was a bitter memory�but the soil also had preserved in physical form much of what had been passed down in inter-generational memory for almost 200 years.

The place of the cross was signposted as well, if one accepts the notion that the cross stood on the hill�s highest point. A piece of rock outcrop protruded from the landfill platform, and on that the Romans had placed a statue of Aphrodite. The Christians of Jerusalem would have been aware of that, and be so scandalised by it as to convey their outrage to successive generations. So when the time came to tear down Aphrodite, the Christians knew that this was the rock of the cross. Pilgrims touch that stone even today inside the church of the Holy Sepulchre.

A� graffito in the rockface that would have been the limestone slope below the temple seems to prove that the site was regarded as the authentic Golgotha in the time between the temple�s construction in the 130s AD and its dismantling in 325/6, not only by the locals but also by pilgrims.� At some point between those years, someone carved into the stone the shape of a boat and the words �Domine Ivimus�. It means �Lord, we have arrived�, a likely reference to Psalm 122 (�Let us go to the house of the Lord�).

The inscription can still be seen in the Armenian chapel of St Vartan and the Armenian Martyrs inside the church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was found by chance during renovations and led to an extraordinary archaeological row which would even involve the police, with allegations by rival archaeologists that Fr Emanuele Testa OFM?(who died last year at 87) had falsified the letters when he restored the inscription. In 1977, the Criminal Investigation Bureau of Israel�s national police cleared Fr Testa and certified that the letters had not been tampered with.

Pope Benedict XVI prays at the spot which marks the place Jesus was crucified at Golgatha during his May 2009 visit to the church of the Holy Sepulchre.(Photo: Yannis Behrakis, Reuters via CNS)

And so, with the temple duly torn down, Macarius found the rock-cut tombs of Golgotha, just like those which Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus would have owned, in very quick time. Having learnt of the successful excavation, Constantine dispatched his mother to Jerusalem.

Our image of Queen Helena might conjure an ethereally pious pilgrim, possessed of intrepid archaeological genius and the virtuous humility befitting the Mother of Christian Europe. Her character might well have embraced these commendable qualities, but she was also a ruthless dynasty builder who by shrewd political manoeuvres ensured that her son would become emperor. Helena�s sanctity certainly was not stainless.

Helena arrived before Golgotha was entirely excavated, and some of the finds credited to her stretch the credulity of modern observers. When Helena, or those who did the digging for her, found three crosses in a disused cistern, a test was required to determine which of these was Christ�s cross. So a woman of gravely ailing health was brought forth. She touched one cross, then another, but nothing happened. But when she touched the third cross, she was spontaneously healed of her illness. Thus, supposedly, the True Cross was identified.

But it isn�t important whether the real cross of Christ was in fact identified, but that crosses apparently were found where the church of the Holy Sepulchre would be built, because this supports further the authenticity of the site as the historic Golgotha. The cross � minus pieces that had been broken, cut or even bitten off � remained in the custody of the bishop of Jerusalem, except for a brief time in Persia following the sack of 614 AD. It was lost in 1187 during the Crusaders� decisive defeat against Saladin at Hattin in Galilee.

Catholics attend the Easter Vigil Mass around the edicule that covers Christ's tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Helena also found what is said to be the INRI inscription, the Titulus Crucis, which is now kept in the Santa Croce church in Rome�s Gerusalemme district.� There was nothing special about Pontius Pilate having a sign fixed on to the top of Jesus� cross. The Romans often attached such notices to condemned men, stating the cause for their punishment. It was a means of humiliating the condemned and of warning the public that they risked the same fate should they pull similar stunts, like claiming to be a king.

Whereas we have only an unreliable legend of piety to identify the now lost cross, the titulus bears Jesus� name � INRI stands for Iesus Nazarinus Rex Iudaeorum (the spelling error in the place name is the scribe�s). Helena divided the titulus into several pieces, of which only the portion she took to Rome for her private collection survives. The artifact has not been carbon tested yest, so there is no proof that this is a 1st-0century item or, as the secular default position avers, a medieval fake.

The lettering on the walnut wood sign has faded, but enough remains to reveal that the Geek and Latin lines were written from right to left, perhaps by a Jewish scribe, in the way of Hebrew. This offers circumstantial evidence as to its authenticity. A forger wants to avoid too much scrutiny of his work of fakery, so dabbling in idiosyncratic renderings of famous lines would appear to be a most peculiar gambit.

Helena also found the reputed nails of the cross, five of them, but these could have been used to crucify any number of people, at least until about 40 AD, when the Golgotha site was incorporated into the city walls and therefore disused as a place of execution.

A lithograph by Scottish-born artist David Roberts, who visited the church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1839. He captioned the litho as depicting the chapel of the crucifixion, which by then already was a Greek Orthodox shrine. This, however, appears to be a Catholic chapel.

That leaves us with the tomb, which has been cut out of the rock formation and is now housed in an edicule (or chamber) in the rotunda of the church of the Holy Sepulchre � the present structure was built by the Crusaders in the 1100s after Helena�s magnificent basilica was razed in 1009. In absence of a name shield we can�t really be certain whether it is Jesus� tomb, though we know from the gospels that it was very near the place of the crucifixion.

Scholars speculate that graffiti by early Christians might have identified the tomb. These graffiti, if they ever existed, have since disappeared, perhaps chipped off by the souvenir hunters of antiquity who over centuries cheerfully degraded all manner of rock associated with Jesus� life.

In absence of evidence to the contrary, the site of church of the Holy Sepulchre most probably is the real Golgotha. It should fill us with joy that we do have what most likely is a genuine physical link to the location of Our Lord�s death and Resurrection.

Visit the church of the Holy Sepulchre with The Southern Cross in May 2013. CLICK HERE for more information