The Holy Sepulcher remained intact. Why did they “open the tomb of Jesus Christ”? What was found in the tomb of Jesus
Research work was carried out continuously for 60 hours after, for the first time in 450 years, a marble slab was removed from the Holy Sepulcher in the Edicule - a chapel in the Jerusalem Church of the Resurrection of Christ.
As the scientific portal notes, the most revered place in the Christian world, the burial bed, is carved into the wall of a cave made of limestone. In 1555, according to scientists, the tomb was covered with marble lining in order to protect it from those frantic pilgrims who wanted to dismantle the funeral bed for souvenirs.
When specialists from the National Technical University of Athens, with the support of Israeli and Armenian colleagues, removed the marble cladding on the night of October 26, they first saw a large layer of stone debris underneath it. However, after continuing their work non-stop for 60 hours, the researchers found another marble slab underneath with a cross carved into its surface. Presumably this was made during the Crusades.
At the same time, the burial bed turned out to be completely intact, despite the fact that the walls of the cave in which it was located, as already mentioned, were destroyed along with the original building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the beginning of the 11th century by order of the then ruler of Jerusalem, Caliph Hakim.
Members of the archaeological team brought the slab to the surface to clean and digitize it before reinstalling it in the Edicule.
"I'm absolutely amazed. My knees are shaking a little because I didn't expect it," archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert told National Geographic magazine at the site. “We cannot be 100 percent sure, but there seems to be clear evidence that the tomb was not damaged during all this time. After all, scientists and historians have been asking this question for many decades,” the researcher added.
In addition, archaeologists confirmed the presence of limestone in the walls of the cave inside Edicule, and also made a small window so that believers could see the shrine for the first time in several centuries.
The Bible says that after the crucifixion, the body of Christ was placed in one of the caves carved into the mountain for burial. It was there on the third day that his miraculous resurrection took place.
The earliest accounts of Jesus' burial come from the canonical Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, which are believed to have appeared decades after Christ's crucifixion. However, the accounts found at the time consistently describe how Christ was buried in a rock tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Jewish follower of Jesus.
Jewish tradition prohibits burial within city walls, and the Gospels indicate that Jesus was buried outside Jerusalem, near the site of his crucifixion on Calvary. A few years after the burial, the borders of Jerusalem were significantly expanded so that Golgotha and the nearby tomb were within the city.
It is also known that in the 4th century, the holy Queen Helen, Equal to the Apostles, ordered the beginning of excavations at Golgotha. As a result, a cross was found on which Jesus was allegedly crucified. The queen ordered the foundation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on this site.
According to Dan Bahat, Jerusalem's former chief archaeologist, "We cannot be absolutely certain that the site of the Holy Sepulchre, the Temple, is the burial place of Jesus, but we assume that there is no other site that can most likely lay claim to it."
Archaeologist Martin Biddle, who published a study of the tomb's history in 1999, believes that the only way to be sure that the Edicule actually contains the burial bed of Jesus Christ is to carefully analyze the data collected during the current research mission.
Scientists removed a marble slab from the Savior's burial bed. And they found it underneath...
Restoration has begun at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. During it, a marble slab was removed from the stone bed on which the body of Jesus Christ rested. She has covered this bed since 1555.
The blood of Jesus Christ will be sought in the Holy Sepulcher
One of the participants in the historical event, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert, said that many stones were found under the slab. However, he does not exclude that under the stones a rocky surface was preserved, on which, in fact, the body of Jesus Christ was laid. At least the ground penetrating radar study is encouraging. Under the place where the slab lay, the wall of the cave in which the tomb was located is “visible”, and its floor is also visible. As Heibert assures, the wall is one with the surrounding rock. That is, it was not built artificially. Therefore, the cave was really carved into the rock, as the Bible tells about it. And the likelihood that it was she who became the Holy Sepulcher is very high.
And the most exciting thing: there is a very small, but still hope that somewhere in the cave, maybe on the floor, since it has been preserved, it will be possible to find the blood of Jesus. After all, there were many bleeding wounds on his body. The largest one is on the chest - from the spear of the guard who pierced the heart of the crucified Christ.
HELP KP
Jesus was laid there
Jesus was buried in a new tomb that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea.
“In the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid. They laid Jesus there...”, the Gospel of John narrates.
The tomb was a cave with a shelf about 2 meters long and about 80 centimeters wide cut into the wall at a height of 60 centimeters. On this shelf lay the body, wrapped in a shroud bought by the same Joseph from Arimathea. Here Jesus Christ was resurrected on the third day.
“And he took him down, wrapped him in a shroud, and laid him in a tomb hewn out of the rock,” Luke testifies in his Gospel.
