At the center of the Christian faith is the assumption that on the third day after his crucifixion Jesus rose from the dead as the primary fruits of the resurrection to everlasting lifetime of all God’s people at the tip of time. That is why when Christians affirm their faith using the words of the Apostles’ Creed they declare, ‘The third day he rose again from the dead.’
It is evident from the New Testament that Jesus’ rising from the dead meant that the dead body of Jesus that had been placed in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27:57-61) had come back to life.
Resurrection meant bodily resurrection which is why, as John reports, the grave cloths which had been placed across the body of Jesus were found lying empty by John and Peter (John 20:5-7) and why the 2 Marys were capable of snatch Jesus feet’ and Thomas was offered the chance to the touch the nail marks on Jesus’ hands and put his hand in Jesus’ side (Matthew 28:9, John 20:24).
Furthermore, provided that it was a bodily resurrection, then it was also a resurrection at a selected place since it is one in every of the properties of human bodies that they occupy particular points in space. A body is all the time somewhere and what happens to it consequently all the time takes place somewhere.
The query of exactly where that somewhere was within the case of Jesus’ resurrection has been highlighted again recently by a report of discoveries by an Italian archaeological team at the location of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
According to a report within the Times of Israel on 22 March this 12 months:
‘Some 2,000 years ago, olive trees and grapevines likely grew on the land where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem stands today, recent archaeological excavations at the location have revealed.’
‘The findings mirror an outline of the world included within the Gospel of John.
‘“Now within the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and within the garden a recent sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus,” reads John 19:19-20.
‘The presence of olive trees and grapevines was identified through archaeobotanical and pollen evaluation on samples retrieved from the excavations under the ground of the traditional basilica. From the archaeological context and strata, it belongs to the pre-Christian era, nonetheless, radiocarbon testing has not yet been carried out.’
The query that the report raises is why the invention of the stays of an ancient garden within the old city of Jerusalem is linked to the account in John that there was a garden within the place where Jesus was buried (and subsequently rose from the dead). The answer is that the link is made since the church of the Holy Sepulchre where the invention took place has been identified by Christians as the location of the tomb of Jesus for 1000’s of years.
According to the fourth century bishop and church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, who was an eyewitness of the events he records, in about 326 AD the Emperor Constantine ordered that the temple of Venus which had been built over the location of Jesus’ tomb by the Emperor Hadrian in 135 AD needs to be removed and when this took place the tomb of Jesus was discovered under the muse platform on which the temple was built.
In the words of Eusebius in his Life of Constantine:
‘But as soon as the unique surface of the bottom, beneath the covering of earth, appeared, immediately, and contrary to all expectation, the venerable and hollowed monument of our Saviour’s resurrection was discovered. Then indeed did this most holy cave present a faithful similitude of his return to life, in that, after lying buried in darkness, it again emerged to light, and afforded to all who got here to witness the sight, a transparent and visual proof of the wonders of which that spot had once been the scene, a sworn statement to the resurrection of the Saviour clearer than any voice could give.’
The present-day Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been built and re-built over the centuries (an accessible guide to its history is provided by Martin Biddle in his book The Tomb of Christ). However, there isn’t a doubt in any respect that the rebuilt church covers the location which Constantine’s labourers excavated and that the shrine on the centre of the church, what’s referred to as the Aedicule, covers the location of the ‘holy cave’ referred to in Eusebius’ account.
Constantine and Eusebius believed, and the vast majority of Christians ever since have believed, that this holy cave was the tomb during which Jesus was buried and the place during which he rose from the dead.
However more recently some Christians (in addition to non-Christians) have been sceptical about whether we will make certain that the structure which Constantine’s excavations uncovered, and which is now covered by the Aedicule, really is the location of Jesus’s burial and resurrection.
In the sunshine of this scepticism there are two questions that must be answered.
The first query is how Constantine’s workmen knew where to dig. The answer to this query is easy. They were guided by unbroken Christian tradition concerning where Jesus died, was buried and rose again. In the words of Carsten Thiede:
‘…. In ancient societies comparable to that of first- to fourth- century Palestine, the function of tradition was … not only to safeguard particular modes of behaviour: it was also a way of handing on information from generation to generation. In this sense tradition was a matter of the deadliest seriousness. Diligent memorialization of necessary sayings and locations was a sacred task, in addition to a social duty.
‘The sites of tombs were considered particularly significant and are sometimes referred to within the Bible … In Jesus’ day we’re told people could indicate the burial sites of notables comparable to Alexander Jannaeus, John Hyrcanus, and Helena Adiabene and her sons. Hegesippus reported that the tomb of James, brother of Jesus, who was killed in AD 62, was still in existence in 175. Before the second Jewish rebel the sites of the sepulchre of David and Solomon were known and Josephus reports that Herod the Great had restored the edifice.
‘It would have been unthinkable for the earliest Christians to forget where their Saviour had been executed, buried and discovered risen from the dead … It is striking too, that no alternative and more accessible site seems to have been proposed by the ancients. Evidently the tradition was so strong that no one dared to accomplish that.’
The early Christians were well aware that the sites of Golgotha and the tomb identified by tradition were throughout the city partitions of Jerusalem/Aelia Capitolina though the biblical record said that Jesus died and was buried outside town. However, this didn’t cause them to doubt the tradition because in addition they knew that town wall had been prolonged by Herod Agrippa between 41 and 44 and it was for that reason that the sites were now contained in the city.
The second query is why the structure that Constantine’s excavators unearthed was immediately and apparently universally accepted as being the tomb during which Jesus was buried and from which he rose again.
There are two likely answers to this query.
The first is, once more, the authority of tradition. The tomb had been buried beneath the pagan temple for roughly 190 years but before that it will have been a significant centre of Christian devotion for over a century. Consequently, there would have been a practice about what the tomb was like, and this tradition would have been passed down within the church in Jerusalem. There would have been a communal memory of exactly what it was that had been buried under the pagan shrine and what Constantine’s excavators found was that the structure that the Christian community remembered was still there.
The second is that, as Martin Biddle suggests, the tomb could have been marked by graffiti. We know that the tombs of the saints were marked by graffiti by the early Christians (as within the case of the tomb of Peter in Rome) and which means the tomb of Jesus was probably also ‘marked indirectly, possibly with cut or painted graffiti which were legible in 325/6 and left little doubt within the minds of those (for Eusebius was not the just one, and maybe not the primary) who made the identification.’
In sum, Constantine’s excavators were digging in the proper place as identified by the unbroken tradition of the church in Jerusalem, and so they found a structure that corresponded exactly to the one which had been buried within the time of Hadrian and which was probably marked by identifying graffiti. Those on the time had little doubt about what they’d found and the primary version of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built to deal with the stays and to be a centre of Christian worship and pilgrimage (which it has remained to today).
What all this implies for us today is that we will confidently say that Jesus was buried and rose from the dead at a selected place in Jerusalem, that this place is understood and is preserved today beneath the Aedicule within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. To put it one other way, Jesus’ tomb continues to be there and, because it has been for the reason that first Easter day, it’s empty.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
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