Churches and Tombs, Friday

The Old City from the Mount of Olives

 Our first stop today was at the Mount of Olives.  An organisation called "God TV" was there filming for what appeared to be some sort of Christian revivalist group.  Not exactly our cup of guava juice.  Even so the view over the Kidron Valley to the Old City is breathtaking.  One interesting artefact is Absolom's Tomb,  an ancient monumental rock-cut tomb with a conical roof located in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem, . Although traditionally ascribed to Absalom, the rebellious son of King David of Israel (circa 1000 BCE), recent scholarship has attributed it to the 1st century CE.

Absolom's Tomb from the Mount of Olives

From there we went to the Church of All Nations situated next to the Garden of Gethsemane. We thought the sign indicating what may or may not be brought into the Church was interesting.

Guns, bicycles and bull-horns not permitted?

Here were olive trees dating back more than 1,000 years.  After the last supper, Jesus walked across the Kidron Valley to this garden to pray and it was here that he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot.

Ancient Olive Tree with
new branches coming from inside

We then motored across the Kidron Valley to Mt. Zion where we visited King David's tomb and the site of the room of the last supper.  Unfortunately the room itself was closed.  We were not sure why it was closed but tension was high and, in fact, we cancelled a walk along the Via Dolorosa because it is in the Muslim Quarter and with Abbas about to make his speech at the United Nations Jerusalem is on high alert.

Statue of King David

We entered the Old City through the Zion Gate and walked through the Jewish Quarter which was almost completely destroyed during the Jordanian occupation but has been largely rebuilt.  We had lunch here before moving on to the Western Wall.  The difference in feel between daytime and nightime at the wall is quite distinct.  At night it seems less touristy and more genuine.

At the Western Wall

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which we visited next, is built over the last five stations of the cross and
is also called the Church of the Resurrection by Eastern Christians and Roman Catholics. The site is venerated as Golgotha (the Hill of Calvary), where Jesus was crucified, and is said also to contain the place where Jesus was buried (the sepulchre). The church has been an important Christian pilgrimage destination since at least the 4th century, as the purported site of the resurrection of Jesus. Today it also serves as the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, while control of the building is shared between several Christian churches and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for centuries and not uncommonly leading to violence. Nowadays, the church is home to Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Anglican and Protestant Christians have no permanent presence in the church.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Faithful outside the Church

The Stone of the Anointing

Entrance to the Sepulchre

Our guide, changing to his Archaeologists hat, then took us through the bazaars to the Garden Tomb located  outside the city walls and close to the Damascus Gate.  It is a rock-cut tomb considered by some to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus, and to be adjacent to Golgotha, in contradistinction to the traditional site for these—the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There is no mention of the Garden Tomb as the place of Jesus' burial before the nineteenth century.  Ahron suggested this was a viable alternative but left us to draw our own conclusions.  Whatever the case, the setting is very peaceful and quiet.


After another exhausting day, we staggered back to the hotel!