The name "Resurrection" (al-Qiyāma) is given to the complex of churches built over the Tomb, Golgotha, and the Cave of the Cross. To make things easier for the reader, we have thought it best to divide its history into five periods:

The First Period:

It begins with the crucifixion and burial of Christ in the year 33 AD, as recorded in the Gospel, and ends with the conversion of Constantine the Great to Christianity, the demolition of the pagan temple erected over the Tomb, and the discovery of the Tomb, Golgotha, and the Cross by his mother, Queen Helena, in the year 326 AD. Most of the information that has come down to us about this period is vague and obscure, apart from what the Gospel relates. This period lasted 293 years.

The Second Period:

It begins with Queen Helena's completion of the Byzantine structure she raised over the Tomb, Golgotha, and the Cave of the Cross in the year 336 AD, and ends with the Persian assault, their seizure of Jerusalem, and their destruction of the Resurrection church in the year 614 AD. This period lasted 278 years.

The Third Period

It begins with the rebuilding of the church by Modestus in the year 629 AD and Heraclius's recovery of the wood of the Cross from the Persians, and continues to the year 1009 AD, in which the Resurrection was razed by order of the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh. This period lasted 380 years.

The Fourth Period:

It begins with its rebuilding by the emperor Constantine, surnamed Monomachos, in the year 1048, and continues to the year 1130 AD, when the Crusaders began to alter the architecture of its structure. This period lasted 82 years.

The Fifth Period:

It begins with the Crusader structure completed in the year 1149 AD, which is the present building, and continues to our own day.

This division is based upon the events of destruction and restoration that befell the church, as you have seen.

The Resurrection in Its First Period:

This is the period known as the pagan Roman era

When evening had come, says the Gospel, there came a rich man from Ramah named Joseph, who took the body of Christ, wrapped it in clean linen, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock; then he rolled a great stone against the door of the tomb and departed. And at the dawn of Sunday the women came to the tomb, and an angel appeared to them and told them of the Lord's resurrection, so they hurried off to bring the disciples the good news of what they had heard. From here begins the history of the Church of the Resurrection. Neither the Gospel nor history has given us any further clarification about the fate of the Tomb after the Lord's resurrection and ascension. Nor is it recorded that the disciples and believers took the Tomb as a place of worship. Rather, it is stated in the history of Epiphanius that the Christians used to hold prayer at a place on Mount Zion where the Lord Christ ate the Last Supper in secret. This place, according to tradition and the testimony of certain famous historians, is our well-known monastery, the house of Mary the mother of John Mark. It is not to be understood from this that the believers neglected the Tomb in the earliest days of Christianity, as some have falsely claimed; on the contrary, they preserved their Lord's resting place, held it in the highest regard, and continued to visit it throughout the second and third generations.

The first church in the world was founded in Jerusalem on the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples. The number of believers before that event had been very small, but this great event, witnessed by thousands of people of differing languages, races, and religions, was the cause of a wondrous spread of Christianity. The first bishop appointed over the church of Jerusalem was James the Brother of the Lord, who was martyred in the year 62 AD. The Christians, while holding their prayers in the house of the mother of John Mark and in other caves, continued to frequent Golgotha and the Tomb to receive blessing by visiting it, until the Jews broke the rod of obedience against the Roman government. And when the din of the Roman armies that had come to subdue the Jews and quench the fires of revolt rang in the Christians' ears, they knew that the time had come for the fulfillment of the Lord Christ's prophecy concerning the ruin of the city and the Temple, so they left Jerusalem, fleeing to the city of "Pella," which lies east of the Jordan near Beisan, together with their bishop Simeon the Righteous. Then Titus came and laid a severe siege to Jerusalem, took it by storm in the year 70 AD, and destroyed the city utterly. The Tomb and Golgotha were spared from destruction because they were not in a condition to attract attention.

The ruin of the city did not prevent some Christians from returning to Jerusalem when the fire of war had died down. They returned to it and settled on Mount Zion around the Upper Room, since it was the only quarter that had been saved from the general destruction; thus the site of Christ's Tomb remained known to them after the destruction as it had been known before it. There is no doubt that they resumed making pilgrimage to visit the holy places as was their custom.

The city remained in ruins for 62 years, until the Jews, scattered throughout Palestine, yearned for their city and rose up a second time, wrested the city from the hands of the Romans, restored some of its buildings, and began compelling the Christians to enter their religion and join them in the revolt. So the emperor Hadrian sent the commander Julius Severus to subdue the rebels; this commander fought them in the year 136 AD, defeated them utterly, killed a great many of them, and then Hadrian transformed Jerusalem, the Jewish city, into a new Roman city which he called (Aelia Capitolina), expelled the Jews from it, and forbade them to enter it except once a year to weep over their former glory. When the news reached the believers from among the Gentiles residing in (Pella), they came to Jerusalem, settled in it, and began choosing bishops for the administration of the church from among themselves. The peoples who settled in Jerusalem were Syriacs, Romans, and Greeks. Jerusalem continued in this state until Constantine embraced the Christian religion, as will be told.

