Garden Tomb

So something about Caiaphas' house hit me.

Obviously, the Garden Tomb was incredible.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, we had an incredible guide, Cesar.

an evangelical praise band standing in front of a different tomb, playing contemporary worship music for an evangelical Easter Sunday service.

This is the Garden Tomb, a rival site identified by 19th century Protestant travelers as the real tomb of Jesus.

Today, it's a serene garden run by the nonprofit called the Garden Tomb Association.

And while no critical scholar accepts this site as authentic, the story of how the garden tomb became an occasional backdrop for evangelical worship services is a fascinating case study into how sacred sites are created.

In this case, the Garden Tomb's identification was less about a historical debate over two rival sites, and more about how expectations, ritual styles, aesthetic preferences, and sectarian prejudices shape what individuals think what a sacred site should look like.

Like so many sacred sites in the region, the Garden Tomb owes its fame to holy land tourism.

Someone traveling to the region, pointing out a feature, and saying, oh hey, this is probably that famous site mentioned in the Bible.

There are a lot of examples.

Because when you died, um, they believed that the soul would hang around the corpse for about seven days.

And so the tombs, if you've ever been to Israel, you know they go to, to the, uh, Garden Tomb, you see that there's actually benches that are built into those tombs, and that's for the family to come and sit over your body after you've died.

But the whole idea is that they say of Jesus, we read about how that they washed his body and they anointed it.

It says that J- [laughs] uh, Nicodemus brought, and Joseph of Arimathea brought 75 pounds of this ointment, which is, it would be today's dollars, would be tens of millions of dollars.

Another name for a part of that hill is Calvary.

And another part of that hill is called the Garden Tomb.

And I think one of the images here might be what is happening on that hilltop will be so compelling.

it will draw your heart to it.

We're showing you pictures of the actual um the non-traditional site and i want to explain how that all happened a man by the name of charles gordon he was a general he was a well-known british leader he came to live in jerusalem in 1882 he were was friends with horatio and anna spafford you would know them from the song it is well with my soul who their four daughters went and ended up dying in the ocean, but from atop their quarters where they were at the northern wall of the old city, Gordon had a view of this rocky hill in which he identified the features of a skull and he identified this location as the place of the skull and around the corner is an ancient tomb which was believed as the empty tomb of Christ.

So a decade later the property was purchased by a concerned group of Christians in England and the garden tomb association was formed and you can see pictures of gordon's calvary and also the garden tomb which we'll show you in another lesson we're going to start with luke 23 26 when they led him away they seized a man simon of cyrene coming in from the country and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus.

And following him was a large crowd of people and of women who were mourning and lamenting him.

But Jesus, turning to them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

Okay, I'm a dork apparently.

Okay, well, top right, top left, top, top.

That's where the garden tomb is and the Golgotha.

It's outside the city.

He would no doubt be glad now to go through another hole in the wall to have his liberty.

To the writer, however, perhaps the most interesting place in or about the entire city is the Garden Tomb and Mount Calvary.

This is almost north of the Damascus Gate and on the great highway from Jerusalem from the north.

Mount Calvary is only a small hill.

The Jews speak of it as the Hill of Execution or the Skull Place, as the outline of the hill seen from a certain distance resembles the form of a gigantic skull.

It is said that no Jew cares to pass this place after night, and if he passes it in daylight, he will mutter a curse upon the memory of him who presumed to be the King of the Jews.

Near the Skull Place is an old tomb that just fits the Bible narrative, viz, "Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulcher wherein never man was yet laid." This tomb was discovered many years ago by General Gordon and is often spoken of as Gordon's Tomb, also called the Garden Tomb.

When excavating about it, a wall was found which proved to be a garden wall, the end of which butts up against Mount Calvary.

Crosshole of Christ.

in the garden tomb property below ground today.

So they've paved over a bunch of this stuff.

They've done the old Charlie Kirk treatment here.

Israel, to its credit, protects Muslim and Christian sites with the same level of fervor and tenacity with which they protect Jewish sites.

I don't think they get enough credit for that, because they are as protective of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, two very important sites in the Muslim faith, as they are to the Western Wall, or as they are to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Garden Tomb, which are very special for Christian believers.

After about an hour, my Temple Mount tour with Katz is coming to a close.

We've left the eastern, more unofficially Jewish, side of the courtyard.