Scientists are now looking for this very shelf on which Jesus’ disciple Simon Peter saw only “the linen cloths lying.” It was just covered by a marble slab - initially white, but over time it had become fairly yellowed. The stones under the slab are likely traces of the activity of thousands of pilgrims, each of whom tried to break off a piece from the tomb.
Whether the cave itself is well preserved is a moot point. It may have been thoroughly destroyed. But it could have survived. Here is what the historian Eusebius of Caesarea wrote about this in his time in his work “The Life of Constantine” - this refers to the Emperor Constantine, who in the 4th century, together with his mother Helen, organized the search for the tomb of Jesus:
“Some atheists and wicked men intended to hide this saving cave from the eyes of people, with the insane intention of hiding the truth through this. Having used a lot of labor, they brought earth from somewhere and filled the whole place with it. Then, raising the embankment to a certain height, they paved it with stone, and under this high embankment they hid the divine cave. Having completed such work, they only had to prepare a strange, truly tomb of souls on the surface of the earth, and they built a gloomy dwelling for dead idols, a hiding place of the demon of voluptuousness Aphrodite, where they brought hateful sacrifices on unclean and vile altars.”
By order of Constantine, the sacred cave was dug up. By 335, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built above it. In the center of the temple is the Edicule - a kind of chapel that stands just above the tomb. Restoration has begun there.
AND AT THIS TIME
The Holy Sepulcher may be located in a completely different place
In 1980, during the reconstruction of the East Talpiot area, a crypt was discovered that was dated to the first half of the first century AD - that is, the time when Jesus Christ was crucified.
In 2007, documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici entered the crypt. Then, together with James Cameron - the creator of Titanic, Titanic 3D, Terminator, Aliens and Avatar - they shot and showed a film called The Lost Tomb of Christ. With which Cameron and Jacobovich tried to prove that the tomb in East Talpiot is the real Holy Sepulcher. And not the one that is now being restored and in which the Holy Fire descends annually.
In the crypt there were ossuaries - stone boxes in which the bones of the deceased were placed after they had dried out, having lain for some time on a shelf in the tomb. There were inscriptions on the ossuaries that indicated that they contained the remains of a certain Jesus (“Jesus, son of Joseph”), one of his brothers - Josiah, the remains of two Marys (presumably the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene), the remains of a certain Mati ( perhaps the Apostle Matthew). And the remains of a man named Judas ("Judas, son of Jesus").
Then, in 2007, they made some noise, but never came to a conclusion whether the found burial could be considered the grave of the “Holy Family”.
Biggest Con: The name Jesus was very popular in the first century. It is engraved on 98 other ossuaries known to archaeologists. That is, most likely the wrong grave was found.
The most compelling argument in favor: Andrew Ferwenger, a Canadian professor of statistics and mathematics at the University of Toronto, analyzed all the names that came across burials in Judea two thousand years ago. And he assessed the chances that people with Gospel names accidentally ended up all together in one crypt in East Talpiot. The probability that this is some other family is 1 in 600. In other words, in 599 cases out of 600, mathematics suggests that we are talking about the Holy Family.
The remains were studied by Dr. Carney Mathieson from the paleo-DNA laboratory at Lakehead University (Ontario, Canada). Found that one of the Marys could be the mother of Jesus. And the second Mary is in no way related to him. But they are buried in the same family crypt. This means they could be husband and wife. And “Judas, son of Jesus” is the fruit of their love.
That Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children is one of the most scandalous assumptions made by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. Perhaps it has some basis.
Jacobovici points out: the tomb in Talpiot is located on the site that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea.
Now the crypt is sealed with a concrete slab. Jacobovici and Cameron, it seems, failed to prove that he is the real Holy Sepulcher.
Vladimir LAGOVSKY
His body was placed in one of the burial caves carved into the mountain. There, on the third day, his resurrection took place. And in the 4th century, during excavations, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine I, Helen Equal to the Apostles, allegedly came across a cross, after which she founded the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on this site.
Now the Holy Sepulcher is considered one of the most significant Christian shrines. It is part of the complex of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher along with Golgotha, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, the underground Church of the Finding of the Life-Giving Cross, several churches and monasteries. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher itself is divided among six denominations of the Christian Church,
each of which has its own chapels and hours for prayer.
To this day, all that remains of the entire bed of Christ is the bed itself, fragments of the walls of the cave and the entrance. This is due to pilgrims who are eager to get a piece of the ancient relic by any means necessary. To avoid such barbaric acts, in 1555 the box was covered with a marble slab.
And now, more than 500 years later, scientists removed the slab from the burial site to find out what the tomb originally looked like.
