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[CHORAL MUSIC]
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Welcome to Jerusalem's church of the Holy
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Sepulchre, the most hallowed Christian shrine on earth.
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According to tradition, this is the very location where
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Jesus died and was buried.
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The church is, in a word, breathtaking.
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The very air that hangs inside seems
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infused with something holy.
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But this is also a place of mystery,
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because as sacred as this structure
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is, nothing that you see here today
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existed in the time of Jesus.
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The Bible tells us that Jesus was crucified on a barren hill
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called Golgotha.
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His body was then laid out on a stone
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before being placed in a rock-cut tomb.
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Over 300 years later, when Christianity spread to Rome,
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the Emperor Constantine dispatched
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his mother Helena to the Holy Land
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to identify the exact site.
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She was led here.
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The church she placed here was destroyed and rebuilt
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over the centuries, as Jerusalem changed
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hands between Christians, Moors, and Jews.
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This is, religiously speaking, a high-traffic area.
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Today, the top of the crucifixion hill
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is under the floor of the church.
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One can also place their hands on the stone
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where Jesus' body was laid out.
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A few hundred feet away, still inside the massive building,
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is the tomb itself--
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the place where scripture says Jesus
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was interred for three days before rising from the dead.
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With so much destruction and renovation
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here, the question has always persisted--
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was this church built in the right spot?
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Well, a recent excavation here might just answer
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that question once and for all.
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The tomb had been badly weathered by time and millions
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of visitors, so in 2016, scientists were called in
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to do an emergency restoration.
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They were given just 60 hours to peer
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beneath the tomb for the first time in centuries.
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Beneath a layer of fill, they found a piece of marble
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stamped with a cross from the time of the Crusades.
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Deeper down, even older marble from the time of Constantine.
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And at the bottom, they found the original limestone bed,
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confirming the existence of a burial cave.
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All of this supports the claim that Constantine and Helena
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built on the right spot and that this may well have been
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the true tomb of Jesus Christ.