History: Hiding pagan places: David Keys reports on research which casts doubt on the authenticity of several Christian holy sites

CHRISTIANITY'S most sacred places - said by the Church to be the site of the birth and death of Christ - were built as part of a ruthless campaign against paganism, and have no real connection with the events they purport to commemorate, according to new research by an ecclesiastical historian.

The establishment of Christian sacred sites in the Holy Land was a 4th century phenomenon which occurred 300 years after the death of Christ, says an authority on the history of the early Church, Dr Joan Taylor.

In a new study of Christian sites in the Holy Land, Christians and the Holy Places, published by Oxford University Press, Dr Taylor states that the famous Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was built primarily to replace a pagan shrine dedicated to the god of agriculture Tammuz-Adonis. She also says the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to mark the site of Christ's crucifixion and burial, replaced a temple of the goddess of sex and fertility, Venus.

Neither of these sites had been venerated by Christians before the 4th century, her research has revealed, and both sites were seized from the pagans in the reign of the pro-Christian 4th century Roman emperor Constantine.

'These sacred sites were established as part of a Roman imperial policy which sought to destroy non-Christian religion in the land of the Bible and develop a focus for Christian piety there', says Dr Taylor, a fellow in Religious Studies at Waikato University in Hamilton, New Zealand.

'The 4th century Church systematically appropriated pagan shrines and other non-Christian religious sites, in order to create Christian holy places', she says. 'This marks out the region as a Holy Land - a zone of spiritual significance.

'This contrasts with the situation prior to the 4th century, for in the 1st to 3rd centuries Christians had rejected the idea that earthly sites could be sacred, deeming it to be a pagan notion', she says.

Some scholarly early Christians had travelled to what is now Israel out of historical interest, but they were not pilgrims spurred on by any feeling that the area had any intrinsic sanctity. 'It was the then emperor Constantine who injected the pagan concept of sacred shrines into Christianity', says Dr Taylor.

At the site now occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Constantine personally ordered the tearing down of the Temple of Venus and proceeded to erect a church in honour of the Holy Cross - his personal battle emblem.

Most early literary evidence suggests that the real site of the crucifixion was 200 metres south of this church. Today's 'Rock of Calvary' was actually a rocky outcrop where a statue of Venus had stood within the pagan temple.

The place's association with the crucifixion stems from a dream by Constantine's mother Helena in which the site of the temple of Venus was revealed as being where Christ died. Inspired by the dream, a Roman 'archaeological' excavation is said to have then 'found' the true cross. Another important pagan site taken over by Christians, purporting to mark the location of a major Christian holy event, was the Temple of Aphrodite at Ein Karim near Jerusalem. It was demolished to make way for a church dedicated to the birth of St John the Baptist.

Christians and the Holy Places by Joan E Taylor, published by Oxford University Press at pounds 45.

(Photograph omitted)