Where Was the Capitol in Roman Jerusalem?

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When Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, the site of what would one day be the Holy Sepulchre Church was an abandoned stone quarry. A catacomb cut into the western side of the quarry attests that the quarry had fallen into disuse. The innermost chamber of the catacomb contains kokhim tombs. These deep recesses into the rock, typical of the first centuries B.C. and A.D., can still be seen behind the Syrian Chapel in the Holy Sepulchre Church today.

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Footnotes

See the following articles in the November/December 1997 Biblical Archaeology Review: Hillel Geva, “Searching for Roman Jerusalem,” BAR 23:06; Hanan Eshel “Aelia Capitolina: Jerusalem No More,” BAR 23:06 and Kenneth Holum, “Iter Principis: Hadrian’s Imperial Tour,” BAR 23:06.

Endnotes

Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.27 (Patrologia Graeca [PG] 20.1085–1087), trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Ariel; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1981), p. 165.

Jerome, Letters 58.3 (Patrologia Latina [PL] 22.281), trans. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, p. 165 n. 1.

Dio Cassius, Roman History 69.12.1, trans. E. Cary, in the Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1925), vol. 8, p. 447.

Pilgrim of Bordeaux, Itinerarium Burdigalense (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina [CCL] 175, ed. P. Geyer and O. Cuntz [Turnhout: Brepols, 1965]), trans. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, p. 157.

J. Germer-Durand, “Aelia Capitolina,” Revue Biblique 1 (1892), p. 380. A drawing of the inscription appears in Dan Bahat, Jerusalem: Selected Plans of Historical Sites and Monumental Buildings (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1980), p. 4.

Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica 8.3 (PG 22.636).

Charles Couasnon, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1972 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 39–40.

The archaeological evidence of Hadrianic work is assembled by Virgilio Corbo, Il Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 34–37.

Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.26 (PG 20.1085–1087), trans. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, pp. 164–165.

10.

The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, 2nd ed., ed. M.C. Howatson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 43.

11.

Jerome, Commentarium in Esaiam, in CCL 73, ed. M. Adriaen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963), p. 33.

12.

Jerome, Commentaire sur S. Matthieu, Sources chretiennes 259, ed. E. Bonnard (Paris: Cerf, 1979), vol. 2, p. 192.

13.

The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Max Cary et al. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1949), p. 282.