Calvary: Difference between revisions
→Disputed claims of Charles Gordon: This section might as well be called 'alternative locations' to clarify what the disputed claims are about |
favouring of one site rather than another should really be part of discussion about 'alternate locations' |
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[[File:Jesus in Golgotha by Theophanes the Cretan.jpg|thumb|left|[[Icon]] of Jesus being led to Golgotha, 16th century, [[Theophanes the Cretan]] ([[Stavronikita]] [[Monastery]], [[Mount Athos]]).]] |
[[File:Jesus in Golgotha by Theophanes the Cretan.jpg|thumb|left|[[Icon]] of Jesus being led to Golgotha, 16th century, [[Theophanes the Cretan]] ([[Stavronikita]] [[Monastery]], [[Mount Athos]]).]] |
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Eyewitness [[Cyril of Jerusalem]], a distinguished theologian of the early Church, speaks of Golgotha in eight separate passages, sometimes as near to the church in which he and his listeners were assembled:<ref>[http://www.pravoslavnaolomouc.cz/ZIP/OTCO/PNC/PN7.PDF St. Cyril of Jerusalem, page 51, note 313]</ref> "Golgotha, the holy hill standing above us here, bears witness to our sight: the Holy Sepulchre bears witness, and the stone which lies there to this day." <ref>[http://www.pravoslavnaolomouc.cz/ZIP/OTCO/PNC/PN7.PDF Cyril, Catechetical Lectures, year 347, lecture X, page 160, note 1221]</ref> Of course, one would not expect Cyril to contradict the emperor's mother, so his testimony is not final. And just in such a way the [[Egeria (pilgrim)|pilgrim Egeria]] often reported in 383: "… the church, built by Constantine, which is situated in Golgotha …"<ref>''[http://www.ccel.org/m/mcclure/etheria/etheria.htm Iteneraria Egeriae]''</ref>, and also bishop [[Eucherius of Lyon]] wrote to the island presbyter Faustus in 440: "Golgotha is in the middle between the Anastasis and the Martyrium, the place of the Lord's passion, in which still appears that rock which once endured the very cross on which the Lord was."<ref>[http://homepages.luc.edu/~avande1/jerusalem/sources/eucherius.htm Letter To The Presbyter Faustus], by Eucherius. "What is reported, about the site of the city Jerusalem and also of Judaea"; ''Epistola Ad Faustum Presbyterum.'' "Eucherii, Quae fertur, de situ Hierusolimitanae urbis atque ipsius Iudaeae." ''Corpus Scriptorum Eccles. Latinorum'' XXXIX Itinera Hierosolymitana, Saeculi IIII–VIII, P. Geyer, 1898</ref> (See also: <!--PLEASE SEE TALK BEFORE RETURNING THIS [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Golgota Eyewitnesses-reports about the location of Calvary]:--> [[Eusebius of Caesarea|Eusebius]] (338) and Breviarius de Hierosolyma (530)). |
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===Location of the Sepulchre=== |
===Location of the Sepulchre=== |
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== Alternative location(s) == |
== Alternative location(s) == |
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[[File:GardenTombGolgothaCloseupA.JPG|thumb|right|Close-up image of the rocky escarpment that some claim to resemble the face of a skull, located northwest of the [[Church of the Holy Sepulchre]], near the [[Garden Tomb]] ]] |
[[File:GardenTombGolgothaCloseupA.JPG|thumb|right|Close-up image of the rocky escarpment that some claim to resemble the face of a skull, located northwest of the [[Church of the Holy Sepulchre]], near the [[Garden Tomb]] ]] |
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Although the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is regarded as location of the tomb of Jesus and of ''Golgotha'' by some prominent historians{{who}}{{dubious}}{{cite needed|date=January 2009}} others find it incompatible with the facts. Additionally many [[Protestant]]s have often opposed the traditional location simply because it has previously received support from [[Roman Catholic|Catholic]]s, and is sited within an environment which isn't exactly [[low church]]<ref>''[[International Standard Bible Encyclopedia]]'', entry on ''Jerusalem''</ref>. |
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After time spent in Palestine in 1882–83, [[Charles George Gordon]] suggested Calvary might have been in a different location. It was not then known that the location of the [[Church of the Holy Sepulchre]] was actually outside of the city walls at the time of the [[crucifixion]]. The [[Garden Tomb]] is to the north of the Holy Sepulchre, located outside of the modern [[Damascus Gate]], in a place that was used for burial at least as early as the [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantine]] period.{{Fact|date=May 2007}} The Garden has an earthen cliff that contains two large sunken holes that people say are the eyes of the skull to which "Golgotha" refers.{{Fact|date=June 2007}} |
After time spent in Palestine in 1882–83, [[Charles George Gordon]] suggested Calvary might have been in a different location. It was not then known that the location of the [[Church of the Holy Sepulchre]] was actually outside of the city walls at the time of the [[crucifixion]]. The [[Garden Tomb]] is to the north of the Holy Sepulchre, located outside of the modern [[Damascus Gate]], in a place that was used for burial at least as early as the [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantine]] period.{{Fact|date=May 2007}} The Garden has an earthen cliff that contains two large sunken holes that people say are the eyes of the skull to which "Golgotha" refers.{{Fact|date=June 2007}} |
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Revision as of 20:09, 6 May 2009
- "Golgotha" redirects here. For other uses, see Golgotha (disambiguation). For other uses of the term "Calvary" and "Mount Calvary," see Calvary (disambiguation) and Mount Calvary (disambiguation).
