The Topography of the Passion
March 14, 2022
Model of Herod’s Temple in Israeli museum/Wikipedia
FROM The Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Alban Goodier, 1944:
Naturally the topography of the Passion is far more simple than is that of the Public Life. If before we had to remind the reader of the small area of Palestine, much more must we do the same when we speak of Jerusalem and its neighbourhood. As for the sites of the various scenes* though, as we have said, scholars can be found who differ concerning almost all, and though time, instead of solving these problems, seems only to increase them, for a study such as this these discussions must be of minor importance. The author has accepted, more rather than less, the traditional sites as they are shown in and about Jerusalem to-day; and he has done so, both because he believes they have as good a claim to acceptance as any other, indeed in most cases there is no other ; but also because in any case it is more important to be definite from the beginning, than to break the narrative by side issues.
Bethania, then, at the foot of the eastern slope of Olivet, by the road which rises and descends over the spur of the hill, would be some forty minutes’ walk from the Supper Room. This, with the houses of Annas and Caiphas, would be in the southern section of the city below the Temple wall, which was the fashionable Jewish quarter. From the Supper Room to the Garden of Gethsemane, rising from the brook Kedron up the western side of Olivet, would take perhaps twenty minutes to walk, not more. The dwelling of Pilate and his Roman guard, Fort Antonia, was in the North of the city. This was the Roman quarter, and was distant from the house of Caiphas scarcely fifteen minutes’ walk, down the street which ran from North to South outside the Temple, in the deep valley separating Mount Moriah and Mount Sion. The house of Herod, the palace of the Asmoneans, was in the West of the city, within the western wall and near the Tower of David ; it could be reached from Fort Antonia in less than ten minutes. Calvary, now within the Church of the Holy Selpulchre, would be about the same distance from Pilate’s house ; from the house of Herod it was but a few hundred yards to the North, but, of course, outside the city wall.