Professor Antonia Moropoulou, who is leading the restoration of the Edicule, a small domed chapel built over the Tomb, says: “The techniques we use to document this unique moment will allow the whole world to experience our discoveries as if they were in the tomb of Christ themselves.”
During the opening of the tomb, which began a few hours after the church closed, a crowd of pilgrims and tourists was present. Conservatives, Copts, Franciscans, and Orthodox Greek priests crowded at the entrance to the Edicule. The tomb itself, usually illuminated by wax candles, was bathed in bright electric light. When the cream marble slab was pulled away, the researchers discovered a grey-beige stone surface underneath.
Maropoulou can't say what it is yet. It points to the need for instrumental research.
Archaeologist Frederic Hébert, one of the research team members, says: "It will be a long scientific analysis, but in the end we will see the surface on which Christ lay, according to Scripture."
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem in 2015, with the consent of two large communities, invited researchers from the Polytechnic University of Athens to study the Edicule. Previously, employees of the same university were involved in the restoration of the Acropolis of Athens and Hagia Sophia.
The communities of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher agreed to the restoration in March 2016, provided that
that the work will be completed by Easter 2017. The cost of the project was $4 million.
Added to this was a royal donation from and another $1.3 million from Mika Ertegun, the widow of the founder of Atlantic Records.
Recently, there has been particular activity in the media around the issue of the restoration of the Edicule of the Holy Sepulcher, carried out in Jerusalem. In the general information flow, one can also see very bold publications about signs that supposedly happened over Jerusalem - trumpeting angels and supernatural phenomena in the sky, which are frankly false information dumps, since such phenomena did not actually take place.
Since various doubts are still observed in the church community, we, as those who live and carry out our ministry directly in Jerusalem, would like to help our readers correctly place emphasis on this issue, understanding that these doubts naturally arise from a lack of adequate information.
However, before we begin to present the facts, it is necessary to agree on terms, since their correct understanding depends on the correct designation of things. We need to clearly understand that restoration work in the Edicule cannot, in principle, be called “opening the Tomb.” The term “opening of the Tomb” gives rise to involuntary associations with an invasion of some sacred inviolable area and even with desecration. And if in other cases this may be true of tombs containing human remains, then in no way can it be extrapolated to the burial bed of Christ - there is simply no tomb in the usual sense, as a place that contains human ashes. The tomb of Christ is empty - Christ has risen, “here is not the place where He laid Him” (Mark 16:6).
Thus, we are not talking about the “opening of the Holy Sepulcher,” but about the temporary removal of marble slabs from the funeral bed of Christ that protected it from the vandalism of pilgrims.
Moreover, if this had not been done in our days and the stone of the funeral bed and the surrounding rock, which is simply the foundation of the Edicule built on it, had not been carefully strengthened with modern means, then the process of destruction of the rocky foundation of the Edicule would have become irreversible.
Note that this is not the first time that, due to the need for construction or restoration work in the Edicule, the burial bed of Christ was temporarily freed from the architectural elements covering it.
So, as you know, on October 26, 2016, in the Edicule of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, specialists from the Athens Polytechnic University under the leadership of Professor A. Moropoulou removed the marble slabs covering the top of the burial bed of the Lord Jesus Christ. The work was carried out in the presence of Patriarch Theophilus of Jerusalem, representatives of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
Let us note that neither representatives of church circles nor the scientific community kept information about these works secret. Moreover, complete, lengthy, illustrated reports on the restoration work are published on the official website of the Jerusalem Patriarchate ( http://www.jp-newsgate.net/ru/2016/07/21/30664#more-30664 And http://www.jp-newsgate.net/en/2016/10/07/26922#more-26922), which also has a Russian-language version.
According to reports, the removal of the slabs above the stone bed was dictated by the technical need to ensure the safety of the bed and the surrounding rock of the Holy Sepulcher.
According to research conducted before the start of restoration work, the main problem of the Edicule was that this structure, being too heavy, sank under its own weight, simultaneously destroying the rock of the Holy Sepulcher, which consists of soft and brittle limestone and is the foundation for the Edicule.
It is also known that the structure of the Edicule received serious damage from earthquakes, which are very frequent in this region, and as a result of a devastating fire that occurred in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in 1808. It is also impossible to ignore the negative impact of the increased concentration of moisture inside the Edicule and serious problems with the drainage system located at the base of this structure.
According to experts, at the beginning of 2016, the problems of the load-bearing structures of the Edicule required an urgent solution, otherwise their negative consequences for the structure and its shrine - the rock of the Holy Sepulcher - would have become irreversible.
For those interested in more detailed information about the condition of the Edicule, the tasks and difficulties of restoration work, we recommend that you refer to the reports published on the website of the Jerusalem Patriarchate. Without dwelling on these details in detail, we will immediately move on to the question of the need to free the burial bed of Christ from the marble slabs covering it during the work in Edicule.
