Jacob’s Well (see John 4:6). This ancient well, traditionally associated with Jacob, is in Nablus, Palestine – on the route from Galilee to Jerusalem.
Crucifixion was a slow and painful way to die. In 1968 the remains of a man who had been crucified were discovered in Jerusalem. The photo shows that a nail driven through the victim’s heel bone held his feet to the cross.
The Garden Tomb, popularized as Golgotha by General Gordon of Khartoum in1883. The real place of Jesus’ burial is far more likely to have been where the Holy Sepulchre church now stands, but this tomb shows clearly how a body would be laid on the stone floor, with the head on the slightly raised ‘pillow’ at the far end.
Garden tomb interior
A first century rock-hewn tomb inside the Holy Sepulchre Church.
A tomb with rolling stone, near Mt Carmel.
The distinctive domes of the Holy Sepulchre church. The emperor Constantine built the first church here in the early 4th century. It was destroyed by the Moslem caliph Hakim in 1009. After rebuilding during the following 150 years the church has remained substantially as it was then.
Inside the Holy Sepulchre church, this elaborate monument over what is believed to be the place of Jesus’ burial dates only from the early 19th century, when it replaced an earlier structure destroyed by fire.
Holy Sepulchre church, mosaic of Christos Pantocrator (‘Almighty’) in the dome.
While the main church is mostly Roman Catholic, Christians of some other traditions have their altars and shrines. A community of Ethiopian monks lives here on the church’s roof and worships in a small chapel en route from here to the inside of the church.
The ‘John Rylands fragment’(papyrus p52), showing part of John 18:34-36. This, the earliest surviving fragment of the New Testament text, probably dates from about AD 125, though some scholars have dated it several decades later. The reverse side of the page shows John 18:37-38. The papyrus can be viewed in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, UK.
