| During the three pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles), Jews flocked to Jerusalem. No one knows how many: even today, with aerial photography, it is hard to estimate the size of a crowd.
Many would have received hospitality in the homes of Jerusalemites, who made guest rooms available for this purpose. Homeowners were prohibited from taking rent from pilgrims because the homes in Jerusalem "belong to the tribes," although the pilgrims would have felt a social obligation (not legally binding) to give gifts in return. More. (Those who could not find accommodation in the city would have stayed in tents outside, as Josephus indicates in Antiquities XVII 9.3.)
...all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)
Both these events relate to the history of ancient Israel.
The Lord's Supper: According to the first three ("synoptic") Gospels, this meal was a Passover Seder. And what was Passover at that time? The festival had both an agricultural and a historical significance. (As did the Feast of Tabernacles.) Agriculturally, Passover marked the barley harvest. Historically, the Book of Exodus (12:14) calls it a festival of remembrance, on which the children of Israel remember how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. Jesus broke bread, in our earliest account (I Corinthians 11:24-25), saying,
"This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."
He presents himself as the fulfillment of the redemption that began with the exodus from Egypt.
The Feast of Weeks or Pentecost corresponds to the wheat harvest, but the First Testament does not connect it to a historical event. The Rabbis did so, however, linking it to the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Here, then, we also find a fulfillment: the giving of the Holy Spirit occurs on the anniversary of the giving of the Torah.
And Hadrian found the temple of God trodden down and the whole city devastated, save for a few houses and the very small church of God, where the disciples, when they had returned after the Savior had ascended from the Mount of Olives, went to the upper room. For there it had been built, that is, in that portion of Zion that escaped destruction, together with blocks of houses in the neighborhood of Zion and the seven synagogues that alone remained standing in Zion, like solitary huts. (On Weights and Measures, 14-15)
By the time Epiphanius wrote, the term "Zion" was confined to Jerusalem's western hill (see Mt. Zion). In 348 one Cyril, later to become bishop of Jerusalem, delivered a sermon referring to the place "where the Pentecost Spirit descended upon the apostles, namely in the Upper Church of the Apostles." Was this the same "small church of God" in Zion referred to by Epiphanius?
Apparently so, for later in the 4th century a bishop named John refers to...
the dedication of the Holy and Glorious Zion, which is the mother of all churches, that had been founded by the Apostles, which Emperor Theodosius the Great (379-395) has built, enlarged, and glorified, and in which the Holy Spirit had come down on the holy day of Pentecost. (van Esbroeck, 314-315.)
When Egeria describes the Jerusalem liturgy (ca. 394 AD), she mentions that the Sunday morning service is held in the large church built by Constantine in Golgotha, "that is, behind the Cross (today the Holy Sepulcher - SL), on every Lord's Day throughout the year except on the one Sunday of Pentecost, when they proceed to Zion." (My emphasis - SL)
There is a strong tradition, then, at least from the 4th century, maybe from the 2nd, and even perhaps from the time of the event itself, connecting a place on Mt. Zion with the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
There is no 4th-century tradition, however, connecting the same place with Jesus' Passover meal. According to Egeria, that meal was remembered on Maundy Thursday "behind the Cross" at Constantine's Church of the Resurrection.
Thus the 4th-century Christians, despite their interest in identifying biblical sites, did not have a traditional place for the Lord's supper, as they did for Pentecost. Since both events occurred in upper rooms, however, the one on Mt. Zion attracted the memory of the Lord's supper a century later.
With one or both of these traditions at their backs, the Byzantines built a grand church called Holy Zion (Hagia Zion), which appears on the 6th-century Madeba map. It is unclear whether it incorporated the older Church of the Apostles.
Logistics: Open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but Friday only to 1 p.m.
© 2003 Near East Tourist Agency (NET) Text © 2003 Stephen Langfur
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When
the Persian army invaded the Byzantine Empire in 614, it destroyed
most of the land's churches, including Holy Zion. After the Persian
withdrawal, the Christians rebuilt it, but in the early 11th century