Garden Tomb, Jerusalem

The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem is considered by some to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This theory was popularized 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 to back his claim.

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 befitting the possible interpretation of "Golgotha", near the site Gordon identified as Calvary.

The traditional site of the tomb of Jesus is believed to be where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands. In Life of Constantine, Eusebius of Caesarea states that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre sits on the site where 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.

Gordon's claim of the Garden Tomb site is also contradicted by modern scholarship, which supports the traditional site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. To quote the 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.

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