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Tomb of Jesus

Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense. Station 14 of the Calvary of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption (Villamelendro de Valdavia).
Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense. Station 14 of the Calvary of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption (Villamelendro de Valdavia).

According to the gospel accounts, Jesus was buried in a tomb which originally belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man who, believing Jesus was the Messiah, offered his own sepulcher for the burial of Jesus.[1] Possible locations for the tomb of Jesus include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Garden Tomb.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

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A diagram of the modern church showing the traditional site of Calvary and the Tomb of Jesus

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.[2] It contains, according to traditions dating back to the fourth century, the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified,[3] at a place known as Calvary (or Golgotha), and Jesus's empty tomb, where he is believed by Christians to have been buried and resurrected.[4]

The marble covering protecting the original limestone slab upon which Jesus was thought to have been laid by Joseph of Arimathea was temporarily removed for restoration and cleaning on October 26, 2016.[5] This is just one of several arguments supporting the identification of tomb of Jesus at this site.[6]

In the Apocrypha

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Within the apocryphal text known as the Gospel of Peter, the tomb of Jesus is called "Joseph's garden".[7]

Other locations

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The Garden Tomb

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The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem.

The Garden Tomb is a rock-cut tomb in Jerusalem, which was unearthed in 1867 and is considered by some Protestants to be the tomb of Jesus. The tomb has been dated by Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay to the 8th–7th centuries BC.[8]

Talpiot Tomb

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The Talpiot Tomb (or Talpiyot Tomb) is a rock-cut tomb discovered in 1980 in the East Talpiot neighborhood, five kilometers (three miles) south of the Old City in East Jerusalem. It contained ten ossuaries, six inscribed with epigraphs, including one interpreted as "Yeshua bar Yehosef" ("Jeshua, son of Joseph"), although the inscription is partially illegible, and its translation and interpretation is widely disputed.[9] It is widely believed by scholars that the Jesus in Talpiot (if this is indeed his name) is not Jesus of Nazareth, but a person with the same name, since he appears to have a son named Judas (buried next to him) and the tomb shows signs of belonging to a wealthy Judean family, while Jesus came from a low-class Galilean family.[10]

Roza Bal

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Roza Bal shrine in Srinagar, Kashmir

The Roza Bal is a shrine located in the Khanyar quarter in downtown area of Srinagar in Kashmir. The word roza means tomb, the word bal mean place.[11][12][13][14][15] Locals believe a sage is buried here, Yuzasaf (alternatively Yuz Asaf or Youza Asouph), alongside another Muslim holy man, Mir Sayyid Naseeruddin.

The shrine was relatively unknown until the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, claimed in 1899 that it is actually the tomb of Jesus.[16] This view is maintained by Ahmadis today, though it is rejected by the local Sunni caretakers of the shrine, one of whom said "the theory that Jesus is buried anywhere on the face of the earth is blasphemous to Islam."[17]

Kirisuto no haka

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Alleged tomb of Jesus in Shingo Village
Main article: Shingō, Aomori § "Tomb of Jesus"

Shingō village in Japan contains another location of what is purported to be the last resting place of Jesus, the so-called "Tomb of Jesus" (Kirisuto no haka), and the residence of Jesus's last descendants, the family of Sajiro Sawaguchi.[18] According to the Sawaguchi family's claims, Jesus Christ did not die on the cross at Golgotha. Instead his brother, Isukiri,[19] took his place on the cross, while Jesus fled across Siberia to Mutsu Province, in northern Japan. Once in Japan, he changed his name to Torai Tora Daitenku, became a rice farmer, married a twenty-year old Japanese woman named Miyuko, and raised three daughters near what is now Shingō. While in Japan, it is asserted that he traveled, learned, and eventually died at the age of 106. His body was exposed on a hilltop for four years. According to the customs of the time, Jesus's bones were collected, bundled, and buried in the mound purported to be the grave of Jesus Christ.[20][21]

References

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  1. ^ Lidz, Franz. "The Little-Known Legend of Jesus in Japan". Smithsonian. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  2. ^ "Complete compendium of Church of the Holy Sepulchre". Madain Project. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  3. ^ McMahon, Arthur L. (1913). "Holy Sepulchre". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  4. ^ "Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem". Jerusalem: Sacred-destinations.com. 21 February 2010. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
  5. ^ Romey, Kristin (October 31, 2016). "Unsealing of Christ's Reputed Tomb Turns Up New Revelations". National Geographic. Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City. Archived from the original on February 22, 2021. Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  6. ^ https://dannythedigger.com/holy-sepulchre-jesus-burial/
  7. ^ Walter Richard (1894). The Gospel According to Peter: A Study. Longmans, Green. p. 8. Retrieved 2022-04-02.
  8. ^ Gabriel Barkay, The Garden Tomb, published in Biblical Archaeology Review March/April 1986
  9. ^ Heiser, Michael. "Evidence Real and Imagined: Thinking Clearly About the "Jesus Family Tomb"" (PDF). pp. 9–13. Retrieved 2007-06-08.
  10. ^ Cooperman, Alan (2007-02-28). "'Lost Tomb of Jesus' Claim Called a Stunt". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  11. ^ Ghulām Muhyi'd Dīn Sūfī Kashīr, being a history of Kashmir from the earliest times to our own 1974 – Volume 2 – Page 520 "Bal, in Kashmiri, means a place and is applied to a bank, or a landing place."
  12. ^ B. N. Mullik – My years with Nehru: Kashmir – Volume 2 1971 – Page 117 "Due to the presence of the Moe-e-Muqaddas on its bank the lake gradually acquired the name Hazratbal (Bal in Kashmiri means lake) and the mosque came to be known as the Hazratbal Mosque. Gradually the present Hazratbal village grew ..."
  13. ^ Nigel B. Hankin Hanklyn-janklin: a stranger's rumble-tumble guide to some words 1997 Page 125 (Although bal means hair in Urdu, in this instance the word is Kashmiri for a place – Hazratbal – the revered place.) HAZRI n Urdu Lit. presence, attendance. In British days the word acquired the meaning to Europeans and those associated with ..."
  14. ^ Andrew Wilson The Abode of Snow: Observations on a Journey from Chinese Tibet to ... 1875 reprint 1993– Page 343 Bal means a place, and Ash is the satyr of Kashmir traditions."
  15. ^ Parvéz Dewân Parvéz Dewân's Jammû, Kashmîr, and Ladâkh: Kashmîr – 2004 Page 175 "Manas means 'mountain' and 'bal' means 'lake' (or even 'place'). Thus, the ..."
  16. ^ J. Gordon Melton The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena 2007 "Ahmad specifically repudiated Notovitch on Jesus's early travels to India, but claimed that Jesus did go there late in His life. The structure identified by Ahmad as Jesus's resting place is known locally as the Roza Bal (or Rauza Bal)."
  17. ^ Times of India Tomb Raider: Jesus buried in Srinagar? 8 May 2010 "One of the caretakers of the tomb, Mohammad Amin, alleged that they were forced to padlock the shrine ... He believed that the theory that Jesus is buried anywhere on the face of the earth is blasphemous to Islam."
  18. ^ "From Japanese text of the sign included in this article". Archived from the original on December 11, 2019.
  19. ^ "Japan Travel: Jesus in Japan". Metropolis. Archived from the original on 2006-08-25. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
  20. ^ "The Japanese Jesus Trail". BBC. September 9, 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
  21. ^ "Land of the Rising Son". Fortean Times. May 1998. Archived from the original on 2007-03-10. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
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