Posted on 06/23/2016 6:44:10 AM PDT by marshmallow
JERUSALEM — Work has begun to save the holiest shrine in Christendom. It won’t be a simple patch-and-paint job.
This is the alpha and omega of restoration projects.
They are going to repair Jesus’ tomb — with titanium bolts.
Over the next nine months, a team of Greek conservationists will restore the collapsing chapel built above and around the burial cave where the faithful believe that Jesus was buried and rose from the dead after the Crucifixion.
To fix the chapel, which is buckling under its own weight, the crew will have to enter a few square meters of the ruins of the first-century tomb.
It is called the Holy Rock.
To get there, they will clean centuries of candle soot left from votive lamps; they will reset and anchor the imported marbles; and they will inject 21st-century stabilizing mortar into 12th-century masonry from the Crusader times.
And at the heart of the heart of the edifice, in the center of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, they will lift the slab where millions of pilgrims have knelt and prayed, where the salt of tears and the wet of sweat have smoothed and worried the hardest stone.
And for the first time in more than 200 years, they will look inside.
The ruins of what is believed to be a rock-cut tomb are being breached because the chapel built above is falling apart.
Its repair is decades overdue. After years of squabbling among the Christian communities who occupy the site, work to restore the edifice began earlier this month.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It's just an empty hole.
“Christianity” has no shrines.
“...years of squabbling among the Christian communities...”
Nah, I better not say what I’m thinking.
I'm bettin' its empty. ;o)
A couple of things...
1. Churches were home meetings in early days and some met in courtyards of synagogues...buildings were not built until Constantine in the fourth Century AD...so since the tomb was empty and nobody puts flowers at at empty grave they dont even know if they have the right cave.
2. Chrisitianity has a relationship with a living Lord, Jesus Christ to quote Eli Wallach from a spaghetti western...we don’t need not steenking buildings...worshipping of a building is pagan in its roots
3. OK, so three things...what makes this shrine holier than some other sight? How about the sight of the assencion? How about the upper room? How about the place where the sermon on the Mount was delievered...How about Lazarus’ tomb in Bethany? How about it? How many holy sights do you need to realize the Jesus is the Holy One and we are mere saints and believers?
Ok I am thru now.
I feel much better getting that of my tear stained votive candle soaked keyboard!
Freegards
LEX
Worth restoring!
Post #7 ~ You are entitled to share your opinion.
However, “I feel much better getting that of my tear stained votive candle soaked keyboard!” was unnecessary.
You should not mock what you do not understand. Have a pleasant day...
One of the FEW articles from the Washington Post I really like.
It’s all part of the mentality that used to worship relics. Luther said that when he visited the Vatican he saw enough nails supposedly from the cross to shoe every horse in Germany.
There are shrines in Jerusalem that not only honor Christ’s rising from the dead, but of all the other events in the life of Christ.
Well, generally, evangelicals are not all that exercised over it. It’s a nice place to visit but it does not supersede the importance and reach of what happened at whatever actual site it did happen.
If I won the lottery, would I then spend it all at the place where the ticket was issued? I think not....
Sort of like Plymouth Rock. It's a rock that was designated as such a hundred years after the event.
BTTT
Maybe if every horse in Germany was shod and carried good news of the gospel, it would be worth it.
Or conversely we could say the entire universe and the whole of heaven is its shrine.
Yet say thank-you to Israel for allowing Christian pilgrims to visit the Christian shrines in peace.
Or like preserving Independence Hall.
After Luther translated the bible into the native tongue that became much more possible.
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