BURIAL PLACE OF JESUS

Chronicle (Levin), 22 November 1946, Page 2

BURIAL PLACE OF JESUS

CSpecial gorresyomlent.)

LONDON, Nov. 20. Tlie belief that the Cliurch of the Holy Sepuichre in the heart of the labyrinthine Old City of Jerusalem was the burial place of Jesus Christ ma.v have to be revised following a new reiuarkable achaeological diseovery a few yards east of the Street of the Prophets, states the Daily Mail's Jerusalem eorrespondent. An Arab labourer, who was helpiug to dig the foundations of an ultvauiodern block of flats with a built-iu einema, drove his piek through a thin vrust of earth straight into the earliest (lavs of the Gospel history. II is pick struek a massive stone weighing two tons. This stone has been identified as part of the third wall of ancient Jerusalem — the fortification.1? ugainst the battering rams and boulder-hurling eatapultists used more than 2000 years ago. More digging revealed vestiges of the fortress tower that was part of the defences of the Old City built by lving llerod Agrippa against possible invasion. When traees of the third wall were iirst found l ii 1027 antiquarians thought the City of Jerusalem must have beetj, situated farther north-west .than the existing built-up area slvows. The signilicancc of this is that the present sile of the Church of the Holy Sepul-. chre is well withiu tlie walls of the ancient city. But the liomans never sited their places of exeeution within any city walls, but outsido thcm as is testified in the New Testanient. The hypothesis that the place of the Crucilixion in about A.D. 33 must have been elsewhere than the traditional site has eauscd an uproar.