Golgotha

Golgotha (pronounced gol-guh-thuh or gol-goth-uh)

(1) In the Bible’s canonical Gospels, the hill near Jerusalem on which Jesus Christ was crucified; the ancient (and now alternative) name for Calvary.

(2) A place of suffering, sacrifice or martyrdom.

(3) A place of burial (rare and usually without an initial capital).

(4) In eighteenth & nineteenth century Oxbridge slang, rooms of the heads of the colleges (obsolete).

(5) In UK slang, a hat (an allusion to "the place of the skulls" (obsolete)).

(6) A charnel house (an alternative name for a crypt or ossuary).

(7) In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a representation of Christ crucified.

1590–1600: From the Late Latin Golgotha, from the Ancient Greek Γολγοθᾶ (Golgothâ) from the Aramaic (Semitic) גּוּלְגּוּלְתָּא‎ (gulgultā) (literally “place of the skull”) and cognate with the Hebrew gulgōleth (skull).  The hill gained the name because its shape was skull-like.  In Dutch the spelling was originally Golgota which influenced use in some early English translations of the Bible.  The use of Calvary to refer to the mount on which Christ was crucified dates from the late fourteenth century.  It was from the Latin Calvariae, Calvariae & Calvaria (related to calvus (bald)), from the Ancient Greek Kraniou topos, a translation of the Aramaic gulgultā and the Old English used Heafodpannan stow as a loan-translation.

A cleaning woman on the steps of Munich's Roman Catholic Cathedral, washing a carving of Christ crucified on his Cross, Munich, 1939.  In the Eastern Orthodox Church, these installations are called Golgothas.

Historians agree Golgotha lay immediately beyond Jerusalem's city walls but there’s no certainty about the exact location although the tradition of pilgrimage has since the early Medieval period focused on the southern chapels of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, probably because the site received the imperial imprimatur within a century of Rome adopting Christianity.  However, speculation has always been encouraged by the apparently contradictory passages in surviving texts which can be interpreted in different ways, thus the suggestions of alternative sites, a matter of some interest to scholars in the field but ignored usually by most of Christendom for whom the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has for so long been a place of veneration.  Beginning in the nineteenth century, there have been archeological excavations but, two-thousand years on, the fragments and remains unearthed have provided only material for speculative interpretation.

The uncertainty about the exact location of Golgotha casts no doubt on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as a historical event, described in the Book of Mark 15:22-27 (King James Version (KJV (1611)):

And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull.  And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not.  And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take.  And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.  And the superscription of his accusation was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS.  And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left.

From what was done of the slopes of Golgotha followed the resurrection, the central event of Christianity and the only vital component for if one accepts the story of the resurrection then Christianity makes sense.  If one’s faith can’t make that leap, Christianity is just another of the competing constructs of moral theology. 

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.  For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.  Wherefore comfort one another with these words.  1 Thessalonians 4: 14-18 (King James Version (KJV (1611)).

Canada's Golgotha (1918), sculpture in bronze by Francis Derwent Wood RA (1871-1926), photograph by F Hilaire d'Arcis (1845-1935), Royal Academy of Arts Collection, London.

Canada's Golgotha is a sculpture in bronze depicting a Canadian soldier allegedly crucified on a barn door in occupied Belgium, surrounded by the jeering German troops responsible for the atrocity, said to have taken place in 1915.  There was during the First World War (1914-1918) an extensive catalogue of atrocity stories including some quite graphical imagery and there were an accepted part of the propaganda efforts on both sides of the conflict but the event carved by Wood was never verified, the contemporary witness statements later discredited.  Immediately after the end of hostilities, the German government objected to the sculpture being put on public display unless documentary evidence could be produced which proved the incident took place.  The Canadian government asserted such evidence was in their hands but declined to furnish copies which provoked further complaints from Berlin and ultimately, the sculpture was withdrawn from the exhibition.  It was kept in storage until 1992 and has since been exhibited though the curators were careful to explain the work was to be treated as an example of Christian art rather than something part of the historic record of war.  That didn’t prevent controversy.

Controversial too was the event remembered as the Nemmersdorf massacre, a series of atrocities against civilians perpetrated by Red Army soldiers during their advance into East Prussia in October 1944.  The German army swiftly (though temporarily) retook Nemmersdorf and gathered evidence of the violence, including a number of crucified bodies.  The material was passed to the Nazi Propaganda Ministry which immediately organized a publicity campaign illustrating this “Bolshevik Barbarism”, intending to inculcate the population with a fanatical desire to resist lest they suffer a similar fate.  However, there were still memories of the false atrocity stories from the earlier war and the Nazi’s propaganda efforts, increasingly disconnected from reality, had come to be regarded by many as the “fake news” of the day and the most notable consequence of the campaign was panic and a flood of civilians evacuating the eastern territories to trek west.