51. Jerusalem. Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Has the tourist guide been drinking?

Jerusalem has more religion per square foot than anywhere I have ever been. The Jewish orthodox neighbourhood outside the old city and inside, the Armenian quarter, the Muslim quarter, the Jewish quarter and so on (the division of the city into quarters was far less strict before the arrival of Israel in 1948, I am told). For people like me, brought up Catholic, there is plenty to see. Jerusalem has visible history everywhere, as well as plenty of invisible history about the ethnic cleansing which Palestinians have been victims of in a hundred ways over the last 80 years and more.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is considered by many Christians to be built on the site that Jesus was crucified, buried and then rose again. It is no ordinary church, and is made up of a maze of chapels, many of them connected with a particular brand of christianity. The main groups sharing the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic, and to a lesser degree the Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches. I hope you are taking notes because there will be a short test at the end.

Some of the history of the church makes you think it is being invented by a bored tourist guide who has drunk too much. The keys of the church are kept by some Muslim family because of the conflicts betweeen different denominations of Christians. The documents say the family have had the keys for 800 or so years, but the family claims it is a couple of hundred more years. Every few years a fist fight breaks out between monks of different Christian denominations. An agreement in the 18th century, known as the Status Quo, says in some detail what each denomination can control and what days of the year etc. The agreement says everything should stay as it as, and, we are told, was so rigid that the ladder some workmen were using to fix something could no longer be moved. You can still see the ladder in one of the photos. I can’t remember if it has been replaced or not.

Catholics around the world have a "stations of the cross" ceremony in their churches where they go around praying at the fourteen stations of the cross, representing different moments in the last few days of Jesus’s story before the resurrection thingy. « Jesus falls for the third time » « Jesus is nailed to the cross », « Jesus comforts the women of Jerusalem » - that sort of highight. Well in Jerusalem there is a traditionally established place for each of these fourteen events, and pilgrims and tourists follow the Via Dolorosa to visit them all (the last few are inside the Holy Sepulchre church). Some of the tourist guides will provide you with a big cross to carry, though the crosses the tourists carry do not seem to be solid enough to decently crucify anyone.

The place is a real jewel to visit. As you walk in, if you go to the main entrance and not through the Ethiopian chapel on the roof (yup !), you see the stone where they say Jesus’s mate Joe prepared him for burial, with ointments and stuff. Pilgrims put rosaries and other such things on the stone for a few moments to bless them. Further in is the actual tomb (but there is always a long queue to get right inside the pink stone shrine which encloses it) . And around it, above it and behind it, chapel after chapel, and public toilets. Many of the chapels have an Orthodox tone to them, with lots of silver and gold and icons and mosaics. The Ethiopian chapel (well actually the chapel is claimed both by the Ethiopian church and by the Coptic Egyptians – get used to this) has fine pink chairs, and there is a wealth of pulpits, altars, old testament scenes etc. The photos should mostly speak for themselves. Have included photos of some of the other stations of the cross outside the actual church.