Calvary

Calvary (Calvariae or Calvariae locus) or Golgotha (Golgothâ) was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was crucified. Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for . The exact location of Calvary has been traditionally associated with a place now enclosed within one of the southern chapels of the multidenominational Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a site said to have been recognized by the Roman empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, during her visit to the Holy Land in 325. Other locations have been suggested: in the 19th century, Protestant scholars proposed a different location near the Garden Tomb on Green Hill (now "Skull Hill") about north of the traditional site and historian Joan Taylor has more recently proposed a location about to its south-southeast. The English names Calvary and Golgotha derive from the Vulgate Latin Calvariae, Calvariae and (all meaning "place of the Skull" or "a Skull"), and used by Jerome in his translations of Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, Luke 23:33, and John 19:17. Versions of these names have been used in English since at least the 10th century, a tradition shared with most European languages including French (Calvaire), Spanish and Italian (Calvario), pre-Lutheran German (Calvarie), Polish (Kalwaria), and Lithuanian (Kalvarijos). The 1611 King James Version borrowed the Latin forms directly, while Wycliffe and other translators anglicized them in forms like Caluarie, Caluerie, and Calueri which were later standardized as Calvary. While the Gospels merely identify Golgotha as a "place", Christian tradition has described the location as a hill or mountain since at least the 6th century. It has thus often been referenced as Mount Calvary in English hymns and literature. In the 1769 King James Version, the relevant verses of the New Testament are: And when they were come unto a place called Golgatha, that is to say, a place of a skull, They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.