Holy Week has begun, and today The Times runs the first in a six-day series of four-page pull-outs complete with superb colour photography and some of the best writers on religion in the world. When it appears online, I will post some links but meanwhile, if you want to read it in full, you’ll just have to go out and buy the newspaper. Later in the week we will have Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, Archbishop of York John Sentamu and the Archbishop of Westminster-elect Vincent Nichols. Tonight I’m going to Canterbury Cathedral to hear the first of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ three Lent talks to write it up for the series. I’ve posted some extracts from today’s journey through Holy Week below.

Why is The Times doing this? One third of the world’s population is Christian, about two billion people, and the number is growing. This week is the most important in the calendar for many of these people, and we wanted to reflect this in the paper, as well as offer a chance for reflection at this time amid the fast pace of news around the world.

The supplement appears right in the middle of the news pages, proof if it were needed that we do carry ‘good news’ in The Times.

Libby Purves opens the series by asking: ‘Easter: what’s that all about then?’

She writes: ‘That Easteris actually the prime Christian festival is, in these secular times, easily overlooked. What with Bank Holidays and chocolate overkill it has slid back rapidly towards its pagan roots as a mere celebration of the days getting longer…. on the wider canvas Christianity often seems to be about internal quarrels, obscure language, uncharitable narrowness about women and gays, and an increasing tendency to use the pulpit for nothing more spiritual than run-of-the-mill green politics. We do not have the larky Hispanic tradition of celebrating Semana Santa, with insanely decorated processions and street parties. In Britain the Queen distributes Maundy money, the railways degenerate into depressing replacement buses, confectioners push hollow eggs at us and that is that.’

She writes about Holy Saturday at her convent school when the nuns, veiled and shawled, walked in the gardens silently, ‘suspended between death and life.’ On Easter Day, ‘I remember throwing my ball in the air, up in great leaps towards the golden light, catching it every time and making it soar again. The daffodils shone. In chapel the Alleluias multiplied and sun streamed through the glass. …. Even the most ardent Dawkinsite, the most plodding grumpy commissioner of atheist bus posters, should admit that the ancient drama of Holy Week has an emotional power rarely matched elsewhere.’

In Jerusalem, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Professor of New Testament at the Ecole Biblique et Archaeologique Francaise, writes: ‘After the Resurrection the gospel texts suggest that memorial liturgies were celebrated in the tomb. The Jerusalem Church, therefore, knew exactly where Jesus had been buried. It had access to the tomb for more than a century. Given what we know of other early Christian pilgrimage sites, it would be surprising if graffiti were not scratched or painted in the tomb. In AD135 the Emperor Hadrian filled in the quarry and built the Capitoline Temple above it. We know that visitors made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the 3rd and 4th centuries to visit the site. When the Emperor Constantine authorised the destruction of the Capitoline Temple in the summer of 325, the Bishop of Jerusalem, Macarius, knew exactly where to dig. To no-one’s surprise he found a tomb. It may have been the presence of Christian graffiti that convinced the sceptical Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, that it was the tomb of Christ. Over it was built the Holy Sepulchre.’

Professor Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford and author of The Resurrection, writes: ‘The conservative Sadducees considered the idea of life after death a departure from biblical faith, where reward for virtue and punishment for sin were expected in this life. … In the Gospels resurrection is not among the central tenets of the teaching of Jesus; he was more concerned with eternal life than with the revival of dry bones.’ He looks at the ‘maze’ of positive and negative reasoning around the resurrection and concludes that the transformation of the Apostles is the way out: ‘It was not because of the apparitions of Jesus. What catapulted them into action was Pentecost, the metamorphosis achieved by the inward experience of the Spirit. Pusillanimous men became spiritual warriors. The charismatic potency imparted to them by Jesus and the recollection of His powerful teaching resulted in mighty words and deeds. They felt their master close to them: He rose in their hearts. This is the historical element in the Resurrection saga.’

James Hider, our correspondent in Jerusalem and author of Spiders of Allah, describes how Israeli police stood guard over Easter celebrations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: ‘Their rather incongruous presence was a reminder that the Christian festivities have, on more than one occasion, descended into fisticuffs as the various monastic orders jealously guard their areas of the church from each other. During the Orthodox Palm Sunday ceremony last year, a major brawl broke out between Greek and Armenian clerics and worshippers over access rights to the Edicule, covering the spot where Christ’s tomb is believed to have been located. When Israeli police tried to break them up, they were hit with palm fronds, and several people were arrested.’

Tomorrow, the series continues with the theme of pilgrimage.