Footnote 1 – The True Cross

Until 20th-century archaeologists determined that the Holy Sepulchre did lie outside the city walls in Jesus’ day, explorers posited that it could not have been the place of Jesus’ death and burial. In the mid-19th-century, British explorer Charles Gordon proposed a site north of the Old City as Golgotha. A nearby tomb, called the Garden Tomb, became the Protestant candidate for the true tomb of Jesus. Archaeologists have since determined that the Garden Tomb was used hundreds of years before Jesus’ time and hundreds of years after, but not in Jesus’ day. See Dan Bahat, “Does the Holy Sepulchre Church Mark the Burial of Jesus?” BAR 12:03; and Gabriel Barkay, “The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?” BAR 12:02.