Jesus’ Tomb Exposed for First Time in Centuries
For
centuries, no one has looked inside the simple tomb in Jerusalem’s Old
City, where it is said that Jesus Christ was laid to rest after his
crucifixion and before his resurrection. Until this week, where a crew
of specialists opened the tomb to find the limestone burial bed.
“We
saw where Jesus Christ was laid down,” Father Isidoros Fakitsas, the
superior of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, told me. “Before, nobody
has.” Or at least nobody alive today. “We have the history, the
tradition. Now we saw with our own eyes the actual burial place of Jesus
Christ.”
For
only 60 short hours, the crew collect samples, took photographs and
reinforced the tomb’s structure before resealing it, perhaps for
centuries to come. In the end, just about 50 or so priests, monks,
scientists and workers had peered inside, and they seem likely to be the
only ones on the planet who will do so in our lifetimes.
The
tomb was opened as part of a large renovation of the shrine that was
build around it long after his death, in now what is known as the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher. This is one of Christianities holiest sites and
scholars hop to study what they found to determine more about the events
leading up to his death.
The
church was first built where the tomb was discovered in the fourth
century during the reign of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to
officially convert to Christianity. It was sacked after Jerusalem fell
to the Persians in the seventh century, then rebuilt and later destroyed
by Muslim caliphs in the 11th century. After the Crusaders captured
Jerusalem, the church was restored in the 12th century but burned to the
ground in the 19th century and then rebuilt yet again.
The
marble shrine, known as the Aedicule, was built in its existing form in
1810 during the Ottoman era and has been crumbling lately. But only
after pressure from the Israelis did the three religious communities
that share the church, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox and Roman
Catholic, agree to a renovation that began last spring. Chosen to handle
the project was the National Technical University of Athens, which had
worked on restorations of the Acropolis in Athens and the Hagia Sophia
mosque turned museum in Istanbul.
The
conservation experts removed the iron cage built by the British in 1947
to shore up the earthquake-damaged Aedicule and then began taking apart
the shrine piece by piece. They removed disintegrating mortar,
reconstructed parts of the sometimes-swollen masonry, reset the columns
and injected grout into cracks in the structure.
Rainwater
had deteriorated much of the mortar over the centuries. Iron support
bars that were fully corroded will be removed and replaced by
titanium. The specialists had no plans at first to open the tomb, but
they decided a couple of weeks ago that they needed to do so in order to
ensure that nothing could leak inside.
image:
http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/idolchatter/files/2016/11/02_folo_holy_sepulchre.ngsversion.1477933999439.adapt_.1190.1-300x200.jpg
It was a delicate operation. The top of the tomb was split, and the specialists worried that lifting it would break it.
“The
main goal was not to break the plate,” said Harris Mouzakis, an
assistant professor of civil engineering at National Technical
University who is working on the project.
The
team felt the pressure. “We had to be very careful,” Mr. Mouzakis said.
“It was not just a tomb we had to open. It was the tomb of Jesus Christ
that is a symbol for all of Christianity — and not only for them but
for other religions.”
Once
they removed the marble cladding, they discovered another marble slab
with a cross carved into it. Beneath that, they found the limestone slab
hewed from the wall of a cave that is believed to be where Jesus lay
after his death.
That
slab had not been seen since at least the 1500s. The team worked around
the clock for three days, gathering dirt and other material from inside
the tomb for future study. They closed it again quickly to avoid
disrupting the visits of pilgrims who still flock to the church each
day.
At
the same time, clergymen approached the shrine and shook incense; most
of the daily church rituals continued as usual while the restoration
work went on.
Overall, the renovations were a huge success.
“It
will last many, many years,” Mr. Mouzakis said. “We will succeed if
after 200 or 500 years somebody will come back to restore our work.”
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/idolchatter/2016/11/jesus-tomb-exposed-first-time-centuries.html#YgIP5p4uW094kt7V.99
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