24 HOURS-Week 4: Pictures

Posted by Randy | Labels: , , , , , , , , , | Posted On Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:35 PM

In this post I'm sharing some present-day photos of historic sites of Jesus' last hours here on earth. Below is a portion of the Via Dolorosa (The Way of Suffering). This is believed to be a portion of the path Jesus walked from his time of torture with the Roman soldiers to Golgotha, where he was crucified. It was along this path that he carried his cross, and when he could do it no more, was aided by Simon of Cyrene.



Following his own conversion, Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire in 313 AD, in effect making it the religion of the realm. In the 330s he had a church built on the site that was believed to be where Jesus was crucified and buried. The church has undergone numerous construction projects, expansions, and even experienced destruction during the time of the Crusades. However, today the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands on this site. The picture below shows the area inside the church where it was believed Jesus was crucified.



Below is an outcropping of rock outside the old city of Jerusalem. In the 1880s a British general by the name of Charles Gordon discovered this formation and believed it had the appearance of a skull. Soon after, he discovered nearby an ancient garden tomb (see below). He therefore believed that this was the actual site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial. He believed Jesus was crucified on the hill overlooking this face of a skull (Golgotha in Aramaic or Calvary in Latin). This site is today called Gordon's Calvary.



For some fairly technical reasons, many, and maybe most, scholars do not believe this site is where Jesus was crucified and buried. The site located at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre seems to be the more likely spot to many scholars, yet Gordon's Calvary leaves you with a much stronger sense of actually "being there."


What I find very interesting is that today this rock outcropping actually sits above a bus barn in Jerusalem. My wife Susan and I visited the Holy Land and Jerusalem on a tour in 1990. As we walked up to this site, at first it seemed such a shame that this possibly significant Christian site stood near a noisy, smelly, highly trafficked area. But, as our guide pointed out to us, in many ways the original Golgotha, whether at this site or under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, would have been a noisy, smelly, highly trafficked area. It would have been near the city on a main road. It would have been a spot where many people had been crucified, and most likely there would be bones and perhaps even the smell of decaying flesh. It would not have been a pretty site. So, we realized that in many ways this "Golgotha" was a modern-day equivalent of the original site.



Pictured below is the entrance to the tomb located near the rock outcropping immediately above. Notice in the lower left-hand corner of the picture there is a channel. This would have been the "track" in which the large stone used to cover the tomb would sit.

Below is the stone that rode in the "track" seen above.



Stepping back from the tomb entrance, you can now see why Gordon's Calvary became such a popular site for pilgrims. The tomb Jesus was buried in was in or near a garden, and the tomb found in the 1880s was located in a garden, which has been kept serene and beautiful. I found I could stand in this place and really imagine in the cool of the morning the actual events of Easter.