Mark 15:22

The place Golgotha.

Golgotha.
The place of execution

Calvary, or Golgotha, is not now distinguishable as a hill, partly because of the accumulation of rubbish from the ruin of the city, in the hollows and valleys, and partly because it is doubtful whether it ever was, properly, a hill. It stood below Zion, and was looked down on from Herod’s new palace, but it was slightly above the elevation of the lower town. Its name, Golgotha, more correctly, Golgoltha, comes from the same root as Gilgal, that signifies a hill, and the term golgoi was used for sacred stones, employed in the heathen rites of the Canaanites and Phoenicians, in their worship of Venus (Baaltis). As in Wales and Cornwall, and in Scotland, Pen means “head” and “mountain,” so this word golgol came to have a double meaning. Among the early Christians a legend existed, that Calvary took its name from Adam’s skull having been buried there, and it is possible that the Jewish rabbis had such a story; but the name Calvary, or Golgotha, properly means only the rounded stone, and by a corruption of the original signification was taken to signify “the place of a skull.” Just in the same way, the Capitoline hill, in Rome, was so called, because it was a rounded elevation, but afterwards a fable grew up that it took its designation from the head of a certain Tolus having been dug up there. The spot, Calvary, would seem to have been the place of execution from an ancient date. It is probably mentioned by Jeremiah (31:38, 39), in a prophecy concerning the rebuilding and enlargement of Jerusalem, in which he foretells that the wall would be built in an extended are from the hill of Gareb in the East, sweeping round, along the North, to the hill of Goath in the West-and Goath, here, answers to Calvary, and means the place of execution. His prophecy was fulfilled about seven years after the death of Christ, by Agrippa, when Golgotha was actually enclosed within the new walls; and at the present day it lies within the city. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.)