Jesus was here! And that’s a certain fact

There are sites in the Holy Land where we can locate the physical Jesus with certainty. In the second part of his series on the recent Pilgrimage of the Peacemakers, GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER takes us to these places.

There are some things I will never understand. One of these is why for many devout Catholics it is not a burning desire to touch the rock on which Jesus’ cross stood and to pray at the place where Christ rose from the dead.

Some Catholics prefer to roast on the beaches of Mauritius or to make a pilgrimage to Old Trafford football stadium when they could be at the places where Our Lord, the physical Jesus, once stood and walked, and died and rose from the dead.

I suspect that the hesitation resides in the false idea that the places of veneration in the Holy Land were randomly appointed in a bid to exploit gullible pilgrims. The contrary is true: there are many places where we can locate the physical Jesus with certainty.

Chief among those are the places of his crucifixion and resurrection, both covered by the church of the Holy Sepulchre. How do we know it is the authentic Golgotha? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

The early Christians followed the religion of the Nazarene Messiah at great risk to themselves. First they were persecuted by the Jews, then by the Romans. Like the Christians of the Middle East today, they were truly devoted followers.

So it is absolutely inconceivable that they might have simply forgotten about the important places of the Lord’s earthly ministry. The Christians of Jerusalem would have venerated especially the places of the crucifixion and resurrection over generations.

The Romans made it easy for them to remember where. In around 130 AD, the emperor Hadrian decided to rebuild Jerusalem, with pagan temples at either end of the city. One of these ends was the garden of Golgotha, once outside the city walls but now within.

The Romans covered the area around the hill with soil to create a platform on which they built a temple dedicated to Jupiter. The highest point of outcrop rock protruded, so they fixed a statue of Aphrodite on it.

For the Romans, this was likely just sensible urban planning, but for the Christians, the grandsons of the first followers of Christ, it was a sacrilegious affront, for they knew that the tomb of the Lord’s resurrection had been covered by a pagan temple, with the goddess of love and fertility standing on the very spot of the crucifixion.

For generations they’d point out the profanity to their children, and lead pilgrims to venerate at the slope of the temple. One of these pilgrims, from the second or third century, engraved a graffito on the wall. It has survived and can be seen, by appointment, in an Armenian chapel in the church of the Holy Sepulchre.

In 313 the Roman empire legalised Christianity, and thus green-lighted the building of churches. In 325 the bishop of Jerusalem, Macarius, petitioned Emperor Constantine to be permitted to tear down Hadrian’s temple and build a church on the site every Christian knew to be Golgotha.

Given the go-ahead, that’s what the Christians did. The excavation was quite simple since the Romans had covered everything with soil, not bothering to raze anything.

The spot of the cross was easily identifiable, thanks to Aphrodite. There are no records of exactly how the tomb of Christ was identified, but it is probable that pre-130 AD Christians had left their graffiti at this most holy of places, as they did at other sacred sites.

By 335, the first church of the Holy Sepulchre, twice the size of today’s Crusader structure, was inaugurated.

In the 1960s the noted Franciscan archaeologist Fr Virgilio Corbo led excavations at and around the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Among other things, he confirmed that this area had once been a quarry that was turned into a garden, confirming St John’s description (Jn 19:41) and explaining Mary Magdalene’s question to the risen Christ: “Are you the gardener?” (Jn 20:15).

First-century tombs in the vicinity — one can be seen in a Syriac chapel just a few metres from Christ’s tomb — further show that this area was used as a cemetery.

There can be no reasonable doubt that this is exactly where our Lord was crucified, died and rose on the third day.

Today pilgrims can touch the rock of the crucifixion, located beneath a Greek Orthodox altar, and pray in the place of the tomb, at a marble slab that covers the ledge from which Christ rose.

Why would any Catholic not want to experience that?

There are other spots in the Holy Land where one locate with certainty the physical Jesus (and Mary and the disciples). The members of The Southern Cross’ Pilgrimage of the Peacemakers in February, led by Archbishop Stephen Brislin, had opportunity to see them.

A good rule of thumb is that a place has a good claim to authenticity if (a) the event it marks was important enough to be remembered by the early Christians, (b) veneration of it goes back to the fourth century — that is, as soon as churches were allowed to be built — and (c) there are no rival ancient places.

We must not underestimate the collective memory and oral history passed down over generations of Christians. Those of Nazareth would have remembered the location of the Holy Family’s home; those of Bethlehem that of Jesus’ birth; those of Bethany the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and so on.

But even allowing for the slim possibility that they got it wrong, at some places we can pinpoint the physical Christ with 100% accuracy, almost to the metre.

Two of them are wells. Nazareth had only one well, so it is without question that Jesus and Mary spent much time there, simply by dint of their residency in the village.

Likewise, Jacob’s Well was the only source of water at Shechem, today’s city of Nablus in the West Bank, where Jesus’ had that amusing and momentous high-noon encounter with the Samarian woman.

One of our group had the privilege of drawing water from that well, which stands in the crypt of a Greek Orthodox church — but first he had to navigate his tongue through a chunk of Shakespearean English as he read the relevant Bible passage.

In Capernaum, the town on the Sea of Galilee where Peter, James, Andrew, John and the tax collector Matthew were recruited, we meet the physical Jesus in two places.

A fourth-century synagogue there, impressively preserved, was built on the basalt stone foundation of a previous synagogue which, archaeology has revealed, was built in around 26AD. That was the synagogue in which Jesus preached and healed, and where he made that eternal promise: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54).

Nearby is the house of St Peter. Fr Corbo, the archaeologist whom we encountered earlier at the church of the Holy Sepulchre, found so much evidence there to prove that this was the apostle’s house, nobody with a shred of sanity could dispute it.

He also ascertained that this type of house could not have sustained a permanent roof, all the better for enterprising men to remove it in order to lower their paralytic friend down to that healer from Nazareth.

Besides Mary’s Well in Nazareth, one other place in the Holy Land requires neither Scripture reference nor archaeological proof to know that Jesus walked there.

A flight of steps on Mount Zion, next to the church of St Peter in Gallicantu, has existed there since the first century BC. They formed part of the only plausible way one would walk from the Mount of Olives to Mount Zion. Jesus and the disciples most likely walked up these steps on the way to the Last Supper, and definitely walked down them en route to the Garden of Gethsemane.

There are other places where we can roughly pinpoint Jesus, for example at the Pools of Bethesda or the Pool of Siloam or on the remains of the grand staircase on the southern wall of the temple.

And there are very many other spots where tradition places Jesus — and even without the evidence that we have at the places described in this article, who exactly are we to question the local Christians from 1,700 years ago?

Of course, it is more important to know what happened than where it happened. And yet, being in the presence of the physical Jesus, touching the rock on which his cross stood or reflecting on his earthly ministry while sailing on the Sea of Galilee inevitably deepens our relationship with him.

And how does that not beat even sunny Mauritius or noisy Old Trafford?

Last Week : Nazareth, Where the Incarnation Begins

Günther Simmermacher is the author of The Holy Land Trek: A Pilgrim’s Guide, published by Southern Cross Books (order from www.holylandtrek.com). Join The Southern Cross on the Year of Mercy Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in October, led by Fr Larry Kaufmann CSsR. For details and llustrated itinerary see www.fowlertours.co.za/kaufmann