"Golgota! Das richtige Golgota" (the true Golgotha), he said, excitedly, and then I remembered that I should have said Golgotha, the "Place of the Skull," in the beginning.
[Illustration: THE TRUE GOLGOTHA--THE PLACE OF THE SKULL
(Notice the large eyes and mouth of the skull formed by cavities in the cliff. The place of execution is marked by the little heap of stones above.)]
We were away immediately, all of us, hurrying for the Damascus gate, beyond which it lay. It was not far--nothing is far in Jerusalem--and presently we were outside, at the wicket of a tiny garden--a sweet, orderly little place--where a pleasant German woman and a tall old Englishman with a spiritual face were letting us in. Then they led us to a little arbor, and directly--to a tomb, a real tomb, cut into the cliff overhanging the garden.
I do not know whether Jesus was laid in that tomb or not, and it is not likely that any one will ever know. But He _could_ have been laid there, and it is not unlikely that He _was_ laid there, for Golgotha--the hill that every unprejudiced visitor immediately accepts as the true Golgotha--overlooks this garden.
We could not ascend the hill--the Mohammedans no longer permit that--but we could go to the end of the garden and look up to the little heap of stones which marks the old place of stoning and of crucifixion. It was always the place of public execution. The Talmud refers to it, and the Jews of Jerusalem spit toward it to this day. We could make out the contour of the skull which gave it its name, and even the face, for in its rocky side ancient tombs and clefts formed the clearly distinguished features.
It is a hill; it is outside the walls; it is the traditional site of executions; it is the one natural place to which Jesus would have been taken for crucifixion. The Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was _never_ a hill; it was _never_ outside the walls; it was _never_ a traditional site for anything until Queen Helena began to dream.
Perhaps the reader may say, "With all the tales and traditions and disputes and doubts, what does it matter?" Perhaps it does not matter. Perhaps that old question of Pilate, "What is truth?" need not be answered.
Yet somewhere amid the mass of confliction there follows a thread of fact. Sifting the testimony, it is difficult to deny that there once lived a man named Jesus--later, and perhaps then--known as the Christ; that He was of humble birth, and grew up to teach a doctrine of forgiveness and humility (a doctrine new to the Hebrew teachers of His day, whose religion consisted mainly of ceremonial forms); that He was able to heal the sick; that He had a following who, perhaps, hailed Him as their king; that it was because of these things that He was crucified on a hill outside of Jerusalem.