Saturday, December 26, 2009

Israel-Day9-Garden Tomb


About 200 years ago, there was doubt that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the place Jesus was crucified and buried. Golgotha means place of the skull. The picture in the picture shows what this hillside used to look like-kind of like a skull. Currently it is a bus station. Romans liked crucifixions to take place where many could see (a busy place) and accessible so it most likely would have been at the bottom of the hill. This site was used as a place of execution (stoning) from an earlier time.

The entrance to the tomb which is a short walk from the first picture. You can kind of see the channel in front of the wall where the stone (shaped like a thick disc) would have been. The channel is for ease of rolling the stone back and forth. The area surrounding the tomb is a beautiful garden. I had fun taking pictures of flowers, cactus, pomegranate trees, etc while I waited to go in.

Where Jesus would have lain in the tomb. He is not here for he has RISEN.

An interesting tree outside of the tomb. BTW-(Completely unrelated to this tree) I learned earlier that for crucifixions, the accused would only carry the crossbeam. They would crucify them on an actual tree that they nailed the crossbeam to.

We took communion in a little chapel outside the tomb area. I couldn't help but hope this was the place rather than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I guess I just want it to be a beautiful garden-like place rather that an overdone shrine.

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