Saving the Holy Sepulchre: How Rival Christians Came Together to Rescue their Holiest Shrine [Hardcover]

Raymond Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2008

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the mother of all the churches, erected on the spot where Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead and where every Christian was born. In 1927, Jerusalem was struck by a powerful earthquake, and for decades this venerable structure stood perilously close to collapse.

In Saving the Holy Sepulchre, Raymond Cohen tells the engaging story of how three major Christian traditions--Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Orthodox--each with jealously guarded claims to the church, struggled to restore one of the great shrines of civilization. It almost didn't happen. For centuries the communities had lived together in an atmosphere of tension and mistrust based on differences of theology, language, and culture--differences so sharp that fistfights were not uncommon. And the project of restoration became embroiled in interchurch disputes and great power politics. Cohen shows how the repair of the dilapidated basilica was the result of unprecedented cooperation among the three churches. It was tortuous at times--one French monk involved in the restoration exclaimed: "I can't take any more of it. Latins--Armenians--Greeks--it is too much. I am bent over double." But thanks to the dedicated efforts of a cast of kings, popes, patriarchs, governors, monks, and architects, the deadlock was eventually broken on the eve of Pope Paul VI's historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1964.

Today, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is in better shape than it has been for five hundred years. Light and space have returned to its ancient halls, and its walls and pillars stand sound and true. Saving the Holy Sepulchre is the riveting story of how Christians put aside centuries of division to make this dream a reality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Probably few of the pilgrims and tourists who visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem are aware that for much of the 20th century the building, revered as the location of Christ's crucifixion and burial, was in danger of collapsing. In this meticulous, evenhanded account, Cohen (professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) describes step-by-step how the three major faith communities in the church (Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic) finally worked together to preserve this shrine in spite of doctrinal differences, property disputes, brawls, lack of funds and the complicated politics of the Middle East. Their goal, according to Cohen, was not interchurch reconciliation or conflict resolution but conflict management; most astonishing is the perseverance of all parties involved over a span of decades. While his concluding analysis of the project's eventual success in terms of international relations principles seems too brief, Cohen's chronological approach and strong writing maintain suspense in spite of the outcome promised in the book's title. His tale offers hope that ancient sites can be preserved in spite of seemingly impossible odds. (Mar.)
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Review

"Raymond Cohen's book traces in meticulously annotated detail the bumpy road traveled by the Christian denominations with claims to space inside the church whose foundations go back to the fourth century, to assert those claims. Chronicling complexities that make a Gordian knot look like a slip tie, Cohen, a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University, traces a process that began with insistence on preeminence and reached a point of making do with negotiated condominium, to reconstruct the crumbling complex, culminating in the dedication in 1997 of the new dome over the tomb." --Haaretz

"...meticulous, evenhanded account Cohen's chronological approach and strong writing maintain suspense in spite of the outcome promised in the book's title. His tale offers hope that ancient sites can be preserved in spite of seemingly impossible odds." --Publisher's Weekly

"A terrific story, told very well." --Rodney Stark, author of Victories of Reason: How Christianity, Freedom, and Capitalism Led to Western Success

"Saving the Holy Sepulchre tells a story of intrigue and tangled diplomacy that no novelist would invent. The book tells us a great deal about interfaith relations, about the preservation of antiquity, and about the Middle East - but the best reason to read it is that it offers a fascinating story, eloquently told." --Philip Jenkins, author of God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis

"A dramatic account told with zest and backed by careful research." --First Things

"Cohen not only has done the sort of properly conducted historical research that is rarely done on institutions with such huge religious stakes, but also...manages to make the detailed story of bickering and nastiness so riveting." --Church History

"Cohen's work of tracing this complex and unseemly history is a marvel of scholarship." --ooks and Culture

"Saving the Holy Sepulchre is a complete and very useful accounting of the modern history of the church. It is more than just a story about fixing a building; it is one that reflects the contentious nature of centuries-old claims of religious dominance in Jerusalem and international claims on holy places." --Middle East Quarterly

