The subtitle of Raymond Cohen's instructive book might more accurately read, "How Christians Nearly Destroyed Their Holiest Shrine." The battle over the supposed location of Calvary and Jesus' tomb has raged for two millennia, beginning with the Roman Emperor Hadrian—who, in the 2nd century, as part of his rebuilding of Jerusalem, constructed a temple to Venus over the site. In the 4th century, Emperor Constantine had the temple replaced with a Christian basilica. Then in 614 Persians swept in, burning the church.

When Muslim rulers replaced the Persians, they rebuilt and protected the shrine. Attacks four centuries later on the limestone of the tomb helped inflame European Christians. When the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, they renovated the earlier rotunda and its chapels and expanded the church to incorporate the excavated hill of Calvary. Though Arab Muslims soon retook Jerusalem, Saladin continued to protect Christian holy places.

Interestingly, the property was best cared for under Ottoman rule. By the 14th century, oversight of the church was in the hands of Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Orthodox monks, with Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Orthodox monks claiming "rights of access." The grand vizier, Rajib Pasha, told the French ambassador, representing the Latin interest, "These places, my Lord, belong to the Sultan and he gives them to whomsoever he pleases." Under sharia law, Cohen says, all holy places, including Jewish and Christian shrines, were to be protected (though in practice such protection was often lacking). Also, no single entity could "own" religious shrines in the Western sense.

Franciscans and Orthodox monks vied—or paid for—favor with their Ottoman overlords. In 1757, wearied of their intrigues and violent skirmishes, the Turks arranged what came to be known as the Status Quo, which divided the church among the rival groups.

At the center of the church, on an east-west axis, stand two domes. The larger, called the Rotunda, contains the Edicule, a building-within-a building. It contains the entrance to Christ's tomb. The smaller dome, the Katholicon, joins the Rotunda at the Triumphal Arch. Around both the Katholicon and the Rotunda are numerous outcroppings of chapels sacred to the various factions. Also courtyards, both covered and open, ambulatories, porches, apses, galleries, a refectory, store rooms, and even an ancient latrine.

In this war of square feet, the Status Quo gave the Greeks the lion's share, followed by the Roman Catholic Franciscans, with the Armenians running a distant third. Trailing behind in the dust of small claims were the Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Orthodox monks. The document also established rules for the use of the common spaces and designated times for each of the parties' services. Finally, it entrusted in perpetuity the keys to the church to two Muslim families living next door.

The Status Quo, at first a tacit agreement, was given written form in 1853. When the ruling was incorporated into international law in 1878, an added clause explicitly stated that "no alterations can be made in the status quo in the holy places." Unfortunately, the document was later destroyed in a fire, and each faction retains its own reconstructed version of the original. (You begin to wonder, reading Cohen's account, why Mel Brooks has never made a film based on this saga.)

No doubt the hope of both the Ottoman sultans and the international courts was that the Status Quo would do away with conflict between the various church parties. Instead, the ruling, especially the phrase concerning "no alterations," rigidified territorial imperatives to an extent undreamed of by its authors. (A ladder was left on a window ledge over the church's entrance sometime before 1852. Window ledges and doors are designated as common areas. So far, no one has removed the ladder.) The seemingly straightforward ruling did not do justice to the complexity of the disputes. The Armenians, for instance, had been given custody of the Chapel of Nicodemus in an apse let into the wall of the Rotunda. At the entrance of the Edicule, the Copts had a small chapel. But since the Greeks controlled the Rotunda, access to such spaces became problematic.

The later history of the basilica is a shameful tale of petty meanness as the various factions asserted their territorial rights. Squabbles erupted over who would be allowed to scrub a certain step or on what pillar a party might hang an icon. Meanwhile, damage from natural disasters and human neglect went unrepaired by the clerical conservators. A serious earthquake in 1927 severely damaged the supporting walls of the Rotunda. Water and weather had further eroded them. A subsequent fire weakened the large dome.