Calvary or Golgotha are the English language/Western Christian names given to the site, outside of ancient Jerusalem’s early 1st century walls, ascribed to the crucifixion of Jesus. The name Golgotha is the Greek transcription given by the New Testament, of an Aramaic name, which has traditionally been presumed to be Gûlgaltâ (but see below for an alternative); the Bible glosses it as place of [the] skull - Κρανίου Τόπος (Kraniou Topos) in Greek, and Calvariae Locus in Latin, from which we get Calvary.
In some Christian and Jewish traditions, the name refers to the location of the skull of Adam.[1] The word "Calvary" comes from Calvaria in the Latin Vulgate[2].
Biblical references and etymology
Although usage since the sixth century has been to refer to the location as a mountain[1], and as a small hill since 333[3], the Gospels describe it merely as a place. When the King James Version was written, the translators used an anglicised version - Calvary - of the Latin gloss from the Vulgate (Calvariae), to refer to Golgotha in the Gospel of Luke, rather than translate it; subsequent uses of Calvary stem from this single translation decision. The location itself is mentioned in all four canonical Gospels:
- Luke
- And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left[6]
- John
- So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Gol'gotha[7]
A number of alternative explanations have been given for the name:
- The biblical gloss is erroneous and the Aramaic name is actually Gol Goatha, meaning mount of execution, possibly the same location as the Goatha mentioned in a Book of Jeremiah passage[8] describing the geography of Jerusalem[9]
- The location was a place of public execution, and the name refers to abandoned skulls that would be found there[10]
- The location was near a cemetery, and the name refers to the bones buried there[11]
- The location's landscape resembled the shape of a skull, and gained its name for that reason[12].
Traditional location
The traditional location of Golgotha derives from its identification by Helena, the mother of Constantine I, in 325. A few yards nearby, Helena also selected a location for the Tomb of Jesus and claimed to have discovered the True Cross; her son, Constantine, then built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre around the whole site. In 333, the Pilgrim of Bordeaux, entering from the east described the result:
On the left hand is the little hill of Golgotha where the lord was crucified. About a stone's throw from thence is a vault [crypta] wherein his body was laid, and rose again on the third day. There, at present, by the command of the Emperor Constantine, has been built a basilica; that is to say, a church of wondrous beauty[13].
Prior to Helena's identification, the site had been a temple to Aphrodite. Constantine's construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure, and the Rotunda and cloister (which was replaced after the 12th century by the present Catholicon and Calvary chapel) roughly overlap with the temple building itself; the basilica church which constantine built over the remainder of the enclosure was destroyed at the turn of the 11th century, and has not been replaced. Christian tradition justifies this re-use by claiming that the location had originally been a Christian place of veneration, but that Hadrian had deliberately buried these Christian sites and built his own temple on top, on account of his alleged hatred for Christianity[14]. There is certainly evidence that just 30 years after Hadrian's temple had been built, Christians associated it with the site of Golgotha; Melito of Sardis, a late 2nd century bishop in the region, described the location as in the middle of the street, in the middle of the city[15], which matches the position of Hadrian's temple within the late 2nd century city.
