GOLGOTHA
GOLGOTHA
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will be their abundant reward, if whatsoever they would have done to Christ Himself, even so they do unto men, servini; them lowlily and lovingly in His name and for His sake.
LrrERATURE. — In addition to the worlcs mentioned in this article, see Sermon on the Modnt and the excellent Bibliography of Votaw in Hastings' DB, Extra Vol. p. 44 f.
J. G. Tasker.
GOLGOTHA (ToKyoda, Aram. Nij^aSji, Heb. n^jS: [2 K 9'*], ' skull')-— The name of the place where Jesus was crucified. This name is mentioned by three of the Evangelists (Mt 27^ 'a place called Golgotha, that is to say. The place of a skull ' ; Mk 15-^ ' the place Golgotha, which is, being inter- preted, The place of a skull'; Jn 19" 'the place called The place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew, Golgotha'). The Greek equivalent (Kpavlov) is used by St. Luke (23^^ ' the place which is called The skull,' RV). Vulg. uses here the Latin equivalent Calvaria, whence ' Calvary ' in A V.
Three explanations of this name have been sug- gested : (1) Jerome [Com. in Eph 5") mentions a tradition that Adam was buried at Golgotha, and that at the Crucifixion the drops of Christ's blood fell on his skull and restored him to life. The skull often seen in early pictures of the Crucifixion refers to this. (2) It is supposed by some to have been the place of public execution, where bodies were left unburied (Jerome, Com. in Mt 27^), but (a) it is most unlikely that dead men's bones would have been left lying about so near the city, when, according to the Mosaic law, they made any one unclean who touched them ; (h) there was no reason why the place should have been named from the skulls rather than from any other parts of skele- tons; (c) the expression is npavlov T6?ro!, not Kpavluv riwos, as we should expect it to be if this deriva- tion were correct. (3) The most probable view of the origin of the name is suggested by the form of the expression in St. Luke, 'the place which is called The skull.' It was probably so called because of its skull-like contour. The use of the article by the Evangelists seems to indicate that the place was well known, but they never call it a mountain. The Bordeaux Pilgrim (A.D, 333) speaks of it as monticulus Golgotha, and the expression ' Mount Calvary ' appears to have come into use after the 5th century.
The site cannot be identified with certainty. All that we know from the Bible is that it was outside the walls of the city {He 13'-, Mt 27='- ^, Jn W^- "), that it was nigh to the city (Jn 19="), that it was in a conspicuous position (Mk 15*", Lk 23^"), that it was close to some thoroughfare leading from the country (Mt 27"', Mk 15='-=», Lk 23==), and that it was near a garden and a new tomb hewn out of the rock, belonging to Joseph, a rich man of Arimathaea (Jn 19^', Mt 27"- «", Mk 15«- «, Lk 23^''). These particulars are not sufficient to justify a positive decision in favour of any one of the proposed identifications of Golgotha, but they seem to be decisive against the first of the four conjectures mentioned below, to bear against the second slightly, but against the third more heavily, and to be most nearly satisfied by the fourth.
1. The peculiar theory of Fergusson (Essay on the Anc. Topoc/. of Jems., and art. 'Jerusalem' in Smith's DB), that Golgotha was on Mount Moriah, and that the mosque of Omar is the church erected by Constantine over the Holy Sepulchre, was quickly shown to be untenaWe [e.g. by Bonar, art. ' Jerusalem ' in Fairbairn's DB).
2. Barclay (Citj/ of the Great King, p. 79) and Porter (Kitto's Cyel. of Bib. Lit. art 'Golgotha') maintained that the site of the Crucifixion was east of the city, between the then existing wall and the Kidron Valley. This place could have been quickly and easily reached from the palace of
Pilate and the judgment -hall, which probably stood at the N.W. corner of the ^laram area. According to this view, the soldiers, instead of taking their prisoner across the city towards the west, or out in the direction of the Koman road, hurried Him through the nearest gate and crucified Him near the road leading to Bethany. Two ob- jections are urged against this : (a) that the Gospel narratives imply that the road passing Golgotha was a more frequented thoroughfare than this road to Bethany, and that the great highways of Jerusalem are all on the north and west of the city ; and (b) that there is no skull-shaped site in this region.
3. That Golgotha was where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands, seems to have been almost universally believed from the age of Con- stantine down to the 18th century. It is now agreed on all hands that the present Church of the Holy Sepulchre occupies the site of the one erected by Constantine in A.D. 335. On what grounds did he select this as the true site of the Crucifixion ? Those who still believe it to be the true site generally assume not only that the early Christians at Jerusalem had a knowledge of the places where the Lord was crucified and buried, but also that this knowledge was handed down as a reliable tradition through three hundred years, notwithstanding the utter demolition of Jerusalem by Titus and again by Hadrian, and the altering of the whole aspect of the city by the latter when he rebuilt it as a Roman colony and changed its name to Aelia Capitolina. But Eusebius, in describ- ing the discovery of the site by Constantine, says it had been ' given over to forgetfulness and oblivion,' and that the Emperor, ' not without a Divine inti- mation, but moved in spirit by the Saviour Him- self,' ordered it to be purified and adorned with splendid buildings.