Nowadays,
when someone says, "I went to the Holy Land," we know both who they
are and where they went. They are Christians and they went to Israel (and
perhaps the few religious sites just over the borders in Egypt or Jordan).
But
for nearly three centuries after Jesus' death, it was not that way. The land
wasn't holy and there were few Christians in it. By 60 A.D., Christians in
Rome and Antioch were more visible than those in Palestine. Indeed, in Rome in
50 A.D., Christians were well-known enough (and sufficiently disliked) to be
wrongly blamed by Emperor Nero for a fire that burned much of the city. In
Israel itself, modern archaeologists have discovered no remains of churches
built prior to 324, and although we know of Christians living in Palestine and
even the names of some bishops, there is no evidence of large numbers.
Part
of this can be explained by travels of the Paul the Apostle. He went first to
Antioch, and while he went west from there into Asia Minor, Greece and
ultimately Rome itself, other missionaries went throughout Syria. Building on
Paul's influence, Christianity apparently did a better job of gaining
adherents in the lands around the eastern Mediterranean in general than in
Palestine in particular.
Another
probable reason was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions in 70
A.D., after four years of Jewish rebellion against the Empire. Rome banned the
Jews from living in Jerusalem and ultimately expelled them from all of Judea.
Jerusalem and its Temple were razed, and then blotted out from official
memory. A new colony, Aelia Capitolina, was built upon its ruins. This city's
primary trinity were of the gods of Rome itself: Jupiter, Roma, and the female
deity Aphrodite/Minerva. Temples to these gods were erected in Aelia and it
became a pagan city. And so it remained for more than two centuries, while the
name of Jerusalem passed from Roman memory.
It
was not until the Emperor Constantine became the sole Roman emperor in 324 and
declared his support for Christianity and the church, that matters began to
change. At the urging of the bishop of Jerusalem, and over the objections of
his superior the bishop of Caesarea, Constantine decided to reclaim Palestine
for Christianity by building churches at all the important sites of Jesus'
activities and even at some locations of key events of the Old Testament. But
Constantine's main interest was in recreating Jerusalem. Not as the Jerusalem
of the Jews, but as the Jerusalem of Jesus. Thus the site of Jesus'
crucifixion and burial was located, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was
built. This church soon became the highlight of every Christian's pilgrimage
to the Holy Land and has remained so down through the centuries, even under
the nearly millennium-long rule of the Muslim Ottoman Empire.
These
churches rapidly became attractions for Christian pilgrims from across the
Mediterranean world. They came in droves to worship and pray at the sites of
Christ's birth, life and death. And many of them stayed in Palestine rather
than returning home.
Surprisingly, these Christians settled away from the area where Jesus did most of his missionary work. The Christians settled in villages and built churches in Judea and in western Galilee, while Jesus carried out most of his activities in eastern Galilee around the freshwater Sea of Galilee. So although the Christians wished to live in the Holy Land, few wanted to associate themselves day-in and day-out with the holy sites of Jesus' life. Perhaps that was just too much.