If we accept this new indication, the wall can hardly be drawn otherwise than to include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; for the knoll on which that building stands is, as contended above, the knoll of Acra--the Lower City included by the wall; and if this knoll be excluded, the same military objection will again arise--the "encirclingâ wall would be commanded by a hill immediately outside it.
The line of argument thus followed is, I believe, a new one, though the result is old. The observation of the rock-levels is a matter of primary importance, and the special observations on which the argument has been based have never before been published. The military consideration seems to me to set the matter at rest; and, to state the idea in a nutshell--"fortresses stand on hills, not in deep ravines.â
The course of the third wall is a matter which has little bearing on the question of the site of Calvary; but it may be noted that the line laid down on the plan is controlled by three considerations. First, the necessity of placing the great corner tower, Psephinus, on very high ground, the position indicated being the very top of the watershed; second, the distance from the Women's Towers to the Tomb of Helena, which was three furlongs according to Josephus; third, the line passing through the "Caverns of the Kings,â as described by the same author, and extending to the Tower of the Corner.
The third wall was built by Agrippa about ten years after the Crucifixion, to enclose the suburbs north of the city. There seems every probability therefore that the greater part of this suburb already existed in the time of Christ--an additional argument, were one needed, against the claims of the traditional sites of Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre.
Will any reader who holds in veneration so sacred a spot feel disappointed at such a result? In the last chapter I endeavoured to give a faithful account of the yearly Pandemonium which disgraces the ancient walls, and of scenes which lower the Christian faith in the eyes of the Moslem. Surely none who read those pages could still wish to believe that the place thus annually desecrated is the Tomb of Christ.
The question which naturally next demands attention is that of the real site of Calvary; but the Gospel gives us no indication sufficient to settle the matter, though the words in the Epistle are enough to condemn the miraculously-discovered fourth-century site.