The Final Resting Place Of Jesus Unveiled 

By | October 10, 2019

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Israel. Jerusalem. The Tomb of Christ at The Holy Sepulchre. Aedicula. Old city. (Photo by: PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Israel. Jerusalem. The Tomb of Christ at The Holy Sepulchre. Aedicula. Old city. (Photo by: PHAS/Universal Images Gro

Thanks to Tom Hanks, Dan Brown, and The Da Vinci Code, the study of religious texts and sects is more popular than ever. While its depiction of life as a Harvard professor of art history and symbology is completely dramatized, and one of those things isn't even a thing, the movie sparked renewed interest in religious relics, the most important of which must surely be Jesus's tomb.

In 2016, archaeologists opened what is believed to be the final resting place of Jesus Christ in what is known today as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. No human had seen the famous figure's remains since church officials encased the tomb in layers of marble in 1555, so it was a fairly big deal. The reaction of the resident archaeologist, Fredrick Hiebert, likely speaks for us all: "I'm absolutely amazed," he said. "My knees are shaking a little bit because I wasn't expecting this."

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The Church of the Holy Sepulcher (cbn.com)

A Limited Examination

For 60 hours, researchers were allowed access to the sainted tomb before the church resealed it, likely for decades. "We saw where Jesus Christ was laid down," Father Isidoros Fakitsas, the superior of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, told the The New York Times of the awe-inspiring experience. "Before, nobody has. Or at least nobody alive today. We have the history, the tradition. Now we saw with our own eyes the actual burial place of Jesus Christ."