The Life of Jesus

by Ernest Renan

[Footnote 3: John xix. 14. According to Mark xv. 25, it could scarcely have been eight o'clock in the morning, since that evangelist relates that Jesus was crucified at nine o'clock.]

The scene of the execution was at a place called Golgotha, situated outside Jerusalem, but near the walls of the city.[1] The name Golgotha signifies a skull; it corresponds with the French word Chaumont, and probably designated a bare hill or rising ground, having the form of a bald skull. The situation of this hill is not precisely known. It was certainly on the north or northwest of the city, in the high, irregular plain which extends between the walls and the two valleys of Kedron and Hinnom,[2] a rather uninteresting region, and made still worse by the objectionable circumstances arising from the neighborhood of a great city. It is difficult to identify Golgotha as the precise place which, since Constantine, has been venerated by entire Christendom.[3] This place is too much in the interior of the city, and we are led to believe that, in the time of Jesus, it was comprised within the circuit of the walls.[4]

[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 33; Mark xv. 22; John xix. 20; Heb. xiii. 12.]

[Footnote 2: Golgotha, in fact, seems not entirely unconnected with the hill of Gareb and the locality of Goath, mentioned in Jeremiah xxxi. 39. Now, these two places appear to have been at the northwest of the city. I should incline to fix the place where Jesus was crucified near the extreme corner which the existing wall makes toward the west, or perhaps upon the mounds which command the valley of Hinnom, above Birket-Mamilla.]

[Footnote 3: The proofs by which it has been attempted to establish that the Holy Sepulchre has been displaced since Constantine are not very strong.]

[Footnote 4: M. de Vogüé has discovered, about 83 yards to the east of the traditional site of Calvary, a fragment of a Jewish wall analogous to that of Hebron, which, if it belongs to the inclosure of the time of Jesus, would leave the above-mentioned site outside the city. The existence of a sepulchral cave (that which is called "Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea"), under the wall of the cupola of the Holy Sepulchre, would also lead to the supposition that this place was outside the walls. Two historical considerations, one of which is rather strong, may, moreover, be invoked in favor of the tradition. The first is, that it would be singular if those, who, under Constantine, sought to determine the topography of the Gospels, had not hesitated in the presence of the objection which results from John xix. 20, and from Heb. xiii. 12. Why, being free to choose, should they have wantonly exposed themselves to so grave a difficulty? The second consideration is, that they might have had to guide them, in the time of Constantine, the remains of an edifice, the temple of Venus on Golgotha, erected by Adrian. We are, then, at times led to believe that the work of the devout topographers of the time of Constantine was earnest and sincere, that they sought for indications, and that, though they might not refrain from certain pious frauds, they were guided by analogies. If they had merely followed a vain caprice, they might have placed Golgotha in a more conspicuous situation, at the summit of some of the neighboring hills about Jerusalem, in accordance with the Christian imagination, which very early thought that the death of Christ had taken place on a mountain. But the difficulty of the inclosures is very serious. Let us add, that the erection of a temple of Venus on Golgotha proves little. Eusebius (Vita Const., iii. 26), Socrates (H.E., i. 17), Sozomen (H.E., ii. 1), St. Jerome (Epist. xlix., ad Paulin.), say, indeed, that there was a sanctuary of Venus on the site which they imagined to be that of the holy tomb; but it is not certain that Adrian had erected it; or that he had erected it in a place which was in his time called "Golgotha"; or that he had intended to erect it at the place where Jesus had suffered death.]

He who was condemned to the cross, had himself to carry the instrument of his execution.[1] But Jesus, physically weaker than his two companions, could not carry his. The troop met a certain Simon of Cyrene, who was returning from the country, and the soldiers, with the off-hand procedure of foreign garrisons, forced him to carry the fatal tree. Perhaps they made use of a recognized right of forcing labor, the Romans not being allowed to carry the infamous wood. It seems that Simon was afterward of the Christian community. His two sons, Alexander and Rufus,[2] were well known in it. He related perhaps more than one circumstance of which he had been witness. No disciple was at this moment near to Jesus.[3]

[Footnote 1: Plutarch, De Sera Num. Vind., 19; Artemidorus, Onirocrit., ii. 56.]

[Footnote 2: Mark xv. 21.]

[Footnote 3: The circumstance, Luke xxiii. 27-31, is one of those in which we are sensible of the work of a pious and loving imagination. The words which are there attributed to Jesus could only have been written after the siege of Jerusalem.]