[Footnote 1:  Jos., Ant., XX. ix. 1.  The Talmud, which represents the condemnation of Jesus as entirely religious, declares, in fact, that he was stoned; or, at least, that after having been hanged, he was stoned, as often happened (Mishnah, Sanhedrim, vi. 4.) Talmud of Jerusalem, Sanhedrim, xiv. 16.  Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 43 a, 67 a.]

[Footnote 2:  Jos., Ant., XVII. x. 10, XX. vi. 2; B.J., V. xi. 1; Apuleius, Metam., iii. 9; Suetonius, Galba, 9; Lampridius, Alex.  Sev., 23.]

[Footnote 3:  John xix. 14.  According to Mark xv. 25, it could scarcely have been eight o’clock in the morning, since that evangelist relates that Jesus was crucified at nine o’clock.]

The scene of the execution was at a place called Golgotha, situated outside Jerusalem, but near the walls of the city.[1] The name Golgotha signifies a skull; it corresponds with the French word Chaumont, and probably designated a bare hill or rising ground, having the form of a bald skull.  The situation of this hill is not precisely known.  It was certainly on the north or northwest of the city, in the high, irregular plain which extends between the walls and the two valleys of Kedron and Hinnom,[2] a rather uninteresting region, and made still worse by the objectionable circumstances arising from the neighborhood of a great city.  It is difficult to identify Golgotha as the precise place which, since Constantine, has been venerated by entire Christendom.[3] This place is too much in the interior of the city, and we are led to believe that, in the time of Jesus, it was comprised within the circuit of the walls.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Matt. xxvii. 33; Mark xv. 22; John xix. 20; Heb. xiii. 12.]

[Footnote 2:  Golgotha, in fact, seems not entirely unconnected with the hill of Gareb and the locality of Goath, mentioned in Jeremiah xxxi. 39.  Now, these two places appear to have been at the northwest of the city.  I should incline to fix the place where Jesus was crucified near the extreme corner which the existing wall makes toward the west, or perhaps upon the mounds which command the valley of Hinnom, above Birket-Mamilla.]

[Footnote 3:  The proofs by which it has been attempted to establish that the Holy Sepulchre has been displaced since Constantine are not very strong.]

[Footnote 4:  M. de Voguee has discovered, about 83 yards to the east of the traditional site of Calvary, a fragment of a Jewish wall analogous to that of Hebron, which, if it belongs to the inclosure of the time of Jesus, would leave the above-mentioned site outside the city.  The existence of a sepulchral cave (that which is called “Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea"), under the wall of the cupola of the Holy Sepulchre, would also lead to the supposition that this place was outside the walls.  Two historical considerations, one of which is rather strong, may, moreover, be invoked