Did Jesus Die On a Hill?

Fresh off the overnight bus from La Paz, I sat down to sip a coffee at a beach-front bar in Copacabana. In front of me, gentle waves of the largest lake in South America and the highest navigable lake in the world, Lake Titicaca, lapped the shoreline. The sky was clear, the air thin. To my right, a rocky prominence loomed over the lake. The mountain, Cerro Calvario (Calvary Hill), was my destination.

I was in Bolivia doing fieldwork on and around two hills that share the same name. These hills are separated by 205 miles (330 kilometers) of rough terrain, as the crow flies. One hill, in the Cochabamba Valley, reaches to 8,500 feet (2,590 Meters), while the other — the one next to me — rises to 13,100 feet (nearly 4,000 meters).

At the time, I didn’t think much of the fact that two mountains shared the same name: Cerro Calvario. I knew the name is a reference to the location of Jesus’s crucifixion. And the names are fitting because there are, at the top of the summits of the two hills, Catholic shrines. But it wasn’t until I returned to the USA and drove past a Baptist church, which displayed on the highway a solitary cross perched atop a manmade mound, that I started to wonder about the name. After doing a quick search online, I discovered that there were many Calvary Hills around the world.

Across the globe, one can find scores of sites on hills and mountains that conjure up the crucifixion of Jesus. There are Calvary Hills, Cerros Calvarios, and other foreign-language equivalents like the German Kalvarienberg. So too can one find “Sacred Mountains” (Sacri Monti in Italian, Sacromonte in Spanish, etc.) that, while not explicitly referencing the name of the site of Jesus’s crucifixion mentioned in the Bible, alludes to it by providing pilgrims a chance to experience holy sites by evoking the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. There are also a multitude of freestanding shrines or monuments depicting crosses or the crucifixion of Jesus, which are sometimes but not always located on hills or mountains, called “calvaries.”

The association between the crucifixion and mountains is so common that it has become part of our cultural assumptions. Inscriptions of crosses standing upon trefoil symbols depicting mountains (fig. 1) were common on 7th-century tombstones in Gaza.¹ Paintings from the Renaissance depict Jesus nailed to a cross in mountainous landscapes, many of which overlook distant towns, or on small mountain-like piles of stone. And more recently, a lacerated Jesus and two thieves hang on crosses above a flat-topped, rocky mountain in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ (fig. 2).

Given the global reach of Christianity, and the importance the crucifixion and resurrection is in Christian ideas, the sheer number of Calvary Hills around the world is not surprising. But what is surprising is that the Bible does not mention anything at all about the site of crucifixion being a hill or a mountain.

What Does the Bible Say About Golgotha?

The crucifixion is described only a few times in the Bible, in all four of the gospels: Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke. The name of the site is Golgotha (Γολγοθά), a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew word which means “skull.” The Greek and Latin equivalents for the term is kranion (κρανίου) and calvaria, respectively. Neither Matthew, Mark, John, or Luke call the site a hill or a mountain. Instead, they simply call it a “place” (τόπος).

Matthew says, “they came to a place called Golgotha, which means Place of a Skull.” Mark says, “they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull.” John says, “they took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, carrying His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.” And Luke says, “when they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left.”²

In the original Greek, they all use the term Golgotha (Γολγοθά) with the exception of Luke. And they all, inclusive of Luke, call it a “place” (τόπος & τόπον) of a “skull” (κρανίου).³ John’s account is interesting because he explicitly references the etymology of the term Golgotha (Γολγοθά) as being Hebrew in origin, and that it means “skull.”

Apart from the brief lines in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there is no other description of the site of Jesus’s crucifixion in the Bible. Not one, at least, that describes it as a mountain or a hill.

One may then wonder: If the Bible does not mention anything about Golgotha being a hill or a mountain, how did we come to associate the ideas?

The Association Between Golgotha and Hill or Mountain

One important source on the topic is Sir Charles Wilson’s posthumous book Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre. Wilson was a British geographer and archaeologist who worked on the ordnance survey of Jerusalem in the mid 1800s before doing fieldwork in greater Palestine and Sinai. In his 1906 book, Wilson uses late-Roman and early-Christian sources to understand whether the traditionally venerated sites of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection correspond with the actual locations mentioned in the New Testament. He concludes that, while there is no solid evidence in support of the idea, there is no solid evidence against it.

The association between Golgotha and mountain/hill first became connected in the fourth century. Prior to the fourth century, no source that we know of mentions anything about Golgotha’s height or mountain-like appearance.

The earliest connection between Golgotha being a mountain/hill comes from an itinerary to the Holy Land called Itinerarium Burdigalense, or the Bordeaux Itinerary. Written by an anonymous pilgrim of a journey purportedly taken in 333 and 334 CE just as Constantine’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre was being completed, the itinerary is a dry list of waypoints and the distances between them en route to the Holy Land from Bordeaux.

Once at his destination, the Pilgrim of Bordeaux offer an account of what he saw. Regarding the site of crucifixion and resurrection, he writes:

From thence as you go out of the wall of Sion, as you walk towards the gate of Neapolis, towards the right, below in the valley, are walls, where was the house or praetorium of Pontius Pilate. Here our Lord was tried before His passion. On the left hand is the little hill of Golgotha where the Lord was crucified. About a stone’s throw from thence is a vault wherein His body was laid, and rose again on the third day. There, at present, by the command of the Emperor Constantine, has been built a basilica, that is to say, a church of wondrous beauty, having at the side reservoirs from which water is raised, and a bath behind in which infants are washed.⁴

The Latin term the Pilgrim of Bordeaux uses to refer to the hill is monticulus Golgotha. He uses the word monticulus again when discussing “the little hill which the Lord ascended to pray, when he took Peter and John with Him.” Later, on several occasions, the pilgrim uses the term montem oliueti when discussing the Mount of Olives. I point this out because the Pilgrim of Bordeaux is careful to make the distinction between “hills" and “mountains.”

