A recognition of the topographic prominence of
the building site of the Holy Sepulcher affects the
reading of Eusebius' description of the complex.
Eusebius, who as metropolitan bishop of Caesarea
would have been fully aware of the architectural
enterprises of his suffragan at Jerusalem, is the
first and most important witness to Constantine's
building activities. Eusebius claims that the site of
the sepulcher was consciously buried beneath pagan
appurtenances.(49) Evil men attempted to obscure
the truth revealed by the tomb by covering it
over with a great mound of earth and a temple of
Venus. They succeeded in their plot until, "with
the guidance of the divine spirit," the emperor
Constantine began construction on the site. Then,
"contrary to all expectation, the venerable and hallowed
monument of our Saviour's resurrection was
discovered." (50)
Eusebius' narrative invites its readers to make
two historically problematical assumptions. First,
since the text fails to indicate how Constantine,
apart from the revelation of the divine spirit, knew
the location of the Holy Sepulcher, rationalist apologists
have been tempted to argue that the site was
identified by local tradition.(51) However, there is no
evidence that this site of the sepulcher was recognized
and visited in pre-Constantinian times,
though other sacred spots were venerated. The
cave of the Nativity was known to Justin and Origen;
(52) the cave on the Mount of Olives was apparently
a pilgrimage site by 314, before Eusebius
wrote his Demonstrationo f the Gospel.(53) Also, an uninterrupted
oral or literary tradition in Jerusalem
between the first and fourth centuries identifying
the site is questionable in view of the discontinuity
of the Christian community itself. In his Ecclesiastical
History Eusebius notes that the earliest Christian
community in Jerusalem was ethnically Jewish:
". . . up to the siege of the Jews by Hadrian the
successions of bishops [in Jerusalem] were fifteen
in number. It is said that they were all Hebrews by
origin. .... For their whole church at that time consisted
of Hebrews . . ."(54) It is, consequently, quite
reasonable to suggest that any surviving local tradition
might well have been severed by Hadrian's
dispersal of the Jews. (55) For example, on the basis
of his study of the episcopal lists, C. H. Turner
writes:
The break in continuity between Jerusalem and Aelia
must have been absolute. The Christians of Jerusalem
must have been ... of the most conservative type of
Jewish churchmanship: the Christians of Aelia, if at
first there were any of them at all, would have been
not only gentiles by race, but inimical, by the very fact
of their consenting to settle in the pagan city, to all
that pertained to Judaism or even Jewish Christianity.
(56)
In view of the historical circumstances of Jerusalem,
readers should take more seriously Eusebius'
own acknowledgement that the site of the Passion
"had remained unknown for a long series of
years"'(57)
The second dubious assumption concerning the
founding of the Holy Sepulcher has not been imposed
on Eusebius' narrative by its interpretants,
but lurks undisclosed in his text. Eusebius claims
that the new Jerusalem was built over the site of
Jesus' resurrection in order to obscure it. Such a
claim requires the reader to believe that Hadrian's
town planners, in the aftermath of the destruction
of Jerusalem and dispersal of the Jews, located the
center of their new city not with a view to the convenience,
water supply, and geology of the site, but
rather with the sole end of covering up the unmarked
shrine of a dispersed heretical Jewish sect.
A less historically improbable reading of the
source is possible. As in Rome, Antioch, and perhaps
Constantinople, Constantine's first ecclesiastical
construction in Aelia was to be a cathedral. A
site in the center of the city was selected: archaeological
evidence indicates that the church complex
was constructed on the north side of the main Roman
forum of Aelia. Several buildings were demolished,
including a temple. Only in the course
of leveling the area for the construction of the cathedral
complex was the rock-cut tomb from an
earlier Jewish cemetery on the site serendipitously
revealed. It was immediately identified as the locus
of Jesus' entombment and resurrection. With this
discovery came Constantine's order to Macarius,
bishop of Jerusalem, to make the church of the
complex the most glorious in the empire. What
was initially begun as an episcopal complex became,
in addition, a great martyrium. It is this latter
function on which historians, ancient and modern,
have exclusively concentrated.
NOTES:
(49) Vita, iii, 26-27, 95.5-96.19; also see Jerome, ep. 58, ed. I.
Hilberg, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae, I, CSEL 54 (Vienna,
1910), 531.5-532.4.
(50) Vita, iii, 26, 96.6-7; 28, 96.19-22.
(51) For example, D. Bahat, "Does the Holy Sepulchre Mark the
Burial Place of Jesus?," Biblical Archaeology Review 12, no. 3
(1986), 26-45, esp. 37.
(52) Dialogue with Trypho, PG 6, col. 657; Against Celsus, ed. M.
Borret, SC 132-136 (Paris, 1967-1968), 1.51.
(53) Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, 166.
(54) Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. K. Lake and
J. E. L. Oulton, Loeb (London, 1926, 1932), book IV, v; I,
308.2-310.3.
(55) For the recent bibliography and restatement of this question,
J. E. Taylor, A Critical Investigation of Archaeological Material
Assigned to Palestinian Jewish-Christians of the Roman and Byzantine
Periods, Ph.D. diss. (University of Edinburgh, 1989), esp. 203-
30. I am grateful to Dr. Steven Gorenson for bringing this dissertation
to my attention.
(56) C. H. Turner, "The Early Episcopal Lists, II: The Jerusalem
List,"JTS 1 (1900), 529-53,
(57) Vita, iii, 30, 97.13-15.