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The Holy Sepulchre

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The Edicule (from the Latin aediculum - a small building) in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Israel.

There's an interesting connection between the Church of the Holly Sepulchre and the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens. The Temple of Zeus was "under construction" for over 600 years, until the Roman Emperor Hadrian visited Greece in 125 AD and gave the order to complete the temple. Five years later the same Hadrian came to Jerusalem, destroyed in the first Roman-Jewish war, with the intent to suppress the rebellious province of Judaea once and for all. Hadrian of course did quite the opposite - he renamed Judaea as Syria Palaestina, re-established Jerusalem as a Roman polis Aelia Capitolina, barring Jews from entering it, abolished circumcision, plowed the Temple Mount, erecting a temple of Jupiter/Zeus and building another temple, dedicated to Venus/Aphrodite. All of this practically forced the Jews to revolt again in 132 AD (the Bar Kokhba revolt).

Hadrian's temple of Venus, stood until 325 AD, when empress Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, demolished the temple and built The Church of the Holly Sepulchre on the exact same spot.

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