A Tale of Two Hills

One of the hardest things for me to do while in Jerusalem was take away all of the modern as well as 2,000 years of various churches built on what are believed to be holy sites.  I say believed because nothing was done at most sites until Constantine's mother, Helena, came to Jerusalem and built churches on sacred Christian places.  So, those locations were decided upon 1700 years ago, which is a very, very long time ago but, even so, 300 years from the death of Christ gave an ample amount of time for stories and histories to warp, as we know from the Great Apostasy.  I don't know how accurate the places designated as holy sites are.  This post will illustrate how difficult it can be to know where things were.

The scriptures say Christ was crucified at Golgotha, meaning place of the skull.  (FYI, Calvary means the same thing, only in Latin.  I was confused by that.  We always sing about Calvary in sacrament hymns but never about Golgotha.  I think Calvary is much easier for rhyming purposes. I definitely noticed it yesterday during Sacrament Meeting when I was looking through the Sacrament hymns.)  Helena declared this place to be a small mount of rocks right outside the city walls (purple arrow).  I'm sure it was more than simply a guest and 300 years of tradition or oral history had something to do with it.  Historians agree that the Romans would have chosen a spot outside the city walls (it is against Jewish law to be buried within the city walls) but close enough to roads and passerbys to make the execution as public as possible.  That was the point of crucifixion.  To show off Roman power.  By most accounts, the Romans crucified three prisoners daily.



 (You have to click on this picture to see the other arrow.  The purple one is where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is located today and the yellow area is where the Garden Tomb is located.)

Because of Helena's decision to mark that spot as Golgotha, a church was built on top of it.  Depending on your point of view, this is either a triumph or a tragedy as protects the place from unholy activities but also disfigures it so much that it is barely recognizable as a historical spot.  That is, what I feel, what as happened at Golgotha.  The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built upon it and throughout various centuries, ownership has changed and the church has been added upon and destroyed by fire and abandoned and rebuilt and is an architectural mess.




Here is an image I found online that helped me visualize the area before the church took over.

Six different Christian sects current have ownership or control over various sections of the building.  It is shared by the Ethiopian, Syrian, Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Coptic churches.  They each have their own places of worship and the design and ornateness changes as you move from place to place.



At the end of the Via Dolorosa, you come to the church.



You can see that there is no design plan from the roofline.




The six different sects still have what can only be called turf wars. This ladder beneath the right upper window has been abandoned on the outside of the building since at least the year 1852 because no one is sure who placed it there and, more importantly, which sect he belonged to.  Thus, none are willing to take it down.  It is now known as the Immovable Ladder as is powerful symbol of disputes within the religious world.




Inside the church, in a section controlled by the Greek Orthodox, are the rocks from the original Golgotha. Of course, you can barely see them with all of the icons, gold, candles and altars that have been built above it. There is a space underneath an altar where you can reach down and touch the rock. But, it is clearly revered by the Greek Orthodox worshipers.



Maureen and I went back on our free day because the line was too long to touch the rock when we were with the entire group.  You can see the rock beneath the altar and the woman kneeling down to touch it beneath.



It was hard for my eyes to ignore all of....this.  But, that is due to how I was raised and the manner in which I am accustomed to worship.  For many, this kind of embellishment is the highest honor.



This spot in the church is believed to be the place where Christ's body was anointed and wrapped in a shroud when taken down from the cross.  It is between the rocks of Golgotha and the place where the tomb is believed to be. Many come to kiss the stone (which is clearly not original) and place packets of perfume and oil on it.



A mosaic above that marble stone depicting the anointing acts.




About a hundred feet or so from the anointing stone is this tomb, again controlled by the Greek Orthodox.  It is a sort of church within a church but it is said to contain the tomb of Christ.



Before entering the tomb.



Once inside the tomb, there is ornate building around the tomb entrance.



Here is the tomb.  I felt irreverent taking a picture there as those before and following me knelt and prayed and kissed and lit candles and crossed themselves.  I honestly didn't know what to do.



Maureen and I toured the rest of the church and the various sections.  This is considered the chapel of Adam.  Some believe that when the earth shook following Christ's crucifixion, the mountain split and exposed the skull of Adam.  I think this might be Roman Catholic controlled, though I'm not sure.  Their sections were always the most well cared for and ornate, but not super glitzy.  Neither the Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic seem to follow the "less is more" school of thought.  The Ethiopian and Syrian sections were very, very poor.



Down many steps in the church is an area Helena claims to have found Christ's cross.  Of course, historians believe there were thousands and thousands of crucifixions at Golgotha by Roman hands, so it probably wasn't the very cross that Christ was nailed to but its supposed discovery does support this area as the actual site.  There is a chapel built there as well. I was more interested in the stone all around.

In another area of the church, controlled by the Coptics, I believe, is what is known as the Center of the Universe.  Supposedly, if all the continents were pushed back together, or unseparated, as it is scientifically thought they once were, not only would Jerusalem be in the very center of it, but this spot in this church, the spot Christ was crucified and Adam was buried, is the very center.  They also thought the earth was flat and would have a center so I'm not sure what is considered the center of a round object.  It is a round shape just behind that gold box.





