Revisiting Golgotha and the Garden Tomb

(by Jeffrey R. Chadwick rsc.byu.edu)

The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem is a site of significant interest to many Latter-day Saints and religious educators. In the last thirty years, tens of thousands of Latter-day Saint visitors to Israel have spent time at the pleasantly landscaped site. Many of these, if not most, have come away impressed, both by the sincere explanations of the volunteer guides and by the peaceful spirit of the place. Visitors have often left with the feeling that this was where Jesus Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday morning nearly two thousand years ago. Photos, slides, and videos featuring the tomb in that garden are often used in Church classrooms when educators discuss the events of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. In a recently produced video presentation entitled “Special Witnesses of Christ,” President Gordon B. Hinckley, standing at the Garden Tomb, made the following statement: “Just outside the walls of Jerusalem, in this place or somewhere nearby was the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where the body of the Lord was interred.”[1] There is, however, something very notable about this statement. Always a cautious observer, President Hinckley, with the words “or somewhere nearby” left wide open the possibility that the Garden Tomb might not have been the sepulchre of Jesus at all.

In 1992, I began a decade-long archaeological investigation of both the Garden Tomb and the so-called Skull Hill not far away (hereafter referred to as the “skull feature”) with the goal of determining whether either or both may be identified with the New Testament “Golgotha” and the tomb of Jesus’ Resurrection.[2] That investigation has yielded mixed results. The good news is that evidence is quite positive for the skull feature having been Golgotha, or the “place of the skull” where Jesus was crucified. However, the bad news, for some at least, is that the Garden Tomb does not seem to meet the archaeological criteria to be the site of Jesus’ Resurrection described in the New Testament.[3] The tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, if it still exists, will have to be sought “somewhere nearby.”

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https://rsc.byu.edu/vol-4-no-1-2003/revisiting-golgotha-garden-tomb