Anyonevisiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today will be more thanconfused and perplexed. Instead of walking into a church in the usualsense of the word one enters through tall wooden doors into a darkvaulted rotunda with candles burning everywhere and incense pervadingthe atmosphere. It is crowded with tourists, monks, priests, andothers attired in religious garb, who are conducting tours andholding services. Space is so limited that the individual chapels arejammed next to one another and hardly adequate for any kind ofservice. Presently space has been allotted to the Armenian Church,the Greek Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, the Syrian JacobiteChurch, and the Latin Churches. It is apparent that they are not atall happy with these arrangements!
Inthe center of the edifice is a small structure called the Ediculethrough which one must literally crawl in order to see the hollowedout rock which is said to be the site of Jesus's tomb and on whichJoseph of Arimathea is said to have laid Jesus's body after he wastaken down from the cross. Since this so called tomb was onlydiscovered in 335 A.D. when Constantine demolished the Roman templethat occupied this site, the actual site is conjectural and cannot beproven historically or archaeologically. Today it is onlysymbolically important.
Inthe 2000 years since Jesus's death the Christian Church hasfragmented into innumerable sects and this fact is very evident todayat the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In contrast, the Dome of theRock (Islam) and the Wailing Wall (Judaism) stand out as clearlyidentified and undivided expressions of their faiths.
Thearticle on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the March-April 2001issue of Archaeology by Elizabeth J. Himelford describes thesituation at the Church so vividly that I have appended the author'sstory to my remarks.