The Church of the Holy Sepulcher (in Arabic, \u201cKinisat al-Qiyama\u201d or \u201cChurch of the Resurrection\u201d), in Jerusalem\u2019s Old City \u00a0 \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A poignant passage about Jerusalem\u2019s Church of the Holy Sepulcher from the late\u00a0Reverend\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Jerome Murphy-O\u2019Connor,\u00a0O.P.\u00a0(1935-2013), a Roman Catholic and a\u00a0Dominican\u00a0priest\u00a0who was, for decades, a professor of\u00a0New Testament\u00a0at the illustrious\u00a0\u00c9cole Biblique\u00a0there in\u00a0that city:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
One expects the central shrine of Christendom to stand out in majestic isolation, but anonymous buildings cling to it like barnacles. \u00a0One looks for numinous light, but it is dark and cramped. \u00a0One hopes for peace, but the ear is assailed by a cacophony of warring chants. \u00a0One desires holiness, only to encounter a jealous possessiveness: the six groups of occupants \u2014 Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians \u2014 watch one another suspiciously for any infringement of rights. \u00a0The frailty of humanity is nowhere more apparent than here; it epitomizes the human condition. \u00a0The empty who come to be filled will leave desolate; those who permit the church to question them may begin to understand why hundreds of thousands thought it worthwhile to risk death or slavery in order to pray here.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nIs this the place where Christ died and was buried? \u00a0Yes, very probably.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nJerome Murphy-O\u2019Connor,\u00a0The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700 <\/i>(New York:\u00a0Oxford University Press, 1993)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m privileged to have interacted with\u00a0Father Murphy-O\u2019Connor when he once spent a week or two at Brigham Young University, teaching a kind of \u201cmaster class\u201d to some of the faculty, and to have had an email conversation with him for a while thereafter. \u00a0I had and have enormous respect for him as both a scholar and a man. \u00a0So I\u2019m moved by his response to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which (having been there more times than I can count) I completely understand.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
For a long time, I found it easy to ignore the place, religiously speaking. \u00a0On the other hand, its historical importance is impossible to overlook. \u00a0Originally built in the early fourth century by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great at the instigation of his mother, St. Helena, atop the ruins of a second-century temple constructed\u00a0by his pagan predecessor Hadrian to the goddess Aphrodite or Venus; almost completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (an important figure in my doctoral dissertation, though for mostly unrelated reasons) in the early eleventh century; ostensibly, at least, the principal object of the Crusades; regarded by much of Western Christendom as the center of the world, toward which all maps were (literally) oriented \u2014 it\u2019s one of the most important buildings on our planet, even from a secular perspective. \u00a0(And I\u2019ve barely scratched the surface of its remarkable history.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is it the site of Christ\u2019s tomb? \u00a0Virtually all Christians and most authorities believe it to be so. \u00a0And I myself went through a period of believing that very likely. \u00a0(I\u2019ve long since concluded that, for all its desirable qualities \u2014 it\u2019s a rare location in Jerusalem where peaceful meditation is feasible, for instance, and it can\u2019t be more than a few hundred yards from the right place \u2014 the Garden Tomb almost certainly cannot be the burial site of Christ.) \u00a0More recently, though, an article by my friend and BYU colleague Jeff Chadwick (\u201cRevisiting Golgotha and the Garden Tomb\u201d<\/a>) has impelled me to conclude that the Holy Sepulcher likely isn\u2019t the right spot, either.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s been venerated by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of very earnest pilgrims for nearly two millennia, and that alone, in my judgment, is enough to make it a place of holiness and a site deserving of great respect.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 A poignant passage about Jerusalem\u2019s Church of the Holy Sepulcher from the late\u00a0Reverend\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Jerome Murphy-O\u2019Connor,\u00a0O.P.\u00a0(1935-2013), a Roman Catholic and a\u00a0Dominican\u00a0priest\u00a0who was, for decades, a professor of\u00a0New Testament\u00a0at the illustrious\u00a0\u00c9cole Biblique\u00a0there in\u00a0that city: \u00a0 One expects the central shrine of Christendom to stand out in majestic isolation, but anonymous buildings cling to it like barnacles. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1356,2851,9030,9033,9024,9027,1561,446,1369,1366],"class_list":["post-83471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christ","tag-empty-tomb","tag-garden-tomb","tag-gordons-calvary","tag-holy-sepulcher","tag-holy-sepulchre","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-jesus","tag-resurrection"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>