However, Hadrian's temple had actually been located there simply because it was the junction of the main north-south road (which is now the Suq Khan-ez-Zeit, etc.) with one of the two main east-west roads (which is now the Via Dolorosa), and directly adjacent to the forum (which is now the location of the (smaller) Muristan); the forum itself had been placed, as is traditional in Roman towns, at the junction of the main north-south road with the (other) main east-west road (which is now El-Bazar/David Street). The temple and forum together took up the entire space between the two main east-west roads (a few above-ground remains of the east end of the temple precinct still survive in the Russian Mission in Exile).
Outside the wall?
The Bible describes Golgotha as being outside the city wall, but the traditionally identified location is in the heart of Hadrian's city, well within the Old City walls; there has therefore been some questioning of the legitimacy of the traditional identification on these grounds. Christian tradition has responded by claiming that the city had been much narrower in Jesus' time, with the site then having been outside the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41–44) is recorded by history as extending the city to the north (beyond the present northern walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is traditionally attributed to him as well. In 2003, Professor Sir Henry Chadwick (former Dean of Christ Church, Oxford) argued that when Hadrian's builders replanned the old city, they incidentally confirm[ed] the bringing of Golgotha inside a new town wall[16]
However, a wall would imply the existence of a defensive ditch outside it, so an earlier wall couldn't be immediately adjacent to the Golgotha site, which combined the presence of the Temple Mount would make the city inside the wall quite thin; essentially for the traditional site to have been outside the wall, the city would have had to be limited to the lower parts of the Tyropoeon Valley, rather than including the defensively advantageous western hill. Since these geographic considerations imply that not including the hill within the walls would be willfully making the city prone to attack from it, some scholars, including the late 19th century surveyors of the Palestine Exploration Fund, consider it unlikely that a wall would ever have been built which would cut the hill off from the city in the valley[17]; archaeological evidence for the existence an earlier city wall in such a location has never been found.
Inside the church is a rock, about 7 m long by 3 m wide by 4.8 m high,[18] that is believed to be what now remains visible of Calvary. During 1973–1978 restoration works and excavations inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it was found that this place was originally a quarry from which white Meleke limestone was struck.[18] Observation suggests that from the city the little hill (which still exists) could have looked like a skull.[19] In 1986, a ring was found of 11.5 cm diameter, struck into the stone, which could have held a wood trunk of up to 2.5 m height.[20][21]
Eyewitness Cyril of Jerusalem, a distinguished theologian of the early Church, speaks of Golgotha in eight separate passages, sometimes as near to the church in which he and his listeners were assembled:[22] "Golgotha, the holy hill standing above us here, bears witness to our sight: the Holy Sepulchre bears witness, and the stone which lies there to this day." [23] Of course, one would not expect Cyril to contradict the emperor's mother, so his testimony is not final. And just in such a way the pilgrim Egeria often reported in 383: "… the church, built by Constantine, which is situated in Golgotha …"[24], and also bishop Eucherius of Lyon wrote to the island presbyter Faustus in 440: "Golgotha is in the middle between the Anastasis and the Martyrium, the place of the Lord's passion, in which still appears that rock which once endured the very cross on which the Lord was."[25] (See also: Eusebius (338) and Breviarius de Hierosolyma (530)).
Location of the Sepulchre
Professor Dan Bahat, one of Israel's leading archaeologists, the former City Archaeologist of Jerusalem and a senior lecturer at the Land of Israel Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, comments, "We may not be absolutely certain that the site of the Holy Sepulchre Church is the site of Jesus' burial, but we have no other site that can lay a claim nearly as weighty, and we really have no reason to reject the authenticity of the site" (Bahat, 1986). In 2007, he stated, "Six graves from the first century were found on the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That means, this place laid here outside of the city, without any doubt, and is the possible place for the tomb of Jesus." [26]
Alternative location(s)
Although the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is regarded as location of the tomb of Jesus and of Golgotha by some prominent historians[who?][dubious – discuss][citation needed] others find it incompatible with the facts. Additionally many Protestants have often opposed the traditional location simply because it has previously received support from Catholics, and is sited within an environment which isn't exactly low church[27].
After time spent in Palestine in 1882–83, Charles George Gordon suggested Calvary might have been in a different location. It was not then known that the location of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was actually outside of the city walls at the time of the crucifixion. The Garden Tomb is to the north of the Holy Sepulchre, located outside of the modern Damascus Gate, in a place that was used for burial at least as early as the Byzantine period.[citation needed] The Garden has an earthen cliff that contains two large sunken holes that people say are the eyes of the skull to which "Golgotha" refers.[citation needed]
Other uses of the name
- The name Calvary often refers to sculptures or pictures representing the scene of the crucifixion of Jesus, or a small wayside shrine incorporating such a picture. It also can be used to describe larger, more monument-like constructions, essentially artificial hills often built by devotees.
