Golgotha: A Reconsideration of the Evidence for the Sites of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Burial

Currently, the most popular alternative site to traditional Golgotha, located in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, is the area of Gordon’s Calvary, with the so-called ‘Garden Tomb,’ but scholarly endorsement of this locality has never been very strong.

Generally, the current consensus holds that Golgotha was located in the vicinity of the traditional site, somewhere north of the first wall of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, and west of the second wall, though specificity is impossible. In this article, I would like to consider how specific we might be about the localization of Jesus’ death and entombment.

By Joan Taylor. This article was published in the Spring 2002 issue of Bible and Spade.