The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

It is unnecessary to describe the knoll, north of the Damascus Gate, which is now a Moslem graveyard, or the cliff on its south side in which is the so-called “Grotto of Jeremiah”; for the place is familiar to all who have visited the Holy City, and from many well-known photographs and drawings. It is called the Heidhemîyeh (or “cutting”) by Syrians, and it was very clearly outside the city in the time of our Lord, and even later, as we shall see in describing the course of the third wall. It is a site suitable for a public execution, having round it a flat amphitheatre of sloping ground. It is visible “afar off” on either side, and it is immediately east of the great north road. It is regarded still by the Jews of Jerusalem as being the ancient “House of Stoning,” and though this tradition cannot be traced in the scanty notices of the city to be found in the pilgrim texts of Jewish travellers, yet it is by no means modern, and it exists among the Sephardim families from Spain who have lived for centuries in Jerusalem. The circumstances thus enumerated give good grounds for the conclusion that this remarkable hill is not only the true site of the “House of Stoning,” but the actual site of Calvary, and as such it has been long regarded by many who have felt it impossible to accept the traditional sites shown in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.[311]

This site I advocated in 1878; and it was afterwards pointed out[312] that others, whose works I have never seen, had fixed on the same spot, including Otto Thenius in 1849, and Mr. Fisher Rowe in 1871; but neither of these writers has apparently mentioned the Jewish tradition. In 1881 Dr. T. Chaplin kindly arranged for me to go, with a respectable Spanish Jew, to see the reputed tomb of Simon the Just, and this guide pointed out the hill in question when we passed it as the ancient “House of Stoning.” After the publication of my suggestion in 1878, the idea was adopted, first by Mr. Laurence Oliphant, and afterwards in 1882 by General Gordon. The very general acceptance of the site was due no doubt to the great influence of the last named; but he added theories of his own, and thought that a tomb in the cliff—now known as the “Garden Tomb”—must be the true site of the Holy Sepulchre.

THE GARDEN TOMB

General Gordon had not then been long in Palestine, and he was not aware that this tomb had been described already, and had been attributed to a much later age than that of our Lord. He was not versed in Palestine archæology, and the arguments brought forward by the supporters of this opinion are not convincing. The fourth Gospel[313] says that “in [or “at”] the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre” which was “nigh at hand,” but not of necessity in the cliff of Calvary, which would indeed be a very unlikely position for a private tomb. Others have urged that since the “deacons of the Church of the Marturion,” named Nonus and Onesimus,[314] were buried near this place, and one of their texts speaks of a deacon as “buried near his Lord,” there must have been an early Christian tradition pointing to this site. But the church so described was that built by Constantine, and the texts are not earlier at most than the fourth century, when the whole Christian world accepted the present traditional sites of Calvary and the Sepulchre. The “Garden Tomb” is not a Jewish tomb, and there is good reason to suppose that it is not older than the twelfth century A. D. It was first excavated in 1873, when I visited and described it.[315] When opened, it was found to be filled to the roof with bones, and when these were cleared away by Herr K. Schick, two Latin patriarch’s crosses, in red paint, were found on the east wall of the inner chamber. These could not have been painted before the twelfth century, since the Greek cross is always found alone earlier in Palestine.

East of the tomb there are marks of vaults supported against the rock. It is well known that the Hospice of the Templars[316] was here built, for pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, not earlier than the end of the twelfth century, and it was called the Asnerie, or “place for asses,” because the asses used by the travellers were here stabled. The remains of mangers were still visible in 1881, at the south-west corner of this building, in the flat ground below the cliff to the south. The hospice thus appears to have been about 200 feet square, and the tomb in all probability was connected with it, as a sepulchre for pilgrims or for Templars. The immense accumulation of corpses, here hurriedly buried, may have been due to the Kharezmian massacre in 1244 A. D. The inner chamber of this tomb, to the east, had three graves on the floor. It does not in any way answer to the tomb described in the Gospels, nor is it at all like the Greco-Jewish tombs of the first century A. D.

TOMB WEST OF CALVARY.

From the Author’s sketch.

THE NEW TOMB

For these reasons, while it is probable that the site is that of Calvary, we must still say of our Lord as was said of Moses, “No man knoweth of His sepulchre unto this day.” This indeed is the general conclusion of recent writers, and even as regards Calvary we have only probabilities to consider. It is not desirable to create new sacred places, by the same enthusiasm without knowledge which led to the creation of those of the fourth century. There is, however, a single tomb, on the west side of the north road, which passes close to the “House of Stoning” leaving it to the east; but I should be loath to describe this as being more than a possible site at most for the “new tomb.” This sepulchre I examined in 1881, and was led, by comparing it with the other tombs of about the first century A. D., to the conclusion that it was a Greco-Jewish tomb.[317] It is cut in the east face of a rock, and has a chamber for six bodies. Outside, to the north of its outer court, there is another chamber with a single loculus, which might conceivably represent the “new tomb”; for though there are many old Christian tombs in the vicinity, there is no other known which is Greco-Jewish.[318] A cylindrical rolling stone (like a cheese set up on its round edge) often closes the door of this class of tomb—as can still be seen at the tomb of Helena of Adiabene, north of Jerusalem, and elsewhere. The Garden Tomb can never have had such a stone, but at the Greco-Jewish tomb in question guard stones outside both chambers exist, which may have kept such stones in place before the doors.