Slide 1- Welcome to this video, meant to walk you through some of the major scenes in the Passion Narrative as they appear today. All photos were taken by me, and the information is drawn primarily from my notes when I attended the Palestine of Jesus course at St. George’s College in Jerusalem back in 2016. The maps provided come from Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide.
If you’re watching this on YouTube, there should be Closed Captioning provided. You can also go to fathertreysthoughts.blogspot.com to get an interactive manuscript with links provided for some of the references made below.
Slide 2- We will revisit this map from time to time just to help orient you to Jerusalem and the Old City. Again, this map comes from Murphy-O’Connor’s The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide.
Slide 3- Our first stop in the Passion Narrative is the Garden of Gethsemane, found approximately by the red circle on the map here. It is located by the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives. John’s Gospel refers to a garden by the Kidron Valley, Mark and Matthew refer to the Garden of Gethsemane, and Luke refers to the Mount of Olives at the start of their respective Passion accounts.
Slide 4- Today there is a church by the Garden of Gethsemane called the Church of All Nations, pictured here.
Slide 5- Here you can get a better look of the Kidron Valley right in front of the church. You can also see the graves in the valley, some of which would date back to Jesus’ time and before.
Slide 6- Here we see a plaque by the church saying that this land was purchased in 1681 by the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and donated to the Franciscan order.
Slides 7-9- For the next three slides, you will get a better view of the actual garden near the church. Gethsemane, located in the Mount of Olives, means “Olive Press”. It is also worth noting that some of the trees here are 1000 years old. This is the location where Jesus goes with His Disciples after their Passover (or rather pre-Passover) celebration and, because Jesus frequented this spot, where Judas knew to go to betray Him.
Slide 10- The next spot from the Passion Narrative takes us to the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, which is outside the Old City. It is the spot where originally there was a shrine to Peter’s repentance back in 457 A.D. It is thought that this is where Peter denied Jesus, hence the word Gallicantuwhich means “cock’s-crow” in Latin. It is also believed to be where the High Priest Caiaphas’ palace was. Thus, it is connected in tradition with Jesus’ trial by the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish ruling body in Jesus’ time. Unfortunately, I do not have photos of this place.
Slide 11- Next on the map is the Chapel of the Condemnation. It is located near the red circle on the map.
Slide 12- The Chapel of the Condemnation was considered by tradition to be the spot where Jesus was tried by Pontius Pilate. It is towards the start of the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem.
Slide 13- However, as you will see as we zoom in on this plaque by the church, it was only celebrated as such during the Middle Ages. Scholars currently believe Pilate’s headquarters would have been stationed elsewhere in the city.
Slide 14- Next, we move to the Tower of David, found in the city near the red circle on the map.
Slide 15- The Tower of David would have been where Herod’s citadel was in Jesus’ day. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus is taken to Herod after Pilate hears that Jesus is from Herod’s jurisdiction.
Slide 16- Herod had wanted to see Jesus after hearing about the miracles He performed, but was disappointed when Jesus simply remained silent. Herod then passed Jesus back to Pilate.
Slide 17- Next we move to the The Holy Sepulchre (which means “Tomb”), or as it is called in the East, The Church of the Resurrection. I will use both names in referring to this place. The front of the church is pictured here. This is the spot where a medieval church was erected to contain both the site of the Crucifixion and the empty tomb of Jesus.
Slide 18- Turning back to our map, The Church of the Resurrection can be found approximately where the red circle is. You will notice that it is within the walls of the Old City.
Slide 19- Before we take a look at The Holy Sepulchre, let’s take a look at the Old City walls, pictured here from a look out atop the Mount of Olives, well above Gethsemane.
Slide 20- As we take a closer look, it is important to note that the current Old City walls went up in 1535 A.D., so the walls actually enclose a larger area of Jerusalem now, than they would have in Jesus’ time. In fact, while Jesus died around 30 A.D., the city walls were already expanded north in 40 A.D. Thus while The Church of the Resurrection is within the current Old City walls, it would have been outside the walls of Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. You should also note that the Golden Dome that you see in the picture is where the Dome of the Rock is, which marks what would have been the Temple Mount in Jesus’ time.
Slide 21- The first major spot within the Holy Sepulchre to look at is Golgotha, the spot of the Crucifixion. Today, it is marked with the array you see here. You can see the traditional iconography of Jesus upon the Cross. There is an altar by this spot where, as you can see, people will bend under.
Slide 22- People bend down by this altar because there is a hole underneath it where you can place your hand in to touch what is left of the bedrock.
Slide 23- Of course you can also see what is left of the bedrock of Golgotha through the glass next to the altar. There are some theories why this place is called Golgotha, or “The Place of the Skull”. It may simply be because it is a place where people were crucified. It could also be that at one point in time, the rock bed looked like a skull.
Slide 24- Another theory is that the spot of the Crucifixion is where Adam was originally buried. According to legend, when the earth shook at Jesus’ death, part of Golgotha cracked, and Adam’s skull fell out. That scene is commemorated here by this crack you see in the rock in the floor below the altar we saw before and in the icon of the Crucifixion pictured next to this crack. You can’t tell from here, but at the base of the cross in the icon, you can see a skull, as you can with many icons of the Crucifixion. While this legend is unlikely for many reasons, it does connect beautifully with Paul’s description of Christ as the Second Adam in both 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5.
Slide 25- The final spot on this Passion journey is on the other side of The Church of the Resurrection with the tomb, depicted here in the Fall of 2016 when the church began restoration work on this site. Before that time, there was more speculation that this was the actual tomb of Jesus since it was thought to only have been erected in the Middle Ages. However, the work of scholars as they restored this site found evidence that date the veneration of this spot as the empty tomb of Christ back to Constantine’s rule as Roman Emperor. National Geographic did a wonderful piece on what was discovered with the restoration, which will be linked on the interactive manuscript for this video found on therevtreysthoughts.blogspot.com.
Slide 26- Photography is not allowed in the tomb, so this is the closest I could get to the inside. It is a very small space where only 3 people can go in at a time.
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