Today was our tour of modern Jerusalem sites. We kicked off with a morning trip to Yad Vashem (hand/memorial and name), the holocaust museum. It took us through a journey of the holocaust, drawing us gradually into the experience of the real, flesh and blood people who were so easily forgotten by the world. Beginning with the rise of the Nazi party under Adolf Hitler and ending with the desperate aftermath of the brutality that was so swiftly demonstrated against the Jewish people during World War II. One powerful and thought provoking highlight was what we learned about Christianity’s relationship to and responsibility for anti-Semitism. Christianity from the 5th century on has demonstrated suspicion toward and animosity against the Jewish people. It was difficult for many of us to swallow the reality, not only of our connection to the situation but of the event in and of itself–the systematic dehumanization of an entire race of people.
After we left Yad Vashem we went to lunch which was our familiar road combination of pita, Hummus, and randomly assorted meats and pickles and such. When we finished our little picnic we headed off to our next destination–the Israel Museum. Among all the cool things we saw there was a miniature model of Jerusalem (right before it was destroyed in 70AD). When I say miniature, I mean about fifty feet across, so still large enough to take a walk around it. Another major highlight of the Israel Museum was the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. They have a great deal of the scrolls on display for the public as well as a replica of the Isaiah scroll wrapped around the center column of the room. It was a beautiful display that really helped draw us into appreciation for the importance of the discovery of the scrolls.
Our next stop was the Hebrew University where we got a chance to scope out the campus and get a feel for what it would be like to study there. Those who were interested got some information about the programs that the school offers and other such information. A few of us got to sneak down with Dr. Mullins into the Archaeology dept. where we saw some of the things that excavations done by the Hebrew University have yielded.
Our last official stop was the Garden Tomb. It is a site that many protestants prefer over the Holy Sepulcher as the site where Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected. It was a beautiful garden area just north of the city of Jerusalem next to a hill that looks a bit like a skull (hence the name Golgotha). It’s exactly what most of us imagine the tomb would look like. It’s next to an ominous hill, in a beautiful garden just outside the city of Jerusalem. The tour guide we were provided really incorporated the gospel message in his presentation. The only problem with the site is that it can’t really be the site where Jesus was buried. The tomb is indeed a rolling stone tomb and it is indeed near a cistern and an olive press, suggesting that it was set in a garden, but the tomb is from the Iron Age (during the time of Jeremiah and Isaiah) which is far to early to be Jesus’ especially since the Bible tells us that the tomb was never used before. As for the cistern, it doesn’t work as evidence either because it’s from the Crusader period which is far too late to be contemporary to Jesus time. Archaeologically and historically it can’t be the right place, but nevertheless it’s devotional function is still valuable. The Garden Tomb is a very inviting and romantic place to reflect and pray. We’ve been reminded over and over again on this trip that the historicity of a place does not necessarily make or break it’s spiritual validity. The Garden Tomb serves its function weather or not it’s the right place.
After dinner Dr. Mullins offered an optional tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where many of us felt much more spiritually connected to the death and resurrection of Jesus. It helped that Dr. Mullins explained that the tomb in the church does in fact date back to the first century, it is a rolling stone tomb, and the tradition of the particular site goes back much further in history than the garden tomb. In 135AD Hadrian built a temple to Venus on the site and he had a habit of building pagan temples on top of Christian holy sites. Then in the fourth century Helena, Constantine’s mother, built a church on the site to commemorate the site of Jesus death and resurrection. So the history of the tradition provides circumstantial evidence that the site of the Holy Sepulcher, however “Eastern” it may feel to American protestants, is the real site where Jesus was killed, buried, and resurrected.
3 responses so far ↓
J. Winston // July 2, 2008 at 4:38 pm |
I am really enjoying reading your posts. Just a suggested alteration of a comment you made: “In 135AD Hadrian built a temple to Venus on the site and he had a habit of building pagan temples on top of Christian holy sites.” Actually, it was the opposite. It wasn’t that Hadrian built on Christian holy sites, as if he intentionally coopted Christian sacred space. Rather, c. 135 AD Christianity was just beginning to be a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire as evidenced by the writings of the early apologists, so they would not have had a well developed or formalized architectural identity that he would have challenged. Instead, if this site had a tradition as a holy place, it would primarily have been an oral one, rather than any type of elaborate physical monuments. Instead, it was Constantine the Great, Helena’s son, who established the habit of coopting pagan sites and monuments, turning them into Christian holy places, such as his sponsoring of the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the 4th c. AD. It was a type of conquering of spiritual space. (He even stole parts of Hadrian’s monuments in Rome and built them into the famous Constantinian arch of triumph on the Capitoline hill in Rome.
wellis68 // July 3, 2008 at 5:04 pm |
Dr. Winston,
You’ll have to take that one up with Dr. Mullins. I don’t know why the temple to Venus would be built on top of a first century tomb unless it had some significance.
J. Winston // July 3, 2008 at 10:58 pm |
Hi Wes — we scholars always have differences in opinion. However, I wasn’t challenging the existence of the tomb, or that Hadrian built the temple of Venus there, those are true facts. Rather, I was making a more nuanced assertion – that Christians weren’t really important enough yet for Hadrian to have specifically targeted them per se, nor did the Christians have an elaborate architectural presence yet. That doesn’t mean the tomb wasn’t there or that Christians didn’t recognize it as a revered and important site. But rather I was questioning that it would have been something so significant that Hadrian would have specifically targeted it as a way of conquering Christian space. Hadrian was notorious for building temples and statues, including all of the statues of his lover, Antinoos, who drowned in Egypt and over which Hadrian created an entire religious cult with statues and a temple. However, I humbly accede to Dr. Mullins’ wisdom — don’t mind me — it’s the ancient historian in me insisting on chronological contextualization. I still love your blogs!