There has been considerable debate over the years concerning the actual site of Golgotha, Skull Hill. It would seem that the Lord, knowing the tendency of the human heart to adore just about anything but what it should rightly adore, has kept its location uncertain.
The “traditional site,” which various religious groups shamelessly use to their monetary advantage, is located in the “Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” This property was purchased by Helena, mother of Constantine, in 335 ad. Those who hold to this location have yet to prove the following to my satisfaction:
1. That it was outside the city wall. In order for their theory to work, the wall must make an elbow inward, weakening the defense and following an unlikely topography, skirting the Tyropean Valley instead of keeping the high ground, from which the enemy would find it easy to attack the city.
2. That in fulfillment of the Levitical requirement, the Great Sacrifice was offered on the north side of the altar. In fact, this is almost straight west of the temple, whereas the so-called Gordon’s Calvary is on the north.
3. That in fulfillment of Genesis 22, “in the mount of the Lord”–Mount Moriah–it was to be seen. Surely it was no accident that the Lord brought Abraham past a score of mountains to this one. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is not on Moriah, but the skull-shaped hill outside the Damascus Gate is. In fact, Moriah is a ridge with three peaks: the southern peak (the threshing-floor of Ornan) where the temple was built for the Jews; the central peak where the Antonia fortress was built for the Romans, and the northern peak where the Jews and the Romans united to execute the Son of God. But we were there, too. We were all there. The whole universe was gathered there that day–Jews and Gentiles, angels and demons, God and the arch-fiend. And in the midst, that solitary Figure on which your eternity and mine hung. “There they crucified Him.”
Likely, the drama of Genesis 22 did not occur at the place where, a thousand years later, the temple would be built. It seems to me more likely that the sacrifice of Isaac took place at the north end of the mountain, away from the peering eyes of the inhabitants of the town of Salem where Melchizedek was king.
You would expect a grateful father to call the place “The Lord has provided.” But Abraham rejoiced to see Messiah’s day, and called it “The Lord will provide.” How appropriate then that the Father and the Son should go “both of them together” up the same hill.
4. That any major thoroughfare passed by the traditional site. To points west, the road left the city by the Jaffa Gate hard by Herod’s palace and traversed the north end of the Hinnom Valley before crossing the foothills into the Aijalon Valley that led to the coast. To points north, the Nablus Road left by the Damascus Gate and passed by the Skull (referred to in Jewish tradition as the city’s place of execution).
For those who have been there and compared the sites, J. Howard Kitchen says it well: “Many visitors naturally revere the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as the traditional site . . . Others will generally turn with some relief from this dark, forbidding pile of buildings, hung with countless lamps, crowded with sacred sites, and heavy with incense, to that hill outside the city wall, and to the tomb in the garden where there is no dome but the blue sky, and no music but the song of birds and the sound of the wind in the trees.”
The geographical spot may be uncertain, but there is one thing that is sure. Calvary is man’s only hope. And God has seen to it that no pilgrimage is needed to this place; it is as close as a prayer, a heart’s breadth away.
Evangeline Booth wrote, “I have seen men find Him where the shepherds did–in a barn; where Paul did–on a journey; where Mary of Magdala did–in a garden; where the jailer did–in a prison. I have seen men find Him on the seas, in the forests, down in the mines, and in the most evil places outside of hell. I saw a man find Him on his knees in a tavern, with his head on the bar over which he had bartered all his life’s happiness. There is no spot on earth where Christ will not come to meet us if we will only seek Him with a heart that so thirsts it will go to any length to find Him.”
Where is Calvary? Wherever a sinner meets his Savior; wherever a believer meets his Beloved. The place may be forgotten; it is the Person we need.