Abstract:
The tomb of Jesus posed two main problems for early Christians: firstly, the earliest memory of
the tomb seems to recall it as the site of the dishonourable burial of a man executed as an enemy
of the Roman imperial system; and secondly, the narrative of the empty tomb stood for several
reasons in an ambiguous relationship to the announcement of the resurrection. Yet within three
centuries, that ‘place’ had been rehabilitated both architecturally and ritually (memorialised
together with the site of the crucifixion) as ‘sacred space’ in the Church of the Resurrection
(the typical Eastern designation for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). For discussion, see
Morris 2005:33–34). By about 380 CE, Cyril of Jerusalem could thus pronounce this place ‘the
very centre of the world’ (Cat. 13.28). The present article argues that ‘the place where they put
him’ was not originally venerated as ‘sacred space’, but rather was remembered as a place of
shame; and also describes several different narrative and theological strategies, introduced in
the canonical gospels and interpreted by early Christian readers, that changed how the tomb
of Jesus was remembered and that allowed for it eventually to be regarded as ‘sacred space’.