- Churches in various Christian denominations have been named Calvary. The name is also sometimes given to cemeteries, especially those associated with the Roman Catholic Church.
- Two Catholic religious orders have been dedicated to Mount Calvary. Several places worldwide have been named after it; including the town Kalvarija in Lithuania and towns Góra Kalwaria and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska in Poland.
- In the 18th and early 19th centuries at Oxford and Cambridge universities the rooms of the heads of colleges and halls were nicknamed golgotha. Apart from the obvious pun on the place of skulls (i.e. heads), this was also due to the punishments that students received in these rooms.[28]
- 'Golgatha' is the title of the second song on the album, 'Suspect Symmetry' by progressive metalcore band, 'Buried Inside'.
Notes
- ^ a b "Mount Calvary". Vol. Vol. III. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1908 http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03191a.htm.
{{cite book}}:|volume=has extra text (help);|work=ignored (help); Missing or empty|title=(help) - ^ "Luke 23:33". Latin Vulgate.
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, Golgotha
- ^ Mark 15:22
- ^ Matthew 27:33
- ^ Luke 23:33
- ^ John 19:17
- ^ Jeremiah 31:39
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, Golgotha
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, Golgotha
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, Golgotha
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, Golgotha
- ^ Itinerarium Burdigalense, pages 593, 594
- ^ Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 3:26
- ^ Melito of Sardis, On Easter
- ^ Chadwick, H. (2003). The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-199-26577-1.
- ^ Colonel Claude R. Conder, The City of Jerusalem (1909), (republished 2004); for details about Conder himself, see Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener#Survey of Western Palestine
- ^ a b Hesemann, Michael (1999). Die Jesus-Tafel. Freiburg. p. 170. ISBN 3-451-27092-7. Template:De icon
- ^ Hesemann 1999, p.170: "Von der Stadt aus muß er tatsächlich wie eine Schädelkuppe ausgesehen haben," and page 190: a sketch; and page 172: a sketch of the geological findings by C. Katsimbinis, 1976: "der Felsblock ist zu 1/8 unterhalb des Kirchenbodens, verbreitert sich dort auf etwa 6,40 Meter und verläuft weiter in die Tiefe"; and page 192, a sketch by Corbo, 1980: Golgotha is distant 10 meters outside from the southwest corner of the Martyrion-basilica
- ^ Hesemann 1999, pp. 171-172:"Wie der Archäologe Georg Lavas und der Architekt Theo Mitropoulos, der damalige Restaurator der Golgota-Kapelle in der Grabeskirche, feststellten, war der eigentliche Stein von einer bis zu 45 cm dicken Kalkschicht von Ruinen- und Baumaterial und Verputz bedeckt. Die Experten streiten noch darum, ob dies ein Werk der hadrianischen Architekten war, die den Felsen damit besser der Tempelanlage anpassen wollten, oder ob der Verputz aus dem 7. Jahrhundert stammt. ... Als die Restauratoren die Kalkschicht entfernt hatten und zu dem gewachsenen Felsen vorgestoßen waren ... fanden sie einen aus dem Stein geschlagenen Ring von 11,5 cm Durchmesser."
- ^ Vatican-Magazin.com, Vatican 3/2007, page 12; here page 3 photo No. 4, quite right, photo by Paul Badde: der steinere Ring auf dem Golgothafelsen.
- ^ St. Cyril of Jerusalem, page 51, note 313
- ^ Cyril, Catechetical Lectures, year 347, lecture X, page 160, note 1221
- ^ Iteneraria Egeriae
- ^ Letter To The Presbyter Faustus, by Eucherius. "What is reported, about the site of the city Jerusalem and also of Judaea"; Epistola Ad Faustum Presbyterum. "Eucherii, Quae fertur, de situ Hierusolimitanae urbis atque ipsius Iudaeae." Corpus Scriptorum Eccles. Latinorum XXXIX Itinera Hierosolymitana, Saeculi IIII–VIII, P. Geyer, 1898
- ^ Dan Bahat in German television ZDF, April 11, 2007
- ^ International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, entry on Jerusalem
- ^ Amherst, N., 1754, Terræ filius: or the secret history of the university of Oxford 1721–22
External links
