Most videos you see about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre focus on two places
found inside the church: the Golgotha (or “calvary”), where Jesus was crucified,
and the Tomb of Jesus, where his body was buried and resurrected.
These sites are so important that everyone spends all their time talking about them.
But the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a fascinating place and there are some unbelievable
things you ought to know. And that’s what I’m going to show you in this video.
1. The Christian denominations that run the church
As you know, there are many different Christian denominations. But
who runs the church? The Catholics? The Orthodox Church? Maybe the Protestants?
The crazy answer is that the church is divided into 6 different denominations:
the Catholics, the Greek Orthodox and the Armenians
(these 3 denominations own the largest part) and the Ethiopians, the Coptics (who are
the Christians from Egypt) and the Syrian Orthodox have a smaller part of the church.
Now what does it mean to have six different parties running the same building? Well, it is
very complicated. Some parts belong exclusively to one denomination and some shared parts are bound
by very specific rules. I won’t get into it all here but I will show you something interesting.
I am now standing in 2 different churches at the same time. My left foot is in a Catholic
church - you can see the writing in Latin here, and my right foot is in an Orthodox
church, so the writing is in Greek. I want to show you another example.
Outside you can see this plaza, where all denominations have the right to
hold their ceremonies, but only the Orthodox have the right to clean it.
This staircase, however, belongs to the Catholics, which raises a question: who is allowed to clean
these stones? Are they a part of the plaza or a part of the staircase?
In the past, tensions between the different parties led to violence, even culminating in
a war between Russia and the European empires - the Crimean War. But in recent years they have
all cooperated and agreed on renovating Jesus’ tomb after 200 years of disagreement. This was
a huge leap forward. Everyone benefits from this mutual understanding and trust between
the different denominations involved in one of the most important places in the world.
Now you might ask yourself, well, if the church is divided into 6 denominations,
then who has the keys? And this brings us to the next point.
2. Who holds the keys of the church?
The church keys are held by 2 Muslim families. I know it sounds implausible, but the keys
to the most important church in the world are held by 2 Muslim families. When the church was built,
in the 4th century, the keys were held by the Christians, of course,
but after Saladin conquered Jerusalem in the 12th century, he gave the keys to two Muslim families,
and they still hold the keys today. But why 2 families? In the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre even the smallest action, like opening the doors in the morning,
takes the form of a ceremony. An Orthodox priest, who sleeps inside the church,
opens a small window in the door and brings out a small ladder. The keys are held by the Joudeh
family. They are the key holders. After the priest brings out the ladder, the key keeper
from the Joudeh family gives the keys to the door opener, who is someone from the Nuseibeh family, a
very well-known Muslim family in Jerusalem. Their representative goes up the ladder and opens the
two locks and the heavy wooden doors of the church and gives the keys back to the Joudeh family.
3. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has a village on the roof
As far as I know, this church is the only church in the world that has a village on its roof.
The name of the village is Dir A-Sultan, meaning the Monastery of the Sultan, and it is a small
Ethiopian village. We can’t enter the village itself, but we can see it from here. It is home to
Ethiopian monks, who live in very simple huts that you can see from the outside. The village is only
a couple of hundred years old but it used to be a large dining hall at the time of the Crusaders.
So the capitals and the beginning of the big arches that you can see are about 900 years old.
Now you might be wondering what the connection is between Ethiopia and Christianity.
Well, the Ethiopian church is one of the oldest
churches in the world and Christianity came to be the state religion in the 4th century.
And by the way, they maintain many traditions from the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament, so
their understanding of Christianity is closer to the way it was in the time of Jesus.
4. Holy Fire ceremony The Holy Fire ceremony,
which occurs every year at Easter, on Holy Saturday, a day after Good Friday, is described
by the Orthodox churches as a miracle that happens in the church every year. It is the most important
event for hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. The ceremony begins when the
Muslim keepers go to Jesus’s tomb and see that it is empty of any candles and matches. The
tomb is then sealed under the supervision of all denominations except the Catholics,
who don’t take part in the ceremony. At 12:30 the Patriarch circles the edicule 3 times and
then enters it wearing only simple white cloth. He is accompanied by the Armenian bishop. The door
is closed behind them. They pray and when they come out, they hold bundles of 33 lit candles.
So how are the candles lit? It depends who you ask. The Orthodox church will tell you that it
is a miracle and the holy fire comes from the tomb. The miracle also proves that the
day in which the Eastern church, the Orthodox church, celebrates Easter is the accurate date,
as the Western church, the Catholic church, usually celebrates it on a different date. Others
say that the candles are smeared with a substance that makes them light when exposed to oxygen
or that the Armenian bishop is carrying a source of fire. You are free to believe either version.
Before I get to the last point, I will just mention something that I personally
find interesting and yet I’ve never heard anyone talk about. Most churches in the world
are stand-alone buildings or have clearly defined neighbouring buildings. With this church,
it is not clear where it starts and where it ends - is this part of the church? Is that part of
the church? You can’t go around it. There are also many floors to the church. In most large
churches you have the ground floor, the crypt and maybe another, upper floor. Here, there are
loads of floors. I’ve never actually counted them all. So let's go in and do it together.
The lowest place in the church, or the lowest place in the church that I know of and that is
open to the public, is this chapel: the Chapel of the Invention of the Holy Cross. It belongs to the
Catholics and it marks the spot where Helena found the true cross when she came to Jerusalem in 326.
The next floor is the St. Helena chapel, which belongs to the Armenians.
Let’s go on up to the 3rd floor, the ground floor.
I will walk from the other side, where people don’t usually walk.
This is the tomb
and here is the anointed stone, where Jesus’s body was anointed before he was buried.
The 4th floor is Golgotha, the site where Jesus was crucified.
So there are 4 floors inside the main church building
but if we walk outside there are another 2 chapels that belong to the Ethiopians.
So this here is the 5th floor.
The last floor, the 6th floor, is the roof that we have already talked about.
And now we come to the final thing to say about the church.
5. One of the first churches!
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of the very first churches or, to be exact,
it is the first church built by the Roman Empire. There were churches that were built earlier in
different parts of the world. But as the Romans were the ones that ruled the land of Israel, once
they declared Christianity a legal religion, then churches began to be built by the empire and the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the first one. Being first is not really that important,
what makes it significant is that the church has been in consistent use for 1700 years.
It was built during the transition from the Roman period to the Byzantine era.
Then the Arabs conquered Jerusalem, followed by the Crusaders, the Mamluks, the Ottomans,
the British, Israel, the Catholic church, the Orthodox church, the Armenians, the Coptics.
With each era, each denomination left its mark on this unbelievable building.
And so the events that happened here - the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus
- changed the world, but even more than that, many world events in the last 1700 years have changed
this building and turned it into what it is today. You really need to come and see it for yourself…
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