"Cohen writes in a particularly readable and witty style--a literary achievement that should not be taken for granted. He presents all the 'dramatis personae,' bringing them to life and placing them within the cultural and political settings in which they labored. Likewise, he is to be commended for his mastery of the topography, archaeology, and architecture of the site, as well as for his coherent analysis of architectural plans and debates, which he presents (for what is a presumably a nonspecialist audience) in a very clear manner."--The Protestant-Jewish Conundrum

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195189663
• ISBN-13: 978-0195189667
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,285,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lesson in Renovation and in Human Nature, May 23, 2009

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R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Saving the Holy Sepulchre: How Rival Christians Came Together to Rescue their Holiest Shrine (Hardcover)

For about sixteen centuries there has been an ongoing building project in Jerusalem. It is at the supposed location of Calvary and Jesus's tomb, which in between the time of the Gospels and the Emperor Constantine was originally a holy site dedicated to the goddess Venus. Constantine put a Christian basilica there, but as you can imagine, there were plenty of changes thereafter. "This is the only church in the world where first-century Herodian, second-century Hadrianic, fourth-century Constantinian, eleventh-century Byzantine, twelfth-century Crusader, nineteenth century neo-Byzantine, and twentieth-century modern masonry are visible in one place." This description of architectural history is from _Saving the Holy Sepulchre: How Rival Christians Came Together to Rescue Their Holiest Shrine_ (Oxford University Press) by Raymond Cohen. Not only does the architecture come in many different styles, but this is also "the only church in the world where six of the most ancient Christian denominations worship side by side." The minor communities, the Coptic, Ethiopian, and Syrian Orthodox churches have rights of usage of the site, but the major communities, the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Orthodox not only have rights of usage but rights of possession of portions of the building. With but one church building over this sacred site, and many church groups that view the site as sacred, sometimes worshiping at the site has been difficult, and conflicts have been even bloody. Then in the twentieth century there was the very real risk that blocks of the church, or even its entirety, might start falling on the heads of those within. Cohen's book is a meticulous documentation of how some very disputatious devout people came to eventual agreements on keeping the building together.

Problems of maintenance go back to ancient Turkish law; if you repair or cover a structure, you own it. This resulted in a hall-of-mirrors renovation policy: each sect was eager to pony up the money for repairing the structure, declining aid from any of the others; but the others would have no such thing, and so the building deteriorated. This was especially apparent after a 1927 earthquake which damaged main walls of the structure, allowing in weather to accelerate wear and tear. There was a later fire that weakened the main dome over the building. The monks and clerics might have agreed that the building was crumbling, but could come to no agreement about who was to make things better. These were factions that squabbled viciously over which of them might be allowed to clean a certain step, or where an icon might be hung. It took some bullying from the ruler of Jordan in the middle of the twentieth century to get the restoration started; he told church officials that Status Quo or not, he was going to do the work himself if no one else would. The work would have been difficult even if everyone was cooperating. The main task of stabilizing the Rotunda took over three decades. Much of Cohen's book describes the difficult negotiations over the decades, and is full of sentences like these: "Just when all seemed to be going smoothly, fresh problems arose," or "Once again, the communities were at an impasse. They knew what had to be done but disagreed on how to do it." There are many unpleasant personalities profiled here; they may have been nice enough people, even full of Christian charity in their other activities, but over and over again, they literally refused to give an inch within the shrine, and their childish bickering put it, and anyone inside it, at risk for catastrophe. The detail of their disputes is painstakingly given here, and Cohen helpfully includes floor plans and other diagrams of the building; nonetheless, it is a confusing and frustrating story.

Be that as it may, Cohen wishes it to be an optimistic one. "Whatever the future holds," he writes on the final page, "the mother church is in better shape today than it has been for five hundred years." So this is a success story, as far as it goes, and one that needed to be told. However, it may be that nothing much has changed. According to a news story too recent for Cohen to mention, another part of the roof has been found to be weak and "could collapse, endangering human life," but a turf dispute between Ethiopians and the Egyptian Coptic Church is delaying any start of repairs. The non-architectural disputes continue. Last November, Greek Orthodox monks blocked a procession of Armenian clergymen they thought were somehow invading their own sacred space, and a fistfight broke out, requiring Israeli police to bring order. We can take damaged buildings and shore them up and make them whole again; we have not yet the cleverness to do so for our own natures.