In Palestine generally there are five kinds of rock tomb. In the north the Phœnician class has a chamber with kokîm, or tunnel graves, at the bottom of a deep shaft—as in Egypt. The usual Hebrew tomb has a chamber entered from the face of the rock, with kokîm dug endwise from the walls. The inner, and therefore later, chambers of such tombs have a different arrangement in examples which—from the Greek details of the porches—must belong to the Greek or the Herodian ages. In such chambers a rock sarcophagus under an arch is cut parallel to the wall on each side. The “new tomb” was clearly of this class, since we read that two angels sat, one at the head, the other at the foot of the grave, which would be impossible in a tomb with kokîm graves. The Greco-Jewish class of tomb was certainly in use in the first century A. D. The fourth class consists of rock-sunk graves, with a heavy lid fitted above: this seems to belong to Roman times. The fifth has two graves, one each side of a shaft, and this is known from inscriptions to have been in use in the twelfth century. Leaden coffins were sometimes used in these later tombs. The sepulchre west of the “House of Stoning” belongs to the third class—the Greco-Jewish—but, since similar arrangements are to be found in some later Greek tombs of the Byzantine age, it is not here intended to be understood that this tomb of necessity existed at the time of the Crucifixion.
The present chapter has been one of conjecture as to probabilities, rather than of the description of undoubted monuments. This is rendered inevitable by the circumstances. The results will not be admitted by those who are convinced that the traditional sites are to be accepted; but to those who are not so convinced, the arguments may appear more suggestive. The only known patristic allusion to Calvary before 326 A. D. is that of Origen in our third century,[319] and he only refers to a “Hebrew” tradition that Adam was buried at Golgotha. He must mean Hebrew Christians, as the Jews never mention Golgotha by name at all, and held that Adam was buried at Hebron, as Jerome also supposed—a tradition repeated by the Jewish traveller Rabbi Jacob in 1258 A. D., and which was based on the old name of Hebron, Kirjath Arb’a, “the city of four,” who were supposed to be Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.[320] Even if some Hebrews supposed Adam to have died in Jerusalem, the tradition is very improbable, and also tells us nothing as to the position of Calvary.
The events of the Passion have been detailed at some length, with the object of showing that the accounts in the four Gospels do not disagree as a whole with one another, and that the close proximity of the sites fits with the limited time that elapsed between the first trial in the Prætorium and the Crucifixion of our Lord. Like the early Christians, we must be content with a very general idea of the localities; and as regards the “new sepulchre,” we must “let the dead bury their dead.”
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VII
[286] Neubauer, “Géog. du Talmud,” 1868, p. 142, quotes Tal. Jer., Sanhed., ii. 2 (“et dans d’autres passages”), for the doctors seated on the steps to teach. Luke ii. 46–50.
[287] The tables (Sheḳ., vi. 45); the seats (Sukkah, iv. 1); the boxes (Sheḳ., iii. 2); and the stalls (Tal. Bab., Aboda Zara, 8 b.; Rosh hash-Shanah, 31 a). Matt. xxi. 12; Mark xi. 16; Luke xix. 45, xxi. 1; John ii. 14, x. 23; Josephus, “Ant.” XX. ix. 7; “Wars,” V. v. 1; Acts iii. 2.
[288] Matt. xxiii. 37, xxiv. 1–2; Mark xiii. 1–2; Luke xxi. 1–5.
[289] John v. 2–4, ix. 7. The “tower of Siloam” (Luke xiii. 4) was probably one of those on the city wall near the pool.
[290] Bordeaux Pilgrim (333 A. D.); Eucherius (c. 427–40 A. D.); Onomasticon, s.v. Bethesda.
[291] See Derenbourg, “Palestine,” 1867, p. 465; Mishnah, Middoth, iv. 7, and Seder Olam, and Tal. Bab., Aboda Zara, 8 b, Rosh hash-Shanah, 31 a, are quoted by Derenbourg.