Mark 15:22 Commentary and Bible Study

The word ‘Golgotha’ comes from Aramaic through Greek, and it is transliterated here. It is a great hill, probably the one on the north-west side of Jerusalem outside the gates of the old Jerusalem. But it isn't absolutely certain where the location is. In the Gospel of Luke it is translated differently in the King James Version, where the same place is called Calvary, and that comes from the Latin. Calvaria is the Latin for skull, or at least the upper part of the skull and strangely and interestingly the Christian church has preferred the Calvary term to the Golgotha term and that is a beautiful word to us. Why it was called the place of a skull you can only guess. Some say it’s because the rocks, the place looked a bit like a skull. There is indeed a craggy rocky hill there, that years ago, before the rain misshaped it, would have resembled something of a skull. Others think it was because it was a place of execution, so skulls were lying around, but we don’t really know. Golgotha or Calvary; Mount Golgotha, Mount Calvary. But Christ was no doubt executed with the thieves at the bottom of that hill, where the road ran, where there were, as we read in the text, passers-by. People trafficked as usual, and some of the great crowd out of Jerusalem passed that way. There were those that passed, those that were gathered in a great multitude to see the execution.