Popular tradition holds that the place where Jesus was crucified was called “Skull” because it was a bald outcropping that resembled a human skull. In addition to this one, other theories abound including the idea that the site was called “Skull” because it was the location for beheadings and executions. Another holds that it was the place Adam was buried. Yet, there is no indication in the Bible or any of the early sources to corroborate these ideas.⁵

After the Bordeaux Itinerary, the next mention of the Golgotha/hill association is in the Catechetical Lectures given by Cyril around the year 350 CE. Cyril gave these lectures in the basilica Constantine had recently built, the same one the Pilgrim of Bordeaux reported seeing. In his 13th lecture, Cyril discusses the crucifixion and says, “this holy Golgotha, which stands high above us, and shews itself to this day.”⁶ It should also be noted here that Cyril calls Golgotha “the very centre of the earth” and muses that, before “the true Head endured the Cross,” the site was “prophetically named” Skull or Golgotha.

Another fourth-century description of Golgotha mentions its height. In Christus Patiens, Gregory of Nazianzus says of Golgotha: “And when they had thus hung up the Lord, some of them struck him on the head with a reed, mounting upon a tower-like rock.”⁷

Yet, a fourth-century source disputes the idea that Golgotha was a hill or tower-like. Epiphanius of Salamis writes in his Panarion (Adversus Haereses) around 375 CE:

For after leaving Paradise, living opposite it for a long time and growing old, Adam later came and died in this place, I mean Jerusalem, and was buried there, on the site of Golgotha. This is probably the way the place, which means ‘Place of a Skull,’ got its name, since the contour of the site bears no resemblance to a skull. Neither is it on some peak so that this can be interpreted as a skull, as we say of the head’s position on a body. Nor is it on a height. And indeed, it is no higher than the other ‘places’ either. Opposite it is the Mount of Olives, which is higher; and Gibeon, eight milestones off, is the highest (of the three). Even the height which was once in Zion but has now been leveled was itself taller than Golgotha.⁸

There are other sources towards the end of the 4th century and in the early fifth century that refer to Golgotha as “the rock of the cross” (crucis rupes or Golgotha rupes) starting with Jerome in his Epistola ad Paulinum (394 CE) and with Rufinus in his Historia Ecclesiatica.⁹ It is interesting to note here that Jerome, when discussing Golgotha (“Calvary” per his Latin translation) in his Commentary on the Ephesians (c. 387 CE) and and in his Commentary on St. Matthew (398 CE), doesn’t mention anything about a hill or a mountain.

The idea of Golgotha being a “hill” or a “mountain” is likely a Western invention. It first appears in the wake of Constantine’s construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the purported site of crucifixion and resurrection.

The details of the Church’s construction are not clear, but they are generally understood as follows: After Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, the Edict of Milan in 313 CE, and the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, the tomb of Jesus and the “True Cross” were found in Jerusalem. Constantine sent a letter to the Bishop of Jerusalem, Marcarius, ordering the construction of a church where the tomb/cave and crosses were discovered. This location corresponded with the site of a Roman temple. Eusebius, in The Life of Constantine, copies the letter Constantine sent to Marcarius. Some later sources attribute the discovery of the True Cross to Augusta Helena, mother of Constantine, but this is disputed.

In 333/334 CE, when the church is nearly finished, the aforementioned Pilgrim of Bordeaux visits the Holy Land and comments on Golgotha. Following the Pilgrim of Bordeaux, others start discussing the site’s height and hill-like features.

The Importance of Mountains in the Bible, and Why it Matters

Yet, as any visitor to Jerusalem will attest, the entire region is rocky and hilly. Even Luke mentions “the hill country of Judea” several times in the New Testament.¹⁰ One could assume that, because there are so many hills in Jerusalem, the chances of Jesus being crucified on a hill or a rocky place are high. Conversely, if there are many hills, there are also many valleys. While the Gospels do suggest many spectators witnessed the crucifixion,¹¹ this doesn’t mean it had to have been carried out at an elevated position. A crucifixion in a low area like a valley could be viewed by spectators standing on a hill above and looking down into it the valley.

The absence of any reference to mountains or hills in descriptions of Golgotha is striking, especially when one remembers how important mountains are in both the Old and New Testaments, from Mount Sinai to Har Megiddo, and specifically in relation to the life of Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount, the Mount of Olives, healing crowds on a mountain next to the Sea of Galilee, the Great Commission, among others.

Given the biblical significance of mountains, not mentioning a hill or mountain at Golgotha is a conspicuous omission. It would have been consistent with Judeo-Christian themes, and thus symbolically powerful, to place Jesus’s crucifixion on a hill or a mountain, yet no such reference exists in the Bible. The missing geographic detail in all four of the canonical gospels is telling. Considering how explicitly mountains are named and mentioned throughout the Bible, one can reasonably conclude that Jesus probably wasn’t crucified on a hill or mountain because none of the original sources mentions it.