However, the location of the Holy Church of Sepulcher is religiously significant not only because of Jesus’s tomb but also its connection with other faiths. The church is built on top of the pagan Temple of Venus or Aphrodite. Christian’s transformation of the Roman pagan shrine to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher demonstrates the connection of Roman religion to Christianity. The location and supremacy of the church symbolize the triumph over paganism as well as over Solomon’s Temple.
In the lower left corner of the courtyard is the location of where Christ was put to death, typically known as Golgotha or Calvary, which meant “hill.” Upon entering the Calvary, people need to ascend a steep and a curving flight of stairs. The stairs will open up to the top of the hill to where Christ was crucified. According to tradition, it “was regarded as the place where Adam was created and where he was buried,” which played an important role in how Christians view the Calvary (Ousterhout: 46). Since Adam is the first man created…show more content… To Christians, Palm Sunday holds a significant remembrance to the church (Markus: 267). To this day, Christians make annual passage around Jerusalem to commemorate Palm Sunday and reminisce on the greatness of Christ, making the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher sacred due to its surrounding rituals. Therefore, Markus further argues, “change in the fourth century was not from eschatology to history, but from the eschatological meaning of the historical narratives to their topographical associations” (Markus: 267). In other words, Christ’s journey and the location associate with it before his death is transformed into something that is seen as holy. Thus, the rituals manifests by people have made these locations identify as sacred, which constitutes the Church of the Holy
