Jerusalem: The Biography

Jewish dead were not buried in the earth during the first century but laid in a shroud in a rock tomb, which their family always checked, partly to ensure that the deceased were indeed dead and not merely comatose: it was rare but not unheard of to find that the ‘dead’ were awake the next morning. The bodies were then left for a year to desiccate, then the bones were placed in a bone-box, known as an ossuary, often with the name carved on the outside, in a rock-cut tomb.

Joseph and Jesus’ family and followers brought down the body and quickly found an unused tomb in a nearby garden where they laid him. The body was sweetened by expensive spices and wrapped in a shroud – like the first-century shroud found in a tomb a little south of the city walls in the Field of Blood, still bearing clumps of human hair (but unlike the famous Turin Shroud, which has now been dated to between 1260 and 1390). It is likely that the present Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which encloses both the place of crucifixion and the tomb, is the genuine site since its tradition was kept alive by local Christians for the next three centuries. Pilate posted guards around Jesus’ tomb at Caiaphas’ request ‘lest his disciples come by night and steal him away and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead’.

Up to this point, the story of Jesus’ Passion – from the Latin patior

, to suffer – is based on our sole source, the Gospels, but no faith is required to believe in the life and death of a Jewish prophet and thaumaturge. However, three days after his crucifixion, on Sunday morning, according to Luke, some of Jesus’ female family and followers (including his mother and Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ steward) visited the tomb: ‘They found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre and they entered in and found not the body of the Lord Jesus … As they were much perplexed, behold two men stood by them in shining garments and as they were afraid … they said unto them: Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here but is risen.’ The frightened disciples were in hiding on the Mount of Olives during the Passover week, but Jesus appeared several times to them and to his mother, saying to them, ‘Be not afraid.’ When Thomas doubted the Resurrection, Jesus showed him the wounds on his hands and in his side. After some days, he led them up to the Mount of Olives where he ascended to heaven. This Resurrection, which turned a sordid death into a transforming triumph of life over death, is the defining moment of Christian faith, celebrated on Easter Sunday.

For those who do not share this faith, the facts are impossible to verify. Matthew reveals what was surely the contemporary alternative version of events, ‘commonly reported among the Jews to this day’: the high priests immediately paid off the soldiers who were meant to be guarding the tomb and ordered them to tell everyone that ‘his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept’.

Archaeologists tend to believe that the body was simply removed and buried by friends and family in another rock-cut tomb somewhere around Jerusalem. They have excavated tombs, with ossuaries that bear names such as ‘James brother of Jesus’ and even ‘Jesus son of Joseph’. These have generated media headlines. Some have been exposed as forgeries but most are genuine first-century tombs with very common Jewish names – and with no connection to Jesus.^*

Jerusalem celebrated Passover. Judas invested his silver in real estate – the Potter’s Field on the Akeldama south of the city, appropriately in the Valley of Hell – where he then ‘burst asunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out’.^† When the disciples emerged from hiding, they met for Pentecost in the Upper Room, the Cenacle on Mount Zion, ‘and suddenly there came from heaven a rushing mighty wind’ – the Holy Spirit that allowed them to speak in tongues to the many nationalities who were in Jerusalem and to perform healing in the name of Jesus. Peter and John were entering the Temple through the Beautiful Gate for their daily prayers when a cripple asked for alms. ‘Rise up and walk,’ they said, and he did.