To ensure the safety of the rock of the Sepulcher and the Edicule erected on it, at the final stage of restoration it was necessary to homogenize the masonry and rock by injecting a special mortar into the existing voids and cracks. For this purpose, a cementless lime-pozzolanic composition was used, which is characterized by a small particle size, high fluidity and the ability to expand in a plastic state, thereby ensuring that even the smallest voids are filled.
It was to examine the base of the Edicule - the rock of the Holy Sepulcher - for cracks and voids, and then to correctly inject the fastening solution, that it was necessary to temporarily remove the marble slabs covering the top of the bed of Christ, as well as the marble lining of the walls inside the burial chamber of the Edicule.
It is important to note that by removing the marble slabs, scientists made sure that underneath them was the original burial bed of Jesus Christ, carved inside a rock burial cave and being one piece with the rock. The distance from the surface of the upper slab, which pilgrims see, to this stone bed is approximately 35 centimeters.
The work described above was completed on October 28, but the restoration of the Edicule is planned to be completed by Easter 2017.
In the coming days, a video prepared by the press service of the Russian Spiritual Mission will be released, which contains an interview about restoration work in the Edicule of the Holy Sepulcher with His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilus of Jerusalem.
Photo: Official information website of the Jerusalem Patriarchate
At the end of October 2016, which is located in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem (Israel).
This happened for the first time since the mid-16th century, reports The International Business Times.
Why did scientists wait so long, and what prompted them to open the tomb in 2016?
Story
The Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is the most revered shrine in the Christian world. Christians believe that the body of the crucified Jesus Christ rested for 3 days on a stone slab kept here. The slab (bed) measuring 2 x 0.8 meters was located in a cave carved into the rock - this is how the Jews buried their dead in the first century AD, writes “Popular Mechanics”.
In 326, Empress Helena, now revered as a saint by many Christian churches, undertook a pilgrimage to Golgotha. As a result of excavations carried out under her leadership, a cave with a burial and a cross on which, as Christians believe, Jesus Christ was crucified, 4 nails and a tablet with the inscription: IESUS NAZARENUS REX IUDAEORUM (“Jesus of Nazarene, King of the Jews”) were discovered. Elena founded a temple around the bed, where Christian pilgrims from all over the world began to flock. The temple looked like a domed marble chapel.
The room in the temple that has survived to this day symbolizes the cave in which the body of Christ was buried. Now there is the bed itself, part of the cave walls and part of the entrance. The former cave was destroyed in 1009.
The right to conduct Christian and Jewish worship in the temple founded by Helen became a powerful political instrument of the Middle Ages. The territory of Golgotha changed hands many times, from Byzantine emperors to Arab rulers - and back. In 1009, the chapel was destroyed by Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah; European Christians used this event as one of the main propaganda tools during the organization of the First Crusade. The crusaders built a new temple around the bed, preserving the supports of the chapel.
After this, Christians could freely conduct rituals and services near the Holy Sepulcher, even during periods when Jerusalem passed into the hands of Arab conquerors. During the earthquake of 1545, the sanctuary was badly damaged, after which the funeral Lodge was covered with a marble slab to protect it from pilgrims who wanted to take a piece of the relic with them.
The goal of scientists
The restoration of the temple began only in the 19th century, but a new earthquake in 1927 again destroyed the buildings around the Lodge. After World War II, a large-scale restoration of the entire temple complex, which had developed over centuries of construction and destruction, began, but even then the slab hiding the bed remained in place.
And only in 2016, archaeologists came to an agreement with 6 churches: Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian, Coptic, Syrian and Ethiopian, to remove the slab from the tomb and study the burial bed.
Opening of the tomb.
Screenshot from video
The main question that experts have to answer is: why did Elena decide that it was here that the body of the crucified Christ rested?
“The marble slab had been displaced, and we were surprised by the large amount of rock material underneath,” said study participant Fredrik Hiebert of the National Geographic Society. According to him, there will be “a long scientific analysis to finally see the original surface of the stone on which, according to legend, the body of Christ was laid.”
Scientists note that analysis of the original rock can give them the opportunity to determine the original shape of the tomb, as well as the history of the formation of the object as one of the main symbols of Christianity.
Work on the restoration of the Holy Sepulcher is planned to be completed by the spring of 2017. The total financial costs will exceed $4 million. King Abdullah II of Jordan also donated funds for the restoration.
Scientists record all manipulations on video. It is expected that this material will later be used as a basis for a television documentary. So far, only one excerpt has been posted on the Internet, which depicts the rise of the slab.
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