Chapel of the Ascension, Jerusalem after the death and resurrection of Jesus, early Christians began gathering in secret to commemorate his Ascension at a small cave on the Mount of Olives. The issuance of the Edict of Milan by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 313 made it possible for Christians to worship overtly without fear of government persecution. By the time of the pilgrim Egeria's travels to Jerusalem in 384, the spot of veneration had been moved to the present location, uphill from the cave, which had been integrated into the Constantinian Church of Eleona, dedicated by then just to Jesus' teachings about good
Resurrection of Jesus of what is happening. The death and resurrection of Jesus are treated as the climax of the story, the point to which everything else has been moving all the while. Another characteristic of the gospel accounts is that they include only a plain description of the events. Unlike elsewhere in the gospels, there is an absence of any citation of the Hebrew scriptures to contextualize or interpret the resurrection appearances. N.T. Wright calls this "The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Stories." Wright explains that "[t]he very strong probability is that when Matthew, Luke and John describe the risen