The renovation of Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem has had far-reaching implications

Nathan Jeffay from Jerusalem

Work began for purely practical reasons, but by the time the site of Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem was fully renovated at the end of March, it was clear that the process had an impact far beyond the site’s structural foundations — in the realm of history and archaeology.

The many thousands of Christians who flock to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Easter won’t only be some of the first in decades to experience the Edicule, the shrine said to have housed the cave where Jesus was buried, without black soot from candles and without an ugly British-built cage keeping it standing. Easter pilgrims will also experience a much larger site than previous years: large enough to imagine that the site of the tomb has been unchanged since the era of Constantine.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Antonia Moropoulou, who directed the nine-month renovation, told me. “It was amazing what we discovered, and kneeling then in front of the tomb of Christ was moving.”

She was referring to a 60-hour period during the extensive renovation when her team took the historic step of removing the cladding on top of the tomb, and found a marble slab which it dated to the 14th century — presumably a crusader addition. Then, it found remains of another marble slab which it dated back to the fourth century, twhen the Roman Emperor Constantine ordered the construction of the church, complete with part of an engraved cross.

And so, while archaeology cannot confirm that Jesus was buried there, this constitutes a strong indication that the place venerated as his tomb has been unchanged ever since a church was established on the site. “It implies that it was the original engraved tomb from Constantine and Helen,” said Moropoulou, professor at the National Technical University of Athens. What is more, the team said that the fourth century marble sat on top of an original limestone burial bed, which it reported to have survived intact. Moropoulou told me that what she found can be considered “sculptures according to the classic type of burial monument from this era.”

The £2.8 million renovation had a fitting end, a ceremony bringing together thousands of people from across the world, at which Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox patriarch, spoke of the international significance of the work. “For the first time in over two centuries, this sacred Edicule has been restored,” he said. “This is not only a gift to our Holy Land, but to the whole world.”

It turns out that there are more similarities than you would imagine between home renovations and the renovation of one of the world’s most important religious sites. Firstly, there’s the challenge of getting the different stakeholders to settle on a plan. At home that may be finding a plan that you and your partner can agree upon; at this church it is the different denominations who have difficulty agreeing on how to manage the place  — so much difficulty that one ladder has remained in place since the eighteenth century as nobody dares move it.  

Secondly comes the tendency of home improvements to draw people in to the past — via the old photos and family heirlooms that you find in the loft when clearing out for the new boiler. This happened at the church, on a whole different level, in the hours after the tomb’s cladding was removed.

The third parallel is less welcome. It relates to the moment when your builder announces happily that the boiler is fixed and with the cost exactly on target. As you smile he sucks air through his teeth, and tells you that it will work well for years… so long as you fix your plumbing system which he has just noticed to be in a danger of collapse.

Moropoulou tells me that the Edicule is now in good standing and will remain so — as long as major new work is carried out underneath the church to fix its rainwater and drainage systems, and dry out all the tunnels which are found there. This was something she wasn’t aware of when she started work on the Edicule, but if not addressed could lead, “in certain circumstances to collapse” of parts of the church. She has informed the denominations who oversee the church about her findings, and said that a fix will cost the equivalent of £5.2 million - almost double the cost of the renovation phase just completed.

After hearing such a bombshell the denominations may be in no mood to be told that there is an interesting historical back-story to this hefty quote, but there is. The fact that the church is so unstable appears to be linked to the fact that the site has gone through so many uses — some of them not conducive to the future stability of the place. It is thought to have been a limestone quarry more than two millennia ago, and later a Jewish burial place. There was then a Roman temple, followed by Constantine’s construction. Later, came Persians, Fatimids, and crusaders.

This rich past means that some Israeli archaeologists think that the recommendation for more urgent work is par for the course. “I don’t think it is any surprise,” Joshua Schwartz, director of the Jerusalem Studies centre at Bar Ilan University remarked, adding: “When you’re building on an area that was quarried out all those years ago, you’re asking for problems.”

As key figures at the church weigh the quote for new work, as authorities in Jerusalem, Ramallah and elsewhere wonder whether, money aside, the denominations will be able to put their differences aside to carry out work or whether agreement over the Edicule was a one-time thing, and as visitors absorb the beauty of the renovated site and the historical insights of the team, what does the rest of Israel make of it all?

Nothing.

The fact that one of the most important religious sites under Israeli control reopened after an historic renovation largely flew under the radar. An online search for Hebrew-language news stories about renovations being finished throws up only three results. It is one of the contradictions of a nation so tied to religious history that matters of religious importance can sometimes go unnoticed.

This actually includes Judaism, the faith of four fifths of the country’s citizens. The ongoing battle of Reform and Conservative Jews to establish an area at the Western Wall where they can hold mixed-gender prayers is a massive talking point in American Jewry. There are major tensions between Jerusalem and US Jewish leaders as a result of the non-implementation of plans to set up a new prayer gallery. But this is hardly discussed in Israel.

In fact, I remember being one of the journalists in 2013 to break the story that an egalitarian prayer area was on the cards. It was the story of the decade for American Jewish newspapers. Here in Israel none of the mass-circulation daily newspapers carried the plans on its front pages. Only the less widely circulating daily Haaretz ran it on page one. The Western Wall issue is the fight of the Reform and Conservative, while at the other end of the spectrum, religious affairs of Orthodox Jews are often absent from the press unless they are reactionary and/or comical.

Maybe this odd decision-making by the media, and patchy knowledge of religious matters by the general public, is inevitable. This is a country trying to find a balance between history and modernity, between religious heritage and a secular state.

As if to underscore the point, as I write these lines on a train, in the next carriage a group of 12 French Jewish teenagers are singing Psalm 121 in the original Hebrew at the top of their voices. Just as I am unsure whether it’s right to go with my modern sensitivities and tell them to be quiet or with my value for religious heritage admire them, the average newspaper editor here has little sense of when a story is too niche and religious for their readers, and when it’s an apt subject that is relevant to the heritage of faith in this land.