Searching For The Place Of The Skull
Fortean Times|April 2017

As pilgrims descend on the holy land to celebrate easter, Ted Harrison proffers a word of caution: if you’re looking for the location of jesus’s crucfixion and burial then, tradition aside, you need to investigate a growing list of competing sites. Just where exactly was golgotha?

Ted Harrison
Searching For The Place Of The Skull

The pilgrims who today carry heavy crosses in the footsteps of Christ may all be heading in the wrong direction. Golgotha, or Calvary as it is also known, the place of Christ’s crucifixion, may well not be where the guidebooks say.

Golgotha means ‘the place of the skull’ in ancient Aramaic. It was appropriately named as it was the place of common execution used by the Roman military occupying Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. It was to this place, according to Bible accounts, that Jesus was compelled to carry his cross on the first Good Friday.

John’s Gospel says that nearby the place of execution there was a garden with an empty tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathaea. He was a Jewish elder and covert admirer (perhaps a relative) of Jesus. After Jesus was pronounced dead, his body was taken down from the cross and placed in Joseph’s newly hewn tomb.

But where exactly was Golgotha? And where was the tomb that on the first Easter morning was so miraculously empty? To identify the very spot where the momentous events at the centre of their faith actually happened is to some Christians extremely important.Yet there are at least four theories that maintain that the locations authenticated by Christian tradition are in fact completely wrong.

AMATEUR ARCHÆOLOGIST

The main tradition goes back 1,700 years to Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine. She identified the two sites, the tomb and Golgotha, which are today incorporated within the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

For centuries, the tomb and Golgotha have been guarded by monks of several denominations, who are so argumentative and disputatious (for a particularly violent monk-on-monk brawl, see FT244:4-5) that they are not even trusted with the church key. The door is unlocked every morning by a member of one of two Muslim families.

この記事は Fortean Times の April 2017 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

この記事は Fortean Times の April 2017 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

FORTEAN TIMESのその他の記事すべて表示
Lightning Or Legendry?: The Chase Vault Moving Coffin Mystery Revisited
Fortean Times

Lightning Or Legendry?: The Chase Vault Moving Coffin Mystery Revisited

The moving coffins of Barbados have been a staple subject of books on the unexplained for over a century, and yet no one has so far provided a wholly satisfactory solution to the mystery. BENJAMIN RADFORD argues that we might have been looking in the wrong place...

time-read
10+ 分  |
November 2019
The Haunted Generation
Fortean Times

The Haunted Generation

Bob Fischer Rounds Up The Latest News From The Parallel Worlds Of Popular Hauntology...

time-read
3 分  |
November 2019
The House On The Borderland In Search Of William Hope Hodgson
Fortean Times

The House On The Borderland In Search Of William Hope Hodgson

In his new book, EDWARD PARNELL goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles and explores how these haunted landscapes shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema. Here, he arrives in Cardiganshire to look for the house in which the neglected master of weird fiction William Hope Hodgson wrote one of his greatest works.

time-read
10+ 分  |
November 2019
Fortean Traveller: 117. The Mediæval Crime Museum, Rothenburg, Germany Fortean Traveller
Fortean Times

Fortean Traveller: 117. The Mediæval Crime Museum, Rothenburg, Germany Fortean Traveller

STEVE TOASE feels the thumbscrews tighten as he explores a grisly collection exploring the history of mediæval torture and its relationship with the law

time-read
7 分  |
November 2019
Where Ghosts Gather
Fortean Times

Where Ghosts Gather

In 1977, Usborne published World of the Unknown: Ghosts, the children’s book that inspired a generation of junior forteans. Four decades on, following a concerted fan campaign, the book is back in print... and the perpetually haunted BOB FISCHER tracked down its pleasantly surprised writer, Christopher Maynard, to discuss its genesis and unexpected impact.

time-read
10+ 分  |
November 2019
A Bang On The Head
Fortean Times

A Bang On The Head

MARK GREENER explains how traumatic brain injury can change personality, creating serial killers and even vampires.

time-read
7 分  |
November 2019
Out Of The Shadows
Fortean Times

Out Of The Shadows

In an extract from a new book celebrating the history of Boscastle’s Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Professor Ronald Hutton introduces the photographs of Sara Hannant, which aim to bring a range of enigmatic objects from the museum’s unique collection to life.

time-read
3 分  |
Christmas 2016
The Face In The Window - Windowpane Ghosts And Lightning Daguerreotypes
Fortean Times

The Face In The Window - Windowpane Ghosts And Lightning Daguerreotypes

One of the most fortean of lightning phenomena is the “lightning daguerreotype,” where a face or figure, often recognised as a particular deceased person, is mysteriously etched upon a windowpane. Chris Woodyard traces some of the fenestral flaps of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

time-read
10+ 分  |
Christmas 2016
Bodies On Ice
Fortean Times

Bodies On Ice

Couple who went missing 75 years ago ... found by chance in thawing Swiss glacier

time-read
2 分  |
October 2017
happy old christmas
fortean times

happy old christmas

you thought it was all over, but due to the orthodox refusal to accept the new fangled gregorian calendar, many people – from margate to memphis – will still be celebrating christmas in january. ted harrison goes in search of some stubborn old traditions...

time-read
8 分  |
january 2017