An Accurate History of the Cenacle (Site of the Last Supper)...

What's interesting about this recitation of the history of the Cenacle/David's Tomb is that rather then repeating the stories of legend and tradition, you're hearing an accurate rendition of the rather disputed and chaotic history of the location. The bottom line is that Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D., and along with it any original structure that may have played host to the Last Supper. What you see now is essentially a tourist attraction that was build up over a series of memorial chapels starting around 300 A.D.



All of this history is reflected in the back-story of my novel, The Cenacle Scroll. Check out the opening chapters here.

From The Cenacle Scroll:

Udi was standing in the courtyard of the three-story, 12th-century building purporting to house both King David's Tomb and, on the second floor, the Cenacle, believed by Christians to be the site of the Last Supper. The truth was King David was no more entombed beneath the building than he was under Udi's front yard. But it had been venerated as such for almost a thousand years and there seemed little point in stopping now.

The reality was that the Crusaders had constructed the building as a chapel to the Last Supper over an already existing synagogue memorializing David's Tomb. The romanticized tourist literature aside, in the eyes of the scientific community that's all it was, just a very old memorial chapel with nary a stone, scrap of plaster or fragment of tile ever found and dated to the time of Christ.