Where Was Jesus Actually Buried?

Opening the tomb for the first time in centuries...

Where is the real burial place of Jesus of Nazareth? How can we know?

And why does it matter today?

The question of Christ’s tomb conjures up fanatic skepticism as well as religious fervor. But less than 10 years ago, a new excavation changed the ancient debate for good — and taught a crucial lesson about the value of trusting tradition. 

In 2016, the tomb that he’s said to have been buried in (and risen from) was opened for the first time in centuries…

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This Saturday, we dive into the truly tumultuous story of the burial place — from the Seljuk Turks to the Crusaders, to the crazed “Nero of Egypt” who came to destroy it…

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Rediscovering a Relic

Saint Helena, Cima da Conegliano (1495)

Just years after the Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity and ended its persecution throughout the Empire, his mother Helena set out to discover the tomb of Christ.

At less than four centuries old, Christianity was still in its infancy, and the newly baptized Roman Emperor’s family were the first Christians with the power and opportunity to seek out lost relics of Christ’s life.

Helena in particular was a formidable personality — almost 80 years old when she set out to the Holy Land, she searched until she discovered what tradition identifies as Christ’s tomb and Cross. 

The site she discovered fit the Biblical description of a rock-cut tomb outside the walls of Jerusalem. But it was covered by a temple to Venus, built by Emperor Hadrian 200 years earlier in order to discourage Christians from paying homage to the holy site. 

The Gospels say Christ was buried in a rock-cut tomb outside the walls of Jerusalem, near the location of the Crucifixion

Helena had the pagan temple destroyed and began excavating underneath. The historian Eusebius records that she found a tomb and burial bed cut from a limestone cave, matching the Biblical account. 

Consequently, her son Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre over the tomb — but that was just the beginning of a tumultuous history. The church would be rocked by fires and earthquakes, sacked by the Persians, and completely destroyed by a Muslim caliph in 1009 (more on that in Saturday’s email) before being rebuilt in the 11th century. 

That church still stands in Jerusalem today.

Opening a Time Capsule

But the wrath of Roman emperors, Islamic rulers, and the sands of time have all swirled over the Holy Sepulchre. After so much has happened, and so much time gone by, how can we be confident this is the real tomb of Christ?

Today, the tomb is encased in a small shrine known as the Edicule in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a rebuild of Constantine’s church. The years of wear and tear damaged it so greatly that it was covered by a protective iron cage in 1947.

But in 2016, the cage was lifted and the work of restoration began. Scrubbing away centuries’ worth of pigeon droppings and the soot of millions of pilgrims’ candles, conservationists did new research on the shrine even as they restored it. 

One of the first things to notice is that the burial platform is covered by a layer of marble cladding, dating back to 1555. That of course contrasts with the tradition that Christ was laid on a limestone slab.

The bed has been covered by marble since at least 1555, probably centuries earlier. Until 2016, nobody had lifted it

But when the researchers lifted up the millennium-old marble, they discovered something amazing underneath — that the marble did indeed rest on a bed of limestone carved from the original cave wall.

Above the limestone, they also found a second layer of marble, with a delicate cross carved into it. It’s thought that crusaders carved that in the 12th century.

Yet, the most shocking revelation was still to come: further analysis revealed that the last time the layers beneath the marble had been exposed to light was in 345 AD — squarely in the time of Constantine!

These revelations confirm that the modern-day tomb site is likely the same one discovered by Constantine’s mother.

But the question remains: did Helena discover the true burial tomb in the first place?

Well, historical accounts say that Christians had been praying at the site for centuries before Helena discovered it. In fact, it was this Christian reverence for the site that led Hadrian to build a temple to Venus there.

In other words, the chain of events in the history of Christ’s tomb may be thousands of years long, but its links are still secure, having been passed down the millennia from one generation to the next.

Trust and Tradition

In the modern era, tradition is often seen as irrelevant, if not downright dangerous. The perspective of the past is often met with mockery, regardless of whether it concerns culture, morality, or historical fact.

Before the 2016 discoveries, scholars raised objections to the long-held conviction that Christ was buried at the site of the current church, critiquing the idea that a traditional belief could pass down truth over the course of so many centuries.

This is just one reason why the story of the Holy Sepulchre has universal significance. It’s not simply a case of the details of one religious site — rather, it’s a case that speaks to the degree to which we should trust the voice of traditional wisdom. In the case of the Holy Sepulchre, at least, scientific analysis ratifies religious belief.

It’s easy for a story like this to leave you asking: just how many other popular traditions are actually rooted in truth?

And ultimately, it begs the question of which is wiser — to write off tradition in the absence of evidence, or to trust that perhaps that tradition is actually rooted in truth?

In this case, the sheer weight of history seems to have been pointing us in the right direction all along…

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Reminder:

This Saturday, I’m going deeper into the tumultuous story of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — and the “Nero of Egypt” who came to destroy it…

Join the premium list to read it, and help support the mission!

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Art of the Week

The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (detail below), Hans Holbein the Younger (1520-1522)

German artist Hans Holbein the Younger created an image of Christ in the tomb that trespassed pious conventions. While other paintings represent the dead Christ as hale, robust, and even glowing in death, Holbein refused to airbrush the horror of death away. 

Instead, Holbein represents Christ’s body excruciatingly wracked from his torturous death, with his body in the beginning stages of fleshly rot (look at the hands in particular).

The image is such an uncompromising vision of the worst of human suffering that Dostoyevsky, who had to be dragged away from viewing it by his wife, dedicated a passage to it in his novel The Idiot: 

It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: ‘Supposing that the disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshiped Him…how could they have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?’