Jerusalem
With the closure of the West Bank, we still no clear idea of what we were going to do for the next few days, however one thing that we decided we must do was the Church of the Holy Sepluchre. We wanted to avoid the crowds as much as possible, as this place is renowned for being absolutely packed, often taking hours to reach the shrine so we woke up at 4am to be amongst the first visitors.
We walked from the hotel to the old city, entering through Jaffa gate. The entire city was deserted, asides from a number of Vinci's spirit animals scavenging through rubbish bins. The old city is a real maze of small alleys and the map we were using was a little ambiguous to the point where we ended up getting a little lost, but still made it to the entrance a few minutes after the opening time of 5AM. The keys to the church are held by a Sunni Muslim family, which has been a custom since 1187AD. The tradition continues to this day as a symbolic gesture of inter-religious harmony and has helped to avoid clashes between the rival Christian faiths trying to take control of the church.
The church is built at the site where Jesus was crucified, although most of the hill of Calvary was excavated in order to build the church, so the actual spot is around 9 meters higher up. It was founded by Constantine the Great and was completed in 335AD. Since then, this site has been a major pilgrimage for Christians around the world and today is the most visited site in Israel. It was demolished and rebuilt in the 11th century, a process that took nearly 40 years. The main Christian denominations that share the church include the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic and to a lesser extent the Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox. This is all arranged by very intricate and complicated arrangements, although sometimes there are disagreements which leads to all out brawls between the monks.
When we arrived there was only around 100 pilgrims inside. Most of the tourists arrive anytime after 7am and the first few hours are usually for die hard tourists like ourselves and also a select few groups who pay big dollars to celebrate mass inside the aedicule. While we were mulling around the tomb entrance observing the monks enter and light candles, we were next to a fairly large group who all started to enter the shrine. Curious, to see if we could see inside, we followed them pausing outside. A nun at the door saw us, and gestured for us to hurry up and get inside and then locked the door behind us. It turned out that we had joined a Greek Orthodox mass! This lasted for around 30 minutes after which everyone was invited to look inside the tomb and touch the stone where Jesus body lay. Incidentally, this pink marble slab dates only as far back as the founding of the church and was placed to preserve the original stone and prevent people trying to take a piece as a souvenir. A few years ago some archaeologists were invited to lift the pink marble slab to take photographs and other data, revealing the original 1st century slab underneath.
The church contains no less than seven chapels within its walls, mostly belonging to the Greek Orthodox. Many of these are very simplistic and beautiful and some are on different levels of the building. Right at the entrance is a staircase leading to where Golgotha was and there are two chapels belonging to the Catholics and Greeks. Most of the chapels we saw were completely empty as we walked around.
The chapel of Adam, shown in the photo below, contains a glass frame, behind which sits a crack in the wall exposing an original rock from Golgotha. This chapel is situated underneath the Roman and Greek chapels of Golgotha.
Near the entrance of the church complex lies the Stone of Anointing, the large stone of which Jesus' body was prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea. This traditional belief dates only back to the Crusader period, and the current stone in place has only been around since 1810! Regardless, this doesn't really matter as Jesus rose from the dead.
Many of the Crusaders who passed through this place left their mark by etching out a cross into the walls, an early form of graffiti if you will. These walls lead down to a first century tomb which was excavated relatively recently. The presence of the tomb confirms that Golgotha was on the outside of the original city walls of the old city, further validating this as the place of Christ's crucifiction.
We spent a couple of hours in the Church and left just as the tourists gradually started to arrive. It was still extremely quiet, even at 7AM, compared to a typical morning. The massive downturn was due to the huge numbers of tours being cancelled thanks to the Covid-19 virus.
We headed back to the hotel for breakfast, enjoying the streets back to Jaffa gate almost completely to ourselves! Some shops were opening, but one of the traders mentioned there wouldn't be too many opening during the day either.
We decided after breakfast to head south again to visit some of the areas we missed in the Negev, beginning with the ancient Canaanite city of Arad. Some of you must be thinking, why we wouldn't stay in Jerusalem for a few days seeing as the West Bank was cancelled. This was simply done because the accommodation for our three upcoming days for Jerusalem had already been paid for and was not refundable.
"When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals - one on his right, the other on his left." - Luke 23:33
Continue to Part 22 - click here