Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HOLY SEPULCHRE

The tomb in which Jesus’ body was interred, a rock-hewn cave intended for the burial of Joseph of Arimathea (Matt. 27:57-60) located outside the walls of Jerusalem (John 19:41; Heb. 13:12).

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, dedicated on 15 July 1149, the 50th anniversary of the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, stands over the places identified by ancient tradition as Golgotha and the tomb of Jesus. Excavations beneath the church have shown that the site was an ancient quarry reused as a burial place in the 1st century. The area was first enclosed within city walls by Herod Agrippa (41-44), some 10 years after the crucifixion of Jesus (Josephus BJ 5.147-55; Ant. 19.326-27).

Emperor Hadrian refounded Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina (a.d. 135) and erected over the tomb of Jesus a temple of Jupiter with a statue of Venus nearby (Eusebius Vita Const.; Jerome Ep. 58; Dio Cassius Hist. 69.12). After the Council of Nicea (325), Constantine ordered the pagan temple torn down and a church erected in its place. Constantine’s engineers after removing the temple discovered a tomb identified as that of Jesus (Eusebius Vita Const. 3.25-40). A great rotunda was constructed above the tomb. Immediately to the east of the rotunda Golgotha stood in the open air in the southwest corner of a large colonnaded courtyard connecting the rotunda with a huge basilica called the Martyrium (“Witness,” to the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection). In 1009 Egyptian Caliph Hakim ordered the destruction of Constantine’s church, and in 1048 a new church was built on the foundations of the rotunda. The Crusaders incorporated this church into their grand plan, covering the rotunda and courtyard of predecessor churches and a space once occupied by the western portion of Constantine’s basilica.

Skeptics doubt that early Jewish Christians preserved the memory of the actual sites and ascribe the 4th-century identification to the desire of Constantine to propagandize his newfound faith and the desire of the Jerusalem church to exalt itself over other ecclesiastical centers. However, the location (outside the 1st-century city) has the requisite marks archaeologically, and Eusebius, no advocate of a strong Jerusalem, favors the identification, supporting the idea of continuous Christian memory.

Bibliography. M. Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (London, 1999); C. Couasnon, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (Oxford, 1974); J. Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Princeton, 1992), 258-82; J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It (Nashville, 1983).

Robert Harry Smith

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HOLY SEPULCHRE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)