Garden Tomb

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Coordinates: 31°47′1.87″N, 35°13′47.92″E

Rocky escarpment some claim to resemble the face of a skull (Golgatha). Picture in foreground is a historical photograph (date unknown) of the same rock face.

The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem is considered by some to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus.[1]

It was first put forward as Jesus' tomb by Major-General Charles George Gordon CB, who spent time in Palestine in 1882-83. However, Gordon had no academic education in history or anthropology.

The site of the Garden Tomb is outside Jerusalem's Old City Walls, quite near the Damascus Gate. It is also close to the side of a rocky escarpment (just behind the Arab bus station), which resembles the face of a skull (thus fitting a possible interpretation of "Golgotha"), that is near the site Gordon identified as Calvary. The site also falls outside of the traditional walls of the first-century Jerusalem.

The traditional site of the Jesus' tomb is where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands. In his Life of Constantine [2], Eusebius of Caesarea states that where the then contemporary Church of the Holy Sepulchre sat was the site the early Christian community in Jerusalem venerated as Calvary. The ancient claim also follows the precedent set by the Roman Emperor Constantine, whose mother, Helena of Constantinople, found a cave containing artifacts claimed to be from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, including three nails and the True Cross, at the site of which Eusebius later spoke.

Israeli scholar Dan Bahat, former City Archaeologist of Jerusalem:

"We may not be absolutely certain that the site of the Holy Sepulchre Church is the site of Jesus' burial, but we have no other site that can lay a claim nearly as weighty, and we really have no reason to reject the authenticity of the site" (Bahat, 1986).

Gordon did find some ancient graves at the Garden Tomb, but recent scholarship suggests that they are not from the right period.^{[citation needed]} It is surmised that Gordon assumed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not Calvary, as scriptures pointed to the site being outside the city walls. Gordon, seeing the walls built by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th Century, therefore assumed that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, outside the city walls at the time of Christ and now inside the city walls, could therefore not be Calvary.