Christian History Home > Issue 97 > Battles over Christ's Tomb
Battles over Christ's Tomb
The holiest site in Christendom has endured an unholy amount of destruction and violence.
Gary M. Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College | posted 1/01/2008 11:44AM
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Christian pilgrims visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (as it is known by Protestants) in Jerusalem. Historians and archaeologists increasingly support its claim to be built on the site of Jesus' burial. But the church we see today is not the original church built in Constantine's era, and the site has seen tragedy and tensions for 1400 years.
When the Persians invaded Jerusalem in 614, they set the Church of the Anastasis, or Resurrection (as it was then called), on fire, killing countless priests and deacons who had taken refuge there. The Byzantines retook the city promptly, expelled the Persians, and restored the church.
The first Muslim conquest in 638 was utterly different. Caliph Umar refused to pray in the church out of respect, lest it be turned into a mosque, and so the church was spared. Four hundred years of uninterrupted devotion continued. But in 1009, an Egyptian Fatimid ruler, al-Hakim bin-Amr Allah, ordered the complete destruction ... To view this item, you must be a member of ChristianHistory.net.
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