Corrections on Israel

Continued embarrasment as I try to finish my "graduate studies" in front of the world.

I've been trying to nail down some question marks I had about the final days of Jesus in Jerusalem. I've finally been able to check up on some things I had heard before I went to Israel but that had bounced off my teflon head in the absence of any frame of reference. This is my perennial problem--if I knew half the things I have tried to shove in my head... Most just bounce off on the floor.

First, Wilbur had mentioned the possibility that Jesus would have been tried in Herod's old palace rather than in the Fortress Antionia. However, I had no sense of how to make this call.

Now I do. Josephus mentions that the Roman governors took over Herod's palace after the death of Herod the Great. The Fortress was thus more of a barracks and would not likely have been a place where Pilate stayed. The current consensus thus seems to be that they would have tried Jesus at Herod's palace to the west. Unfortunately, that implies that the Via Dolorosa isn't the way of suffering after all. Jesus would have come from the other direction.

Second, there are many archaeological digs that have been conducted under the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I had thought I had heard something about a tomb found around the Armenian quarter, but it wasn't a tomb. They have just found a lot of evidence that the area was a stone quarry at the time of Christ. This is true in the Armenian quarter.

Some of us went down to the lowest chapel in the Armenian quarter, which is where tradition says the Empress Helena found part of the cross. I hadn't noticed really, but there is stone quarry rock under the Armenian section. There is also a second century carving or such that some scholars think is an indication of pre-Constantine pilgrimage in that area. Others think it is a Roman picture.

Third, the story is that the Empress Helena dismantled a Temple of Aphrodite on the spot at the word of local Christians who said the spot was underneath. They did find tombs there, and the tombs we saw reputed of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are two. Who knows, one of these could have been the real one. They are in the Syrian section (I didn't realize it at the time).

They evidently removed the surrounding rock that had been around the tomb that was venerated as the tomb of Jesus in order to facilitate the building of a basilica church in 335. Some marauders apparently destroyed everything there in the 1000's, so there is apparently scarcely anything of the original.

Fourth, Golgotha as it currently exists would not have been wide enough for three crosses and would have been a difficult to "haul" people up on (it's like a jutting finger). However, it could have been wider at the time--after all, it was a quarry.

But a few scholars suggest Golgotha is the name for the general area rather than a specific rock, and think people would have been crucified along a gate that came out at that time. That way people could see them as they left the city. I forget the name (Haditha?). This would place the crucifixion about a hundred meters south somewhere around the current David Street.

Finally, it seems the unanimous conclusion of archaeologists that Gordon's Tomb is a first temple bench tomb. That means it pre-dates Jesus by over six hundred years and can't be the place where Jesus was lain. Oh well.

Updates from Israel--no wait, Marion, Indiana (a holy site in its own right)