ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 27, 1997 TAG: 9703270043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: JERUSALEM
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
A tourist walk established by monks turned into tradition, then graduated into religious sacrament.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims walk the Via Dolorosa every year around Holy Week, carrying wooden crosses and singing hymns as they retrace Jesus' path to crucifixion.
Some Bible scholars now say the pilgrims have been going the wrong way.
``The Via Dolorosa has been determined by an accident of history,'' said Jerome Murphy O'Connor, a Dominican priest who recently published an article on the subject in Bible Review, a Washington-based magazine.
The traditional Via Dolorosa, or Way of Sorrows, is a cobblestone path running through the walled Old City from east to west. But Murphy O'Connor, whose study is based in part on work by other scholars, says the real route Jesus took went from west to east - and never touched the Via Dolorosa.
There is little dispute among scholars that Jesus ended his walk with the cross at the site marked today by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. But where did he start?
The traditional Via Dolorosa begins in the northeastern corner of the Old City at Antonia's Fortress, the Romans' military headquarters. Tradition holds that's where Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, tried and sentenced Jesus.
But Murphy O'Connor said it would make no sense for Pilate - who was visiting Jerusalem - to stay at the fortress rather than the more luxurious palace of King Herod. The palace also was known as the house of the procurators.
The palace is on the western side of the Old City, so Jesus would have proceeded eastward - through what is now a covered bazaar - to an abandoned quarry, the location of today's Holy Sepulcher.
Archaeologists say the real route toward the crucifixion may never be known.
``We know where it ended, but we don't know where it started,'' said Dan Bahat, former chief archaeologist of Jerusalem. Bahat, however, said it was reasonable to assume that Jesus' trial took place at Herod's palace.
Murphy O'Connor said the traditional route of the Via Dolorosa was part of a tour for visiting pilgrims developed by the Franciscans, custodians of the Holy Land since the 14th century.
``Once [the new map] had been established, it acquired the sanction of tradition,'' he said.
Tens of thousands of people now follow the path every year, many of them during Holy Week, although violence between Israelis and Palestinians this year has been causing cancellations.
Should Christians now follow a different path?
Palestinian shopkeepers who sell olive wood crosses and bottles of holy water along the Via Dolorosa don't think so.
``It would ruin the whole business,'' said Ibrahim Zahar, 44, who sells luminescent posters depicting Jesus.
Murphy O'Connor suggested it was better not to tamper with tradition: ``The fact that thousands of pilgrims over thousands of years have prayed here is much more important than what I think.''
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