Following World War I, the British Mandate inherited the hostilities engendered by the primacy of Greek custody. In an effort to save the structure from collapse following the 1927 earthquake, the British employed architect William Harvey, whose meticulous 1939 report on the history and current condition of the church established a baseline for measuring future decline. Harvey concluded that restoration of the Rotunda, both its walls and dome, needed immediate attention. Other parts of the higgledy-piggledy conglomeration were in a grave state as well.

The only thing that remained unshakeable was the monks' determination to jealously defend their rights of custody. Repairs could only be carried out by the mutual agreement of the parties involved. And, quite literally, no one was giving an inch.

Next, a series of experts from the international community of architects spent years testing the condition of the structures, proposing repairs, and advising the monks, mostly to no avail. Making repairs on any part might assert ownership, and no one was willing to grant anyone else that risky privilege.

Then came World War II and the ascendancy of Archbishop Gustavo Testa, the Roman apostolic delegate in Palestine. Until then, the elected Greek Patriarch of the Holy Places in Jerusalem had always shown the most muscle, even during the decades when the patriarchs in charge were wantonly corrupt. The Italian Testa proved a wily fox and a match for Patriarch Timotheos Themlis, an efficient administrator and skilled linguist.

Testa appears to have represented not only the Roman Church but also the Mussolini government. In 1940, as Italy invaded Egypt, he was finishing the design for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as a Roman Catholic cathedral, a dream he expected to be realized as soon as the Italian army took over Palestine. His intentions were echoed in a sermon by the Bishop of Terracina: "Only when the Flag of Fascist and Catholic Italy is unfurled over Christ's Sepulchre will the Holy Land have received the veneration it deserves." Even after the establishment of the state of Israel, Testa continued to represent the Roman Church in Palestine.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims visited the shrine annually, unaware that the whole structure might well have come crashing down around their ears, owing to the unwillingness of the putative conservators to agree on its basic maintenance. Not until the decade of 1951-1961 did the various powers finally began to make progress in negotiating plans for the church's restoration, and then only because the ruler of Jordan threatened to take matters into his own hands.

Eventually a Common Technical Bureau was established to oversee the work. An archaeological excavation of the buried foundations showed that the current outer walls follow the outline of the Crusader church. It took over three decades before the stabilization and repair of the Rotunda was completed in 1997. The Edicule within the Rotunda that covers the empty tomb is still waiting for agreements on its repair.

Sadly, the hostilities have not ended. In 2002 a monk moved his chair into the shade from its designated location. The resulting mêlée sent eleven monks to the hospital. In 2004, a chapel door was left open. No one was arrested after the fist fight. On Palm Sunday 2008, a Greek monk was ejected by rival monks from their territory. When police came, the brawlers turned on them. Yet another squabble made the news several months ago.

Cohen's work of tracing this complex and unseemly history is a marvel of scholarship. The common reader may well feel overwhelmed by the quantity of detail, both historical and technical. No doubt recognizing this difficulty, Cohen provides floor plans and elevations of the structure, a glossary of architectural terms, and a dramatis personae as well as the usual index and bibliography. The 79 pages of notes are mercifully placed at the end of the text in order to avoid interrupting the narrative. A professor of international studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Cohen lives in the vicinity of the church. Hearing of clerical clashes, he strolled over one day to see the action. That was the beginning of his interest in the church and its history. His research is both meticulous and evenhanded. Christians of whatever stripe should be grateful that he has put the mildest and most hopeful interpretation possible on a chapter in our history that does little credit to the Christ who rose from that tomb.

Virginia and David Owens live and write in Huntsville, Texas. Praying with Beads: Daily Prayers for the Christian Year, which Virginia wrote with Nan Lewis Doerr, was published by Eerdmans in 2007. Virginia and David Owens live and write in Huntsville, Texas. Praying with Beads: Daily Prayers for the Christian Year, which Virginia wrote with Nan Lewis Doerr, was published by Eerdmans in 2007.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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