+Israel-©-MEA-20180131-(FRD01)-Historical-Icons-of-Israel–Garden-Tomb
Historical Icons of Israel – The Garden Tomb
The Garden Tomb with its neatly maintained gardens and trees, provides a tranquil environment for prayer and reflection. It is located close to the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. Within the garden at a placed called Golgotha (Place of the Skull) is a tomb, a winepress and a water cistern, including burial benches which were made sometime between the 4th and 6th Century of the Byzantine period.
The Garden Tomb is generally regarded by Protestants to be the tomb in which Messiah was buried. However, the Catholic Church favours the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be the more accurate historical site. The New Testament tells us that after Jesus was crucified, a rich religious leader named Joseph (of Arimathea) was given permission by Pilate to take and bury the body. Also known as Gordon’s Calvary, the Garden Tomb is what you could call the “rival” to the Church of the Hoy Sepulcher. It is called Gordon’s Calvary because in 1883 British General Charles Gordon suggested that this outcropping of rock just across the street from the north city wall was indeed Golgotha. His discovery gained momentum because the garden tomb had been found near this location in 1867, and the words sited in Hebrews 13:12, “He suffered outside the gate,” are used to confirm this.
Interestingly, archaeologists estimate this tomb to have been established between 900 BC and 700 BC, corresponding with the Old Testament later period. This reckoning casts doubt on the claim that this is the same tomb in which Messiah was buried, because there are several references to Messiah’s burial place being a new tomb, e.g. in Matthew 27:60, it says that Joseph (of Arimathea), “…laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed. Also in John 19:41 it says, “Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.”
Copyright exists in all the material on this website and is owned by Messianic Education Australia Ltd. unless otherwise explicitly stated. This copyright extends to the images, logos, layout and presentation styles as well as the text material.