S-07. Rich Man's Tomb

Voice 4

Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Peter Laverock. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier to understand no matter where in the world you live.

In today's programme we look for a special place. Something wonderful happened in this special place. There is no map to help us find it. But there are some ancient stories that tell us what it is like.

Voice 1

Mary, can you smell the flowers? Careful! It is difficult to see where we are going. The sun is only just coming up. Since Friday we have learned where the path is! We will get there soon.

Voice 2

We were all frightened that day. Now it is Sunday morning and we are not so frightened. I think it will be safe today. I hope the soldiers will be sleeping. Then they will not laugh at us or hurt us.

Voice 1

Ah! Mary, look! The soldiers have gone away.

Voice 2

Oh no! What is happening? The earth is shaking.

Voice 3

Do not be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus. You are looking for the man who died - the man who was executed. He is not here. He is alive again. Come and see the place where he was.

Voice 4

This is from the story of Jesus told in the Bible by Matthew. It describes things that happened in Jerusalem, in the Middle East. The angel says 'Come and see the place where he was'. Well, after two thousand years of history, I wonder if it is possible to see 'the place where he was'. I have been to Jerusalem only once in my life. I was there for one day; one long and very busy day. I was with a lot of people on a holiday. A holiday guide showed us the beautiful churches of Jerusalem. We also looked at the Temple of the Jewish people. Only one wall of it is still there, the western wall. And there is a large mosque - a place of worship for Muslims. The mosque is called the Dome of the Rock. I was in the middle of one of the most famous cities in the world. But where was the place that Matthew wrote about? Marina Santee is here now to talk about a man who is also in the story of Jesus.

Voice 5

When Jesus was in Jerusalem he had many followers. Some were very rich and powerful. One of these men was Joseph of Arimathea. He was a leader of the Jewish people. He had a special place cut out of a rock. He was making a place to bury the bodies of dead people. Rich men liked to have these places, called tombs. If your body was in a tomb then people would remember you. Your name would remain famous for years. When soldiers executed Jesus in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, Joseph took the body and put it in his own family tomb.

Voice 4

In the Bible, there is another detail about the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. It says that there were flowers and trees around the tomb. This shows that Joseph was a rich man! He employed workers to look after the flowers and trees around his tomb. His workers made a beautiful garden around his tomb.

The surprising thing is, there is a tomb just like this in Jerusalem today. It is on the Nablus Road. It is a quiet place called the Garden Tomb. Many people visit it today. An historian named General Charles Gordon found it more than one hundred and twenty years ago. General Gordon was a British soldier. He was interested in finding the real places in Bible stories.

Voice 5

General Gordon was visiting a friend in Jerusalem in the year 1884. He was looking across the city one day when he saw a hill in the shape of a human head. He knew that in the Bible the place where Jesus died was called Golgotha. It is a word in the Hebrew language which means 'a hill that looks like the human head-bone, the skull'.

Voice 4

General Gordon went to the hill that looked like a skull. Across the road he saw a small piece of land with no houses on it. This land belonged to a Greek man. The man had already found a lot of human bones in a hole in the rock. This made General Gordon think that it could be an ancient place for burying human bodies.

Voice 5

A few years later, the General was killed in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. But his ideas about the piece of land in Jerusalem did not die with him. His friends decided to investigate the place. They needed money to buy the land. And in the famous London newspaper, the Times, they appealed for money. In 1894 they had two thousand pounds. That was enough money to buy the land and look after it. To this day it still belongs to a British group called the Garden Tomb Association.

Voice 4

Experts still debate the question of the Garden Tomb today. There is another part of Jerusalem that could be the place where Jesus had been buried. It is a rock in the city where there is now a beautiful church. This church was first built in the year 326. It was destroyed two times. And it was rebuilt for the third time in 1149. Is it the real place where Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus? Many have believed this over the years. But the church is surrounded by the ancient city walls of Jerusalem. And in those days people did not bury dead bodies in the city. They buried bodies on the other side of the wall. I do not want to start a big debate on the programme. Jesus is not like other famous men who have a tomb to help us remember them. Let us close with some words from the guide book of the Garden Tomb. I hope you can visit the place one day.

Voice 3

There is no way of knowing if this is the true place. Too many centuries have passed. Yet how much does it matter? The Bible gives only a few details of the place. The Bible stories are more concerned with telling us that the tomb is empty. The point of the story is that Jesus came back to life. Faith in Jesus does not depend on knowing where he was buried. As it says on the door of the Garden Tomb, 'He is not here; he is risen.'

Voice 5

Peter Laverock wrote and produced this Spotlight programme. You can listen again and download the script on our website at www.radio.english.net. This programme is called 'Rich Man's Tomb' Thank you for listening and goodbye.