In Jerusalem they have just discovered a 2,000 -year -old garden that coincides with a description of the Bible: the tomb of Jesus
If we stick to the literature of that best-seller In religious code which was (and is) the Bible, the Evangelical story of the Gospel of John on the burial of Jesus had resonated with a singular symbolic force for centuries. Namely: the death of the “Messiah” occurred in a “Calaveras Place” and the funeral in “A new, fertile garden, without prior use”, almost like an echo of Eden. Ironies of life, a reform in Jerusalem has found an extremely similar place. The garden under stone. Although literaryly powerful, that passage has always lacked the same as many other passages: topographic precision. However, recent excavations in the Church of the Holy Sepulcherled by a team of archaeologists from La Sapienza University of Rome, have unearthed indications that could confer that fragment biblical an unexpected empirical support. Taking advantage of some renovations initiated in 2019 after decades of disputes between the religious communities that administer the temple (the orthodox, the Franciscans and the Armenians), the team of Professor Francesca Romana Stasolla began, in 2022, a meticulous work under the nineteenth -century panel of the sanctuary. There, under slabs and centuries of liturgy, they discovered the vestiges of An old quarry Of the Iron Age that, in Jesus, already served as a place of burials excavated in the rock. From the Empire to faith. This space, although it was not the only one of its kind in the Jerusalem of the time, was the one that the first Christians identified as the place of the crucifixion and the grave of the Nazarene, conviction that led the Emperor Constantine (after his conversion to Christianity) to order the construction of the first temple on that soil loaded with memory. The current church, rebuilt by the crusaders in the twelfth century, is the last incarnation of that ancient veneration. The revealing of the current finding is that, in the period between the exploitation of the quarry and the erection of the temple, the area was transformed into An agricultural space. The finding. Archaeologists identified low stone walls and stuffed land for cultivation, as well as evidence of olive trees and vines 2,000 years ago. For Stasolla and his team, these discoveries offer a possible material correspondence with the mention of the garden that appears in the Gospel of John, which suggests that whoever wrote, or compiled that story, possessed a intimate knowledge of the geography and territorial organization of the city at that time. Faith culture. Beyond the symbolic force of the garden and its potential link with the story of the burial of Christ, the findings also include Ceramic coins and fragments of the fourth century, which suggests continuous use of the place even before its formal Christianization. Although Stasolla herself speaks cautiously with respect to proclaiming any definitive confirmation of the place of Jesus’ burial, the researcher does underline that the true value of the discovery lies in showing how entire generations They have projected their faith On that site. The history of Holy Sepulcherhe insists, it is not only the story of a character or a religion, but an integral part of the history of Jerusalem. The continuity of the cult, the transformations of the environment and the weight of tradition have conferred that space A living identity which transcends archaeological certainties. Seen thus, between fragments of agricultural walls, millenary roots and sacred land, the recent finding not only excava in history, but also in the religious conscience of the West. Image | Gerd Eichmann In Xataka | The miracle of bread and fish is one of the great magic tricks of the Bible. Now we know “how it was done” In Xataka | The Bible and its 463 contradictions, in addition to violence and misogyny, gathered in an interactive graphic
