As Thousands Gather At Renovated Tomb Of Jesus, A New Discovery About First Christian Community In Israel

“Gone is the unsightly iron cage ..."

March 23, 2017 at 1:51pm



While the Israel Antiquities Authority released information about an archaeological find that shed new light on the early Christian community in Israel, thousands gathered in Jerusalem to see the restored site of Jesus’ tomb.

The renovated tomb where Jesus is believed to have been buried after his crucifixion by the Romans was revealed during a ceremony in the 12th century Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the old city of Jerusalem that was attended by thousands of pilgrims and clerics.

The $3.5 million renovation was made possible by contributions from donors all over the world, among them the Jordanian King Abdullah II and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who are both Muslim but want to present themselves as the custodians of the Christian holy places in Jerusalem.

“Gone is the unsightly iron cage built around the shrine by British authorities in 1947 to shore up the walls and gone is the black soot on the shrine’s stone façade from decades of pilgrims lighting candles,” CBS News reported, while adding the stability of the shrine has been improved after 200 years of neglect.

“If this intervention hadn’t happened now, there is a very great risk that there could have been a collapse,” said Bonnie Burnham of the World Monuments Fund, which led the renovation.

Burnham said the monument has been transformed completely, thanks to the work of a team of 50 experts from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece.

Indeed, the shrine was in such a deplorable state that Israeli police decided to close it down briefly in 2015 after the IAA deemed it unsafe.

The workers who renovated the shrine were able to examine, for the first time in 200 years, the burial bed made of rock where the body of Jesus is believed to have been placed after his crucifixion.

The team entered the burial chamber of Jesus on Oct. 26 last year and slid open an old marble layer covering the bedrock and discovered a “white rose marble slab engraved with a cross, which the team dated to the late Crusader period of the 14th century,” according to CBS.

After this discovery, the experts found an even older marble slab that dated back to the fourth century, when the Roman Emperor Constantine introduced Christianity as the dominant religion in the empire.

The restorers have now placed a small window in the marble walls of the shrine to enable pilgrims to see the bedrock of the ancient burial chamber.

The renovation has brought the different Christian denominations who are in charge with the daily affairs in the Church of Holy Sepulchre together, said Antonia Moropoulou who supervised the renovation.

She hopes the second phase of the renovation of the church that involves consolidating drainage and sewage pipes underground and the stabilization of the foundation of the tomb can begin soon, adding that the monument will be worshipped forever.

While Moropoulou made her remarks, the IAA revealed that Israeli archaeologists had uncovered the ruins of a building that was part of a complex which apparently served Christian pilgrims on their way to visit Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem.

An IAA press release said beneath the ruins of the building, the archaeological team made another stunning discovery when it unearthed a cache of nine bronze coins from the end of the Byzantine period in the seventh century.

The coins bared the images of three important Byzantine emperors: Justinian (who ruled from 483-565), Maurice (539-602) and Phocas (547-610), all depicted wearing military garb and carrying crosses on the obverse of the coins.

Landes Nagar, the IAA archeologist who headed the excavation, said the hoard was found among large stones that had collapsed alongside the building.

“It seems that during a time of danger, the owner of the hoard placed the coins in a cloth purse that he concealed inside a hidden niche in the wall. He probably hoped to go back and collect it, but today we know that he was unable to do so,” Nagar added.

The IAA archaeologist thinks the hoard indicates the end of the site during the Sassanid Persian invasion that occurred in the year 614.

“This invasion was one of the factors that culminated in the end of Byzantine rule in the Land of Israel,” Nagar said.

He believes Christian residents of the site apparently feared the Persians would loot the complex, and therefore buried their money in the hope to dig it up as soon as they were able to return to the site.

That didn’t happen, however, because the complex was destroyed and covered with earth until Highway 1 between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was widened last year

During the same excavation, the remains of a Byzantine church were unearthed, the Israel Antiquities Authority reported.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/as-...ity-in-israel/