CASE FILE: Tomb of Christ
THE SCENE: Jerusalem
LEAD DETECTIVES: Archaeologists Martin and Birthe Biddle
For centuries, those who visited a certain spot in Jerusalem believed they stood within what was merely a symbolic representation of Jesus Christ’s burial place. But what if the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, an ancient, crumbling structure, actually did house Christ’s tomb? SECRETS OF THE DEAD: “The Tomb of Christ” explores this possibility using a decade of painstaking research, infrared thermography and a rigorous archeological technique known as photogrammetry. Reconstructing Christ’s final days, this episode traces the history and various incarnations of the tomb through the efforts of an Oxford professor who, with his wife, has been studying the site for ten years. Is the very rock shelf on which Christ’s body was laid 2,000 years ago within the reach of modern science? Or will we always wonder?
