Garden Photo

The Gephsimian garden at the foot of the Maslic Mountain, above the Kedron Valley, tradition links to Jesus' prayer the night before His crucifix.

A small, only 1,200 square metres, the garden is adjacent to the Bornia base (All Nations Church). The ancient olives are growing behind the high stone wall: powerful, knot, magnificent. The excursioners like to tell them what they were praying for the night before the arrest and the crucifix of Christ.

There are eight very old trees in the garden. Three of them were researched by radio carbon analysis, and it turns out they're about nine hundred years old. But the DNA test showed that all of them came from a single parent tree, perhaps from growing here in Jesus Christ. The Romans, destroying Jerusalem in 70 years, cut out all the trees. But the olives are unusually stable plants: if the soil remains the root, sooner or later, it gives a new escape. It is known that the roots of the present trees are far more of a sense of age than the first analysis.

However, it is difficult to say that the Lords of Christ began here. In Evangelia, only the locality is Gefusimania. That's what they call the entire valley at the foot of the Elean. The real fighting of Jesus could have taken place somewhere near the modern Gefsiman garden - for example, the Gefsiman coffin, that meters in the north, near the cave church of Bogorodica. Or in Bornia's basement, there's a peak of the rock in front of the altar, on which Christ prayed.