Time and again on my tour of Israel (including repeated visits to the old city of Jerusalem) I have asked people about Golgotha. That word means “the skull” and is supposed to be the site of the crucifixion. Most people respond to my query by telling me about Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a sacred place for Catholics. This beautiful building (which I did see) allegedly stands upon the site of both the death and resurrection of Jesus. I tend to doubt its authenticity. For one thing, the site was chosen as a result of a dream. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do believe God can speak to people through dreams. Both the Old and New Testaments abound with such incidents. But in this case, the dream came from Emperor Constantine’s mother shortly after he made Christianity a legal religion of Rome. Constantine himself seemed to know little about Christianity and many debate whether or not his conversion was genuine. He had a dream of his own, instructing him to build a cross before battling a contender for the throne. After winning this battle, well, you can guess the rest. Constantine now loved Christianity but still knew little about it. Even theological discussions, which argued about the Trinity, were of no use to him. He commanded the clergy to settle the matter one way or the other and made it clear that he did not care how they settled it. For this reason, I am a little more interested in the opinion of archaeologists and geographers, than the dream of Constantine’s mother.
Another problem: Huge as Church of the Holy Sepulchre is, it seems a little too coincidental that the burial and crucifixion sites would be so close together. Yes, it all happened in Jerusalem and yes, the city was rebuilt by the Byzantines, who unfortunately did put up many buildings over historical sites. And where as the area in and around the old city is certainly not huge, these Catholic locations still seem a bit too close.
Protestant pilgrims go to other places, still in Jerusalem, but without enormous church structures on top. For my third tour with Jacob, I posed the question of the crucifixion once again, this time making it clear that I was not interested in Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
“I once saw a picture of a hill that looked like a human skull. Can you take me there?”
He did and yes indeed, it looked like a skull all right. Jacob also took me to the Protestant “tomb of Jesus” a first century, hallowed out cave. Many such caves were used by wealthy people as a resting place for their loved ones. In the Bible, we are told that Joseph of Arimathea purchased the body of Jesus and gave him a rich man’s grave. Jacob left me for a few minutes, so I could have some time to myself. As I stood inside this cave, known as a sepulcher (not Church of the Holy Sepulchre but a real honest to goodness sepulchre) I found myself wishing for more time but there were many other places Jacob wanted to show me. I will definitely revisit this place when I return to Israel. Can we say for sure that I was actually inside the tomb of Jesus? No, but if this was not the exact same sepulchre, Jesus did lay in a tomb just like it and not far from here. Besides, a site that special and holy to Christians would have been remembered by someone. It’s not like Jesus was some unknown figure of history. And yet, during the period of the Byzantines, who was going to argue with Constantine’s mother? Maybe some guy who no longer cared if his head and shoulders were connected.
Not far from the tomb, (but not as close as the tomb and crucifiction locations in the Catholic site) we looked at the hilltop shaped like a skull. This was first discovered by British General Gordon in 1883. I asked Jacob if there was any record of this hill having its landscape changed by erosion or earthquakes in the last two thousand years. He said, “No.” And remember, Jacob was not a Christian. He had no vested interest in this hill one way or the other. Call me a romantic, but if the Bible says that Jesus was executed on a hill called “The Skull” and if there is in fact a hill shaped like a skull, not far from a first century sepulchre, chances are, we have located the real site of Jesus’ crucifixion. This means I saw the actual place where my own sins had visited Israel once before, the hill where my Messiah took on my sins and not mine only, but the sins of the entire world.
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