Page 32 - Holyland Magazine - 2021 Edition

The entrance to the Garden Tomb
The Garden Tomb
A Site of Christian Worship
And the place of Jesus’ burial and resurrection
By Nick Mancino
Photos: IMOT Flickr
The Garden Tomb is a rock-cut tomb
within the old city of Jerusalem and
rests just outside the city walls, a short body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid
walk to the Tomb from the Damascus
Gate. First unearthed in 1867, the Tomb
is considered by some Protestants to have
belonged to Joseph of Arimathea who offered
it for the body of Jesus.
Twenty-five years before its discovery in 1842,
Otto Thenius, a German scholar, suggestied
that the nearby rock cliff that was shaped like
a skull was the hill of Golgotha where Jesus
was crucified. John’s Gospel (19:17) describes
the crucifixion site as the place of the skull.
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In Hebrew, it is called Golgotha. Although
the Bible does not give an exact location of
Golgotha, John writes: “The place where
Jesus was crucified was near the city.” (19:20) (Calvary being the Latin word for Golgotha).
Luke’s Gospel (15:46) says: “Then Joseph
brought a linen cloth, and taking down the
it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the
rock. He then rolled a stone against the door
of the tomb.”
A main supporter for The Garden Tomb site
was British army office Major-General Charles
Gordon, who visited Jerusalem in 1882-1883.
General Gordon was neither an archaeologist
nor historian, but he had a dream that identified
the cliff as the place where Jesus was crucified.
For years, the site was called Gordon’s Calvary
In 1894, a British charitable organization called
The Garden Tomb Association purchased the
site to preserve its authenticity and maintain the
grounds as found. Today, the association is a
Charitable Trust based in the United Kingdom,
comprising people of different denominations
from around the world.
The traditional site of Golgotha and the Tomb
was established by Queen Helena, mother