Since the Temple of Solomon was the seat of the Jews' hopes and the Tomb of Christ was ever the object of the Christians' gaze and the cause of their great longing for Jerusalem, this emperor wished to obliterate the traces of both and to erect over them pagan temples for Roman gods. So he built over the ruins of the demolished Temple of Solomon a temple to the god Jupiter, and he set upon Golgotha and the Tomb and buried them beneath an artificial mound, upon which he raised a temple to Venus ("al-Zuhara"). By this deed, with which he intended to efface the features of the holy places and destroy their traces, he revived their memory forever. For the Christians clung to the Tomb and began to identify its location by means of this temple. It is gathered from what Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome [Ayrūnimus] relate that pilgrims continued to make their way to Jerusalem to visit it from all quarters throughout the second and third generations; the site of the Tomb, then, was never lost, and in the believers' continual visits to it there is decisive proof of the early Christians' devotion to it.

The Holy Tomb remained lying beneath the temple of Venus that Hadrian had erected, while Christianity endured the bitterest torments and the most horrific persecutions, until the emperor Constantine the Great embraced the Christian religion and made it the official religion of the government, so that Christianity took pride in him and began to perform the rites of its religion openly. And since this emperor's victory had been by virtue of the Cross, which he had taken as an emblem for himself and his troops, he resolved, after the convening of the Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in the year 325 AD, to search for the site of the Tomb and the Cross and to build a church over them. Accordingly, in the year 326 AD, he sent his mother Queen Helena to Jerusalem; she came and, by her son's command, demolished the pagan temple, whereupon the Holy Tomb appeared intact; she found the Cross in the cave known as the Cave of the Cross and discovered Golgotha. The event of this discovery is related by Eusebius without any doubt, and we infer from what he wrote that the site of the Tomb was well known, and that when Helena came she had only to remove the artificial mound built over it. It appears that Eusebius was present at the discovery of the Tomb, Golgotha, and the Cross, for he narrates the events as one who witnessed them himself.

The Second Period of the Resurrection:

Known as the Christian Roman era

No sooner had the news of the discovery of the Tomb, Golgotha, and the Cave of the Cross reached the ears of Constantine than he wrote to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, ordering him to build three churches, one over the Tomb, the second over the Cave of the Cross, and the third over Golgotha. When they began the building, it required leveling the ground until it was level with the Tomb, and nothing remained standing at its original height except the site of the Cross, which was left on its own. Around the Tomb, in a wide circle, were set twenty columns of marble crowned with lofty arches, surrounded by a circular wall that curves on its four sides toward two great apses, one on the right and one on the left, with a third apse between them at the rear, facing the great entrance; and the whole is crowned by a lofty, mighty dome. This building was called the Resurrection. Then two churches were built over Golgotha and over the Cave of the Cross, and the three churches were surrounded by beautiful porticoes standing on marble columns. There is no doubt that these churches were of the greatest beauty and precision of architecture and construction, so much so that they surpassed the temples of Rome in their grandeur and became the masterpiece of masterpieces in the whole world.

This magnificent building was described by Eusebius, the famous church historian, in a description matching that of the visitors after him. It was also described by many visitors, such as Saint Cyril, Theodoret bishop of Tyre, and Saint Hierotheos [Ayrūfus]. We have other details about these churches related by the Bordeaux Pilgrim, who visited Jerusalem in the year 333 AD while the construction work was in full swing, and who described the building as an eyewitness.

There are relics that show us the images of the churches Constantine built as they were. Among them is a piece of mosaic found today in the Church of Santa Pudenziana in Rome, thought to have been made in the fourth or fifth century, in which the depictions of the two churches appear clearly. There is another piece of mosaic in Madaba, east of the Jordan, which is an unrefined depiction of Jerusalem, its walls, and these two churches. And in the Museum of Milan there is a piece of ivory representing the Church of the Resurrection in its earliest period; the date of this piece goes back to the time in which the mosaic piece preserved in the aforementioned Church of Santa Pudenziana was made.

Its construction took six years and was completed in the year 335, and it was consecrated with a ceremony attended by Eusebius bishop of Caesarea and other bishops and priests, and a countless number of believers.

After its completion, many pilgrims from all parts of the world visited it, among them Silvia of Aquitaine, who visited Jerusalem in the year 385 and left us memoirs of her famous journey in which she described the holy places and the religious ceremonies in precise detail. And we conclude from the spacious area chosen for the construction of this church that it was built to hold a great congregation, as is the case now.

The remainder in the next issue