Stealing the Goddess – Temple of Venus Jerusalem
Discounting all the retro fitted stories of Saint Helena in her eighties digging up the true cross, intact, with accessories, nails, unrusted, three hundred years after Jesus supposedly used them, what you have left is an architectural monstrosity, exterior at least, of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
This church covers the area both not only of the most sacred site in Christendom, the empty tomb of Jesus, but also the site of the crucifixion, and throw in a real tourist bonus, the actual tomb of Adam, the first man.
There have been spotty repairs over the centuries after the earthquakes, fires, crusaders, etc.
But the truth of the matter is that this holy place/tourist trap is so busy 24/7, nobody wants to close it down for even a day for a good washing let alone some serious repairs and restoration.
It is shared on the clock with three Christian sects, the Latin, the Orthodox and the Armenian Churches. Fist fights break out regularly if the collection boxes are not turned over in time on a daily basis to the next time share owner. Sweet Jesus Marie.
Can’t shut the cash cow down long enough to keep it from falling down on tourists one day when the centuries of spotty repairs will finally give way in some future earthquake.
The story is that Helena, sparing no expense, tore down Hadrian’s temple of Venus to build a new shrine to her newly discovered Christian relics and burial spot on the very site of this former temple of Venus.
And why is that? Because Hadrian, the god of gods of the Roman Empire was so jealous of the strength of the new Jewish Jesus god, he buried the site of his crucifixion and resurrection under dirt and built his temple of Venus over it to hide the Christian truth. Yeah right.
Truth be told, Helena's son Constantine was broke or close to it. Spending his money on arms and being in constant warfare to keep his throne, what you have really IMHO is a recycled Temple of Venus, the round part of it at least, and with and by coincidence the tomb of Jesus in the exact center of Venus’s old ongoing never torn down temple.
And of course, Hadrian's Temple of Venus in Jerusalem was no doubt round, exotic and beautiful like Hadrian’s Pantheon in Rome and Hadrian’s, slightly smaller, Temple of Venus in Baalbek Lebanon. Hadrian it would seem liked to build, copy, rebuild and improve on designs he admired most in his personal obsession, megalomania, concerned with places of worship.
The rest of the present church is more or less a lean to hodge podge of styles hanging onto the old Temple of Venus, with a slapped together handyman process by crusaders and others, pasting back the pieces of the place after the latest earthquake or burned down by the local Muslim in charge to rid himself of an annoying tourist trap, eyesore, in the middle of his tranquil domain. (Daily fist fitting among the monks over the collection boxes etc. – Muslim tolerance can only go so far.)
There is an incident recorded in the early nineteenth century of four hundred pilgrims getting killing in one of these daily monk fests for Christ in Jerusalem.
History, propaganda, has Constantine as some great force in the West. I can see where his splitting his empire in two in terms of administration might have made sense. But he was totally writing the west off.
Only brute force, such as his army, was the only glue keeping the old empire together. That and his, designer, centralized, under the command of the army, new religion.
His building a new capital city in the east was merely building a lifeboat for those who could afford a first class ticket on the Titanic.
Anyway, getting back to the surviving to this day, but occupied by a zombie worship cult, Temple of Venus in Jerusalem.
The present so called Sepulchre of Jesus, covered by a falling down garage like looking structure (can't shut the tourist cash cow down long enough to repair it), is probably, merely, the carved out stone pedestal of the old, long gone statue of the goddess Venus that once stood where Jesus never lay.
The Orthodox Church celebrates the Dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on September 26 (Gregorian), the same date as the ancient Roman festival of Venus. Some coincidence. Right?
.
