Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/231

Rh claims of this locality, but also in fixing the real site, as it seems to me, beyond the pale of controversy.

If there is any fact clearer than another, in reference to the place of the Crucifixion, it is that the spot was outside the walls of Jerusalem. As the Apostle puts it, both figuratively and actually, "Jesus suffered without the gate," and as there was a garden at the place of the Crucifixion containing a tomb, it is tolerably certain the spot was beyond the suburbs of the city. The traditional site, on which the church of the Crusaders stands, was either inside the second wall, as may be inferred from the description of Josephus, who says that it stretched from the Gate of Gennath in a circuit to the angle of Fort Antonia, or it must have been in close proximity thereto; and, consequently, fails in either case to answer to the language of St. John xix, 20, that the place was "nigh unto the city." As has been pointedly remarked, the language of the Evangelists seems to imply that the procession, on leaving the Prætorium, passed, not through the city, but outside it. Now from the relative positions of the Prætorium and the traditional site, the procession would have had to wind its way along the side of the second wall, instead of outwards towards the country.

But beyond the second wall stretched at that time the populous suburb of Bezetha, which was enclosed about ten years after the Crucifixion by Agrippa's third wall, and it is extremely unlikely that the Crucifixion and entombment would have been permitted in the midst of suburban residences.

We are obliged, therefore, to look outside, and beyond, those limits for a position which would answer the requirements of the several narratives, which are all quite consistent with each other. Calvary was clearly an elevated site, affording space for a large assemblage of spectators; it was some distance from the city walls, and from ordinary habitations; it was by the wayside leading into the country; and was within easy reach of the Prætorium, or Herod's Judgment Hall, which occupied the north-west angle of the Temple area. All these requirements are met by