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  • [CHORAL MUSIC]

  • Welcome to Jerusalem's church of the Holy

  • Sepulchre, the most hallowed Christian shrine on earth.

  • According to tradition, this is the very location where

  • Jesus died and was buried.

  • The church is, in a word, breathtaking.

  • The very air that hangs inside seems

  • infused with something holy.

  • But this is also a place of mystery,

  • because as sacred as this structure

  • is, nothing that you see here today

  • existed in the time of Jesus.

  • The Bible tells us that Jesus was crucified on a barren hill

  • called Golgotha.

  • His body was then laid out on a stone

  • before being placed in a rock-cut tomb.

  • Over 300 years later, when Christianity spread to Rome,

  • the Emperor Constantine dispatched

  • his mother Helena to the Holy Land

  • to identify the exact site.

  • She was led here.

  • The church she placed here was destroyed and rebuilt

  • over the centuries, as Jerusalem changed

  • hands between Christians, Moors, and Jews.

  • This is, religiously speaking, a high-traffic area.

  • Today, the top of the crucifixion hill

  • is under the floor of the church.

  • One can also place their hands on the stone

  • where Jesus' body was laid out.

  • A few hundred feet away, still inside the massive building,

  • is the tomb itself--

  • the place where scripture says Jesus

  • was interred for three days before rising from the dead.

  • With so much destruction and renovation

  • here, the question has always persisted--

  • was this church built in the right spot?

  • Well, a recent excavation here might just answer

  • that question once and for all.

  • The tomb had been badly weathered by time and millions

  • of visitors, so in 2016, scientists were called in

  • to do an emergency restoration.

  • They were given just 60 hours to peer

  • beneath the tomb for the first time in centuries.

  • Beneath a layer of fill, they found a piece of marble

  • stamped with a cross from the time of the Crusades.

  • Deeper down, even older marble from the time of Constantine.

  • And at the bottom, they found the original limestone bed,

  • confirming the existence of a burial cave.

  • All of this supports the claim that Constantine and Helena

  • built on the right spot and that this may well have been

  • the true tomb of Jesus Christ.

[CHORAL MUSIC]

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