Gethsemane

Mark and Matthew give the name Gethsemane to the place where Jesus prayed and was arrested (Mark 14:32; Matthew 26:36). Luke sets the scene on the Mount of Olives without the name (Luke 22:39), and John speaks of a garden across the Kidron valley where Jesus often met with his disciples (John 18:1–2). The Gospels give no closer description.

Eusebius, early in the fourth century, places Gethsemane at the Mount of Olives and says that the faithful still prayed there; Jerome’s Latin version of about AD 390 adds that a church had been built over it (Eusebius, Onomasticon 364). In the 380s the pilgrim Egeria found a church on the slope of the mount at the place where Jesus was said to have prayed, and below it a spot called Gethsemane, where the account of his arrest was read to the people on the night before Good Friday (Egeria, Itinerary 36.1–3). The garden and church shown today at the foot of the mount, facing the east wall of Jerusalem, continue that tradition. None of these sources takes the tradition back beyond the fourth century.