Garden Tomb in Wikipedia
The Garden Tomb (also known as Gordon's Calvary),[1] located
in Jerusalem, outside the city walls and close to the
Damascus Gate, is a rock-cut tomb considered by some to be
the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus, and to be
adjacent to Golgotha[2], in contradistinction to the
traditional site for these-the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
There is no mention of the Garden Tomb as the place of
Jesus' burial before the nineteenth century.
Motivation and discovery
During the nineteenth century some doubts were raised
concerning the authenticity of the traditional site, the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre:
Prior to Constantine's time, the site was a temple to
Aphrodite, built by Hadrian.[3]
Archaeology suggests that the exact location claimed for the
tomb would have been within Hadrian's Temple, or likely to
have been destroyed under the temple's heavy retaining wall.
[4][5]
The temple's location complies with the typical layout of
Roman cities (i.e. adjacent to the Forum, at the
intersection of the main north-south road with the main
east-west road), rather than necessarily being a deliberate
act of contempt for Christianity.
A spur would be required for the rockface to have included
both the alleged site of the tomb and the tombs beyond the
western end of the church.
First century Jewish leaders condemn the idea of burial to
the west of the city,[6] a condemnation archaeologically
corroborated by the locations of the known ancient Jewish
graves.[7]
The site is currently within the Old City walls, and due to
the heights of the terrain, it would be dangerous and
unlikely, from a town-defense point of view, for the walls
to have previously been east of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre.[8]
The tombs at the west of the site, alleged to date from the
first century, therefore indicating that the site was
outside the city at that time, could just as easily date
from centuries prior to that.[9]
Due to these issues, several nineteenth century scholars had
rejected the traditional site's validity. Additionally many
Protestants have often opposed the traditional location
simply because it has previously received support from Roman
Catholic Church, and is sited within an environment which is
not low church.[10] Many of these concerns were aired in the
time of Major-General Charles George Gordon, CB, and it is
surmised that he, a Protestant, was motivated by them to
look elsewhere.[citation needed]
In 1883, near to the Damascus Gate, General Gordon found a
rocky escarpment (now situated just behind a Palestinian bus
station), which from several angles resembled the face of a
skull; since one of the possible etymologies for Golgotha is
the Aramaic word for skull, and may refer to the shape of
the place, Gordon concluded that the rocky escarpment was
likely to have been Golgotha. Prior to Gordon, this
possibility had also been suggested by Colonel Conder in
1870 (an associate of Lord Kitchener),[11] by Fisher Howe in
1871,[12] and by the German scholar Otto Thenius in 1842.
[13]
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has its tomb just a few
yards away from its Golgotha, corresponding with the account
of John the Evangalist: "Now in the place where he was
crucified there was a ... new tomb" (John 19:41 ). In 1869 a
number of tombs had also been found near Gordon's Golgotha,
and Gordon concluded that one of them must have been the
tomb of Jesus. John also specifies that Jesus' tomb was
located in a garden;[14] consequently, an ancient wine press
and cistern have been cited as evidence that the area had
once been a garden, and the somewhat isolated tomb adjacent
to the cistern has become identified as the Garden Tomb of
Jesus. This particular tomb also has a stone groove running
along the ground outside it, which Gordon argued to be a
slot that once housed a stone, corresponding to the biblical
account of a stone being rolled over the tomb entrance to
close it.
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