Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the context of "Via Dolorosa"

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, also known as the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, is an autocephalous church within the wider communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Established in the mid-fifth century as one of the oldest patriarchates in Christendom, it is headquartered in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and led by the patriarch of Jerusalem, currently Theophilos III. The patriarchate's ecclesiastical jurisdiction includes roughly 200,000 to 500,000 Orthodox Christians across the Holy Land in Palestine, Jordan and Israel.

The church traces its foundation in Jerusalem to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, according to Christian beliefs, descended on the disciples of Jesus Christ and ushered the spread of the Gospel. The church celebrates its liturgy in the ancient Byzantine Rite – whose sacred language, Koine Greek, is the original language of the New Testament – and follows its own liturgical year under the Julian calendar.

In Christian iconography, Christ Pantocrator (Ancient Greek: Χριστὸς Παντοκράτωρ, lit. 'Christ the Almighty') is a specific depiction of Christ. Pantocrator or Pantokrator, literally 'ruler of all', but usually translated as 'almighty' or 'all-powerful', is derived from one of many names of God in Judaism.

The Pantokrator is largely an Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic or Eastern Lutheran theological conception and is less common under that name in Latin Catholicism and Western Lutheranism. In the West, the equivalent image in art is known as Christ in Majesty, which developed a rather different iconography. Christ Pantocrator has come to suggest Christ as a benevolent, though also stern and all-powerful, judge of humanity.

Calvary (Latin: Calvariae or Calvariae locus) or Golgotha (Biblical Greek: Γολγοθᾶ, romanized: Golgothâ [Κρανίου Τόπος or Κρανίο]) was a site immediately outside Roman Jerusalem's walls where, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, Jesus was crucified.

Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for pilgrimage. The exact location of Calvary has been traditionally associated with a place now enclosed within one of the southern chapels of the multidenominational Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a site said to have been recognized by the Roman empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, during her visit to the Holy Land in 325.

Several differences exist within the organizational structures and governance of the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. These are distinguished from theological differences which are differences in dogma and doctrine. A number of disagreements over matters of ecclesiology developed slowly between the Western and Eastern wings of the State church of the Roman Empire centered upon the cities of Rome (considered to have fallen in 476) and New Rome/Constantinople (also considered to have "fallen" in 1453) respectively. The disputes were a major factor in the formal East-West Schism between Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I in 1054 and are largely still unresolved between the churches today.

The Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church have been in a state of official schism from one another since the East–West Schism of 1054. This schism was caused by historical and linguistic differences, and the ensuing theological differences between the Western and Eastern churches.

The main theological differences with the Catholic Church are the papal primacy and the filioque clause. In spirituality, the tenability of neo-Palamism's essence-energy distinction and of the experiential vision of God as attained in theoria and theosis are actively debated.

Jerusalem's role in first-century Christianity, during the ministry of Jesus and the Apostolic Age, as recorded in the New Testament, gives it great importance, both culturally and religiously, in Christianity. Jerusalem is generally considered the cradle of Christianity.

The Christian Quarter (Arabic: حارة النصارى, romanized: Ḥāraṫ al-Naṣārā; Hebrew: הרובע הנוצרי, romanized: Ha-Rova ha-Notsri) is one of the four quarters of the walled Old City of Jerusalem, the other three being the Jewish Quarter, the Muslim Quarter and the Armenian Quarter. The Christian Quarter is situated in the northwestern corner of the Old City, extending from the New Gate in the north, along the western wall of the Old City as far as the Jaffa Gate, along the Jaffa Gate – Western Wall route in the south, bordering on the Jewish and Armenian Quarters, as far as the Damascus Gate in the east, where it borders on the Muslim Quarter.

The Christian quarter contains about 40 Christian holy places and one of the most important communities of Christianity in there and holy places for Christians in the world. First among them is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Christianity's holiest place. Most of the residents of the Christian quarter remain Christians however their numbers have dwindled.

The siege of Jerusalem marked the successful end of the First Crusade, whose objective was the recovery of the city of Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from Islamic control. The five-week siege began on 7 June 1099 and was carried out by the Christian forces of Western Europe mobilized by Pope Urban II after the Council of Clermont in 1095. The city had been out of Christian control since the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 637 and had been held for a century first by the Seljuk Turks and later by the Egyptian Fatimids. One of the root causes of the Crusades was the hindering of Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land which began in the 4th century. A number of eyewitness accounts of the battle were recorded, including in the anonymous chronicle Gesta Francorum.

After Jerusalem was captured on 15 July 1099, thousands of Muslims and Jews were massacred by Crusader soldiers. As the Crusaders secured control over the Temple Mount, revered as the site of the two destroyed Jewish Temples, they also seized Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock and repurposed them as Christian shrines. Godfrey of Bouillon, prominent among the Crusader leadership, was elected as the first ruler of Jerusalem.