Even though Easter is the holiest holidays for the billions of Christians who worship Jesus as the son of the God and the Messiah, this year's celebration was different due to Coronavirus outbreak that also forced Pope Francis to deliver his Easter speech via live streaming.
But the virus outbreak did not stop devoted Christians on Good Friday to recall the torture and crucifixion of Christ some 2,000 years ago, as described in the New Testament, while some experts discussed where the location would be.
Crucifixion of Christ
Some scripture has revealed that Jesus carried his cross from Ancient Jerusalem to the hill Calvary, also known as Golgotha where he was crucified along with two other criminals. Golgotha or the place of the skull is claimed to be located outside Jerusalem. But there are some debates over the hill's exact location.
A college professor, Tom Meyer is also known as the Bible Memory Man said that the Romans tried to erase all "recent memory" of Jesus Christ to control the rise of early Christianity in the region. Recently he mentioned that some evidence showed the true location of the crucifixion.
It should be noted that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Old Jerusalem's Christian Quarter is believed to have built on Golgotha, while some alternative theories suggest that the location was in a different part of the ancient Jerusalem, specifically near the Jaffa Gate or a quarry from the First Temple Period.
The location of Christ's crucifixion
Prof Meyer said that then Roman emperor Hadrian visited Jerusalem between 129 and 130 AD some 60 years after Emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Jewish Temple. He added that "In a vain effort to erase the recent memory of Jesus Christ, whom Hadrian saw as a threat and competitor to the Roman way of life, Hadrian built a temple honouring the Roman goddess Aphrodite over the place where Jesus was crucified and resurrected: the present-day Church of the Holy Sepulchre."
The Roman emperor who ruled between 117 – 138 AD tried to erase the memory of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem by building a temple for Roman god for beauty and desire, Adonis over the cave where Jesus Christ was born and where the Church of the Nativity now situated. But none of these helped to delete the memory of the true location of Calvary despite the Roman's best efforts.
Later, the Roman emperor Constantine adopted Christianity and became the first Christian emperor in 324 AD. His mother Helena was heavily involved in many establishments related to Jesus' life, said Meyer. Constantine is also credited with the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is currently managed by a number of different Christian denominations, including the Catholic and Orthodox churches but it is not the original construction raised in Jerusalem.
"Consecrated in 335 AD, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by the Persians in 614 AD but partly rebuilt. The church was destroyed and rebuilt several times by Islamic invaders until the Crusader Period. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre visible today was constructed in the 12th century and is built on top of the church built by Helena in the fourth century which was built over the rock of Golgotha where Christ was crucified, and the tomb where he was buried for three days and three nights," he further added.
