CONFLICTS AND CONTRASTS MAKE JERUSALEM ENDLESSLY FASCINATING

THE CHURCH OF the Holy Sepulchre, traditionally identified as the site of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, is shared by half a dozen denominations under a baroque "status quo" agreement signed in 1757.

- JACOB SULLUM

The agreement, which could be viewed as an attempt to reduce conflict by establishing something like property rights, aimed to prevent interdenominational violence, which nevertheless occasionally breaks out between clerics with contradictory views of the prerogatives assigned to each group.

Near the church's entrance is a conspicuous symbol of that uneasy arrangement: a three-century-old wooden ladder that connects a ledge to an upper-level window. Although that section of the building is assigned to the Armenian Apostolic Church, no one is allowed to mess with the “immovable ladder,” lest all hell break loose.

Old as they are, the clashes that inspired the status quo pact are recent by local standards. The original church, completed in 335 C.E. under Constantine the Great, replaced a pagan temple that Hadrian had built over a Jewish burial ground. The church was destroyed in 1009 at the order of Fatimid ruler al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah and rebuilt by Byzantine emperors in the mid-11th century.

All of that amounts to a small but representative slice of Jerusalem's 5,000-year history, which features a long succession of powers contending for control of the same territory, including Canaanites, Egyptians, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, various Arab caliphates, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, and a fading British Empire. The City of Peace has been a locus of conflict for a very long time—a story that continues to this day.