Golgotha #55

Golgotha is the name of the place just outside the walls of Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified. The Gospels give it as an Aramaic name meaning the place of a skull (Matthew 27:33; Mark 15:22; John 19:17). English readers also know it as Calvary, from the Latin word for skull, which appears in the Vulgate translation of Luke 23:33. The Greek term there is kranion, the skull, which older English Bibles rendered as Calvary.

Biblical Significance

All four Gospels place the crucifixion of Jesus at this site. After Pilate handed him over, Jesus was led out carrying his cross, or with Simon of Cyrene compelled to carry it, and brought to Golgotha (Matthew 27:32-33; Mark 15:21-22; John 19:16-17). There he was offered wine mixed with myrrh or gall, was crucified between two others, and had a notice reading King of the Jews fixed above him, written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek (Matthew 27:34-37; John 19:19-20). Jesus prayed for forgiveness for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34), promised paradise to a repentant criminal (Luke 23:39-43), and died after crying out that it was finished (John 19:30).

The Gospels do not explain why the place was called the place of a skull. Some have suggested that the name described the shape of the rocky hill, and others that it referred to its use as a place of execution. The text says only that it was outside the city (John 19:17, 20), a point the letter to the Hebrews also stresses when it says that Jesus suffered outside the gate (Hebrews 13:12). John adds that there was a garden at the place where he was crucified, with a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid, and that Jesus was buried there because it was near (John 19:41-42).

Today

The traditional site of Golgotha and the tomb lies within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. According to the fourth-century historian Eusebius, the emperor Constantine had a temple to Aphrodite that stood there removed and a church built over the site of the tomb, after excavation, around AD 326 to 335. Though the site now lies inside the walls of the Old City, archaeological work has shown that in the first century it was outside the city wall, in a disused quarry with rock-cut tombs around it, which fits the Gospel description. Many archaeologists and historians therefore regard the Holy Sepulchre as a plausible location.

Some Protestants since the nineteenth century have favored a rocky hill north of the Damascus Gate, often called Gordon’s Calvary, and a nearby rock-cut tomb known as the Garden Tomb. Most archaeologists date that tomb to the Iron Age rather than the first century. It remains a peaceful place of devotion for many visitors, whatever the historical question.