Palestine Twilight: The Murder of Dr Glock and the Archaeology of the Holy Land. Edward Fox

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      TO UNDERSTAND FULLY what Nabhan Khreisheh meant in his cryptic remark about the significance of archaeology in this murder; to understand how Albert Glock, an American archaeologist, came to be assassinated in a driveway in the West Bank, one has to go back a long way, to the very beginning of archaeology in Palestine.

      In about the year 325 of the common era, shortly after he acquired the eastern provinces that included Palestine, the Emperor Constantine – the first Christian emperor and the founder of Byzantine civilization – sent his mother, Flavia Julia Helena Augusta, the Empress Dowager, at the head of a mission to Palestine. Its immediate political purpose was to assert Constantine’s authority in the province, and implement his policy of promoting Christians and Christianity in the imperial state among a mostly non-Christian population. As physical signs of this new dispensation, a number of churches and basilicas were commissioned, including a church over the Holy Sepulchre, the presumed tomb of Christ. A local cult of the relic of the cross on which Christ was crucified had already come into existence at some point in the intervening three centuries, though how and when remains obscure. Albert Glock worshipped at a church a stone’s throw from this place on the morning of the day he was murdered.

      The Empress Helena died in about 328, in her eighties. Some fifty years after her death, a legend began to circulate about her and her visit to Palestine. It appears in the Ecclesiastical History of Tyrannius Rufinus, written towards the end of the fourth century:

      Helena, the mother of Constantine, a woman of outstanding faith and deep piety, and also of exceptional munificence … was advised by divinely-sent visions to go to Jerusalem. There she was to make an enquiry among the inhabitants to find out the place where the sacred body of Christ had hung on the Cross. This spot was difficult to find, because the persecutors of old had set up a statue of Venus over it, so that if any Christian wanted to worship Christ in that place, he seemed to be worshipping Venus. For this reason, the place was not much frequented and had all but been forgotten. But when … the pious lady hastened to the spot pointed out to her by a heavenly sign, she tore down all that was profane and polluted there. Deep beneath the rubble she found three Crosses lying in disorder. But the joy of finding this treasure was marred by the difficulty of distinguishing to whom each Cross belonged. The board was there, it is true, on which Pilate had placed an inscription written in Greek, Latin and Hebrew characters.

      Helena was unsure that what she had found was the True Cross. To allay her doubts, the bishop of Jerusalem, Macarius, determined that divine proof was needed. He led Helena and her entourage to the house of a woman who was mortally ill with a serious disease. One by one the crosses Helena had found were shown to the sick woman. When the third cross was brought to her, the woman leapt out of bed, cured. This miracle identified the third cross as the True Cross.

      When the queen saw that her wish had been answered by such a clear sign, she built a marvellous church of royal magnificence over the place where she had discovered the Cross. The nails which had attached the Lord’s body to the Cross, she sent to her son. From some of these he had a horse’s bridle made, for use in battle, while he used others to add strength to a helmet, equally with a view to using it in battle. Part of the redeeming wood she sent to her son, but she also left part of it there preserved in silver chests. This part is commemorated by regular veneration to this very day.

      This legend has been woven into later historical narratives as if it were fact, but it is a pious fiction, emanating from the imperially supported church in Jerusalem. (In his account of the life of Constantine, written in about 338, about the time of her death, the Bishop Eusebius, chronicler of the early church in Palestine, mentions Helena’s piety and her commissioning of churches, but says nothing about finding the Cross.) The purpose of the legend is to burnish Constantine’s reputation as a Christian emperor. Note the symbolism in what happened to the nails: incorporated into the Emperor’s helmet (other versions of the legend say diadem or crown) and his horse’s bridle. The sacred power of Christ is incorporated into Constantine’s imperial implements of war and governance, giving supernatural legitimacy to his military and civil authority.

      The legend also enhances the reputation of Jerusalem as the home of sacred relics, and reflects the beginning of a tradition that persists to this day of the search for the physical remains of biblical history as a dimension of Christian spirituality. It establishes the idea of the Holy Land as one of the universal features of the Christian faith: a transcendental geography imposed on the mundane geography of southern Syria. In subsequent centuries, Jerusalem and surrounding sacred sites were the prized destinations of Christian pilgrims, and splinters of Helena’s True Cross and other relics were sold as sacred souvenirs for the pilgrims to take home with them. This account was an advertisement, intended to promote the pilgrimage industry, not a report.

      Helena’s excavation techniques have been improved upon, but her archaeological assumptions have proven remarkably durable, persisting well into an age of scientific rationalism. She knew what she was looking for, and – with divine inspiration – she found it.

      Before Helena’s visit, Christian pilgrimages to Palestine originating from outside the country were unknown. Visiting sacred sites was a local cult, preceding Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Church’s earliest authorities considered it theologically unnecessary for Christians to tread the land that Jesus’s feet had trodden. Besides, the anti-Christian policy of the Roman authorities that governed Palestine discouraged Christian visitors. After Constantine’s institutionalization of Christianity in the Roman empire, pilgrimage was encouraged as a natural expression of piety. Monasteries and hostels were built to accommodate pilgrims. In СКАЧАТЬ