page_title: Calvary
section_title: Biblical references and etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Calvary / Biblical references and etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: Chapel of Mount Calvary from Views in the Ottoman Dominions, in Europe, in Asia, and some of the Mediterranean islands (1810) illustrated by Luigi Mayer (1755-1803).
context_page_description: Calvary, or Golgotha, was, according to the canonical Gospels, a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was crucified.
  The canonical Gospels use the Koine term Kraníon when testifying to the place outside Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified. Kraníon is often translated as "Skull" in English, but more accurately means Cranium, the part of the skull enclosing the brain. In Latin it is rendered Calvariae Locus, from which the English term Calvary derives.
  Its traditional site, identified by Queen Mother Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, in 325, is at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A 19th-century suggestion places it at the site now known as The Garden Tomb on Skull Hill, some 500 m to the north, and 200 m north of the Damascus Gate. Historian Joan E. Taylor bases a location c. 175 m south-southeast of the traditional site on her reading of textual evidence.
context_section_description: The recorded form Γολγοθα may be a simplified pronunciation of an Aramaic golgolta, corresponding to  Hebrew gulgōleṯ (גֻּלְגֹּלֶת) "skull".
  English Calvary is the anglicized form of  the Latin gloss from the Vulgate (Calvariæ), to refer to Golgotha in Luke 23:33,
  where the Greek text gives Κρανίον rather than the explicit Κρανίου Τόπος of Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22 and John 19:17.
  The adoption of the Latin form has a long tradition in English Bible translations, going back to at least the late 10th century (Wessex Gospels), and is retained in  Wycliffe's Bible  and Tyndale's Bible as well as in the King James Version.  
  By contrast, Martin Luther translates Luke's Κρανίον into German as Schädelstätte ("place of skull(s)"). The Latinism is also current in various other languages within the Latin sphere of influence, including Spanish and Italian Calvario, French Calvaire, Polish Kalwaria, Lithuanian Kalvarijos.
  The church fathers offer different interpretations for the name; either deriving it from a topographic feature resembling a cranium (Pseudo-Tertullian),
  or alternatively as the site where the  skull of Adam was said to be buried (Origenes), or from the skulls of those executed there (Jerome, locum decollatorum).
  The association of the site with the "skull of Adam" is expanded in a number of noncanonical Christian writings, including the Kitab al-Magall, the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, the Cave of Treasures, as well as by Patriarch Eutychius of Alexandria (9th century). According to  these accounts,  Shem and Melchizedek traveled to the resting place of Noah's Ark, retrieved the body of Adam from it, and were led by Angels to Golgotha – described as a skull-shaped hill at the centre of the Earth, where also the serpent's head had been crushed following the Fall of Man.
  While the Gospels merely identify Calvary as a  "place" (τόπος), Christian tradition since at least the 6th century has described the location as  a "mountain" or "hill".
  The location itself is mentioned in all four canonical Gospels:
  Matthew 27:33: "And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha [Γολγοθᾶ], that is to say, a place of a skull [Κρανίου Τόπος]"  (KJV)
  Mark 15:22: "And they bring him unto the place Golgotha [Γολγοθᾶ], which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull [Κρανίου Τόπος]" (KJV)
  Luke 23:33: "And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary [Κρανίον], there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left." (KJV)
  John 19:17: "And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull [Κρανίου Τόπον], which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha [Γολγοθα]."  (KJV)
  An alternative suggestion, due to Krafft (1846)
  proposes that the reported association with the word "skull" is  a popular etymology of an original name Gol Goatha, interpreted (by Krafft) as meaning "heap of death", or "hill of execution";
  the supposed toponym Goatha has also been identified,  by Ferguson (1847), 
  with the location called Goʿah (גֹּעָה)   in   Jeremiah 31:39, in a description of the geography of Jerusalem.
caption: Chapel of Mount Calvary, painted by Luigi Mayer
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