Golgotha

Golgotha (Aramaic Gulgaltā, “skull”; rendered Kranion in Greek and Calvaria in Latin, from which the English “Calvary” derives — all meaning the place of a skull) was the site just outside the walls of Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified. All four Gospels name it: “the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull)” (Matthew 27:33; Mark 15:22; John 19:17), while Luke records simply “the place called The Skull” (Luke 23:33).

The name most likely arose from the skull-like shape of the rocky knoll rather than from any use as a place of execution. Crucifixions were carried out beyond the city gate along public roads for maximum deterrent effect, which fits Golgotha’s location “near the city” yet outside its walls (John 19:20; Hebrews 13:12). Two sites have been proposed: the traditional location now enclosed by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, identified in the fourth century in the time of Helena and Constantine and supported by evidence that the area lay outside the first-century wall; and “Gordon’s Calvary,” a skull-shaped escarpment north of the Damascus Gate that drew attention in the nineteenth century. The geographical debate is secondary to the site’s meaning.

Golgotha stands at the center of the Christian faith as the place where the redemptive death of Christ was accomplished. There the sinless Son “suffered outside the gate” — like the sin offering burned outside the camp — “to sanctify the people through his own blood” (Hebrews 13:11-12), so that the hill of the skull, a place of death, became the ground of the world’s redemption.