Golgotha
The place outside the walls of Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified, with the tomb in a garden close by. Since the fourth century both have been shown inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Gospels call the place where Jesus was crucified Golgotha, “the place of a skull” (Mark 15:22; John 19:17). The English name Calvary comes from the Latin word for skull. John says that it was near the city and that there was a garden there with a new tomb, in which Jesus was buried (John 19:20, 41–42); the letter to the Hebrews says that he suffered “outside of the gate” (Hebrews 13:12). The New Testament gives no further direction.
The site shown today goes back at least to the fourth century. Eusebius, in his list of biblical places, says that Golgotha was pointed out in Jerusalem, north of Mount Zion (Eusebius, Onomasticon 365). In his life of Constantine he reports that the emperor had a shrine of Venus pulled down and the earth beneath it dug away, that the cave of the tomb came to light, and that he ordered a church to be built there (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.25–28). About AD 350 Cyril of Jerusalem, teaching candidates for baptism there, pointed to “Golgotha … near which we are now assembled” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 13.4). The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, many times rebuilt, stands on the same spot inside the present Old City of Jerusalem. The identification rests on the tradition of the Jerusalem church as Constantine’s builders received it. It cannot be proved from the texts.
What happened here
- AD 30 or 33, estimated dateThe Crucifixion
Jesus is crucified outside Jerusalem at a place called Golgotha, on the order of Pontius Pilate, under the charge “King of the Jews”, and dies the same afternoon. Tacitus mentions the execution, and so does a passage of disputed wording in Josephus.
- AD 30 or 33, estimated dateThe Burial and Resurrection
The Gospels tell that Jesus was buried in a rock tomb on the evening of his death and that on the first day of the week women found the tomb open and empty and were told that he had risen. That God raised him from the dead is the central claim of Christian faith.