There am I at the Center of the Universe.

Following our lunch on Shabbat, we stopped at a place known as The Garden Tomb.  It has a relatively young historical existence as it was only "discovered" in the late 1800s.  A man named Gordon, a Protestant, noticed a rocky hill with a distinct "skull" shape embedded into the surface.  He proposed that this might be the site of crucifixion instead (yellow arrow in first picture).





My picture.  The hill has changed but you can still the "eyes" of the skull still.



How it looked in the 1890s when Gordon noticed it.  You can see the two eyes and lower mouth.



What it looks like today with a major bus terminal in front of it.

It is a bit unfair to compare the two sites.  Growing up looking at pictures from the Gospel Art Kit, The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was the very opposite of the image I had in my head.  All of the religious icons and decoration distracted me.  Then, when we approached the Garden Tomb, my eyes beheld this:



You can see how much more sense it made to my emotional being.  Here, it felt peaceful.  Here, it felt like a garden.  Here, it resembled the pictures in the Gospel Art Kit!

In terms of archeological evidence, there are several discoveries that suppport Gordon's claim of authenticity.  First, a groove was found in front of the tomb used to roll a stone just as it is described in the scriptures.  Also, the term "garden" in biblical time meant an area that produced something useful, not just a pretty place to grow flowers.  An ancient wine press has been excavated supporting that the area was historically a garden.



Just an example of the shape of stone that would have fit in the groove discovered.  The actual stone would have been much larger.






Before entering the tomb.  The doorway is much higher than originally discovered and enlarged to accommodate visitors.



Maureen in front of the tomb.



The tomb is set up as described in the scriptures.  The burial place is on the right and could be seen by stooping down at the entrance and looking in.  Its simplicity contributed to the reverence surrounding the site for me.



The burial place.

Archeology, science and historians have discredited this site as Christ's tomb.  Bones found date to 700 years before Christ.  Its location doesn't put it in a typical Roman street intersection, whereas the other location does.  First century Jews condemned burial sites to the west of the city, which is where the Garden Tomb is located.  In spite of all of that, I think nothing can be known for sure. It may be the very spot.

Just like that ladder symbolizes the disputes and factions within Christianity, I have to share the following story because it is funny.  The Garden Tomb closes for several hours at lunch time and our bus arrived before the gates had reopened.  A group of four BYU Jerusalem students stood right at the front of the line.  I recognized them from our morning Sacrament meeting, although it was clear they didn't recognize our group.  No one was wearing anything with a Y logo on it, so it was a bit harder to determine.

While we were waiting, our Israeli tour guide wanted to teach us a Hebrew prayer song.  She was a singer and fit right in with our group and most of the songs she had taught us or performed for us were mellow, in a minor key, and had that Hebrew folk song feel.  This one was a bit more upbeat.  It had a rhythm that tempted one to clap and wasn't quiet or subdued.  I have to go by our guide's word that it was, in fact, a praAwr sonf because it didn't really sound like one.  In fact, the song's tempo and dynamics actually felt out of place at such a holy place.

Still, we followed her and sang along and it must have been very upsetting to this young group of BYU students.  They were still in their Sabbath best (I'd say Sunday, but it was Saturday), including pretty skirts and suits, and as we were singing, I heard them start to sing, "I Stand All Amazed" at the same time.  I knew what was happening: we were having a sing off!

Our guide was visibly annoyed by their singing.  Her face and looks over her shoulder were easy to interpret as, "We were singing first!" and she got louder and louder.  Not only that, but she kept repeating the song.  As the refrain would end, she'd say, "Again!" and start it all over again.  She even started to clap and move from side to side.

I knew exactly what those students were doing.  It was so funny and uncomfortable at the same time.  I could almost see inside their brains to see the thought, "We are going to bring the spirit back to this place!" as they decided to sing a sacred, to them and, unbeknownst the them, to us, song.

That moment captured everything about Jerusalem.  About Israel.  About the world.  We are all so determined to be right. We want everyone else to do things our way. I'm not saying there isn't truth or that the truth doesn't matter, but there is certainly a difference between truth, tradition and worship.  How we worship depends so much on what we are taught is acceptable.  I grew up going to an unadorned church with carpeted walls and cultural halls.  Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics revere and worship with imagery and magnificent buildings.  Our Israeli guide worshiped, at that moment, with a rather festive prayer song.

We had the most genteel English tour guide at the Garden Tomb.  I could have listened to his soft spoken accent for hours.  His reverence and the beautiful area around me provided me with the peaceful feeling and appropriate visual aid I was seeking.  And, just as he said during his explanation of the area, it really doesn't matter where the spot was where he was crucified.  What matters is that he overcame death.  That, three days later, he was raised from whichever tomb and lives!  That is the truth that matters.