Bible 101

Lesson 6: Archaeological Proof: Are the Stories we read about in the NT true?

The Garden Tomb

Jesus, known as the “Christ” (another word for “Messiah”), was executed April 7, 30 AD on a hill named “Golgotha” (the “place of the skull”), just outside of what is now called the “Damascus Gate“. Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple and member of the Sanhedrin, skillfully persuaded Pontius Pilate to release Jesus’ body to him for burial. Together with Nicodemus, another secret disciple, he put Jesus’ body in a tomb near the site of the execution.

The site was discovered by General Charles George Gordon (2), a renowned British general who was assigned to Palestine in the late 1800‘s. Looking out of his hotel window, he one day recognized the unmistakable features of a "Skull Hill" and suddenly became convinced, in spite of church traditions to the contrary, that he may very well be looking at the actual place where Jesus was executed. The traditional thought up to that time was that Jesus’ tomb was located in the "Church of the Holy Sepulcher"(3) (a church Emperor Constantine the Great built in 325 AD at another location). The latter is a problematic assumption, since it is hard to harmonize the location of Jesus’ crucifixion with the burial place; it would mean that Jesus was crucified within the city, and not outside the city, as the Biblical resources and historical facts tell us.

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