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How carefully do you read your Bible? If the answer is not so much, then you may have missed this week’s word, since it only occurs 3 times in our English Bible. The word is Golgotha, and it occurs in Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, and John 19:17. What do all of those passages have in common? They’re from the gospels, and they’re during the narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The word Golgotha is the name of a place, namely the place where Jesus was crucified. It’s from the Aramaic language, which was the spoken language of that time, and it means “the place of the skull.” Scholars don’t know why this particular location was called that. Some speculate that there was a rock formation that was shaped like a skull; others guess that perhaps it’s where Adam’s (the first man created) skull was buried.

So where exactly is Golgotha? Well, we don’t really know. There are some clues given in the Bible to point us toward its whereabouts. For example, in John 19:41-42 it says that the tomb was nearby, so Golgotha was likely near a cemetery of some sort. From Hebrews 13:12 we know that Jesus’ death took place “outside the city gate,” but it doesn’t tell us which gate of Jerusalem is being referenced (there were many of them). Finally, we know from Matthew 27:39 that it was near a road with a lot of foot traffic, since there were people passing by. The traditional site of Golgotha is where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is today, just outside the Old City area where the second city wall stood.

To recap, we don’t really know why it’s called Golgotha and we don’t really know where it is. So why is it so important? Its significance is in what happened there - wherever “there” may be. Golgotha is the place where Jesus was crucified. It’s in that spot where our Lord and Savior endured the worst physical torture known to mankind at that time, so He could fulfill all of the prophecies and be able to save us from our sins and bring us closer to God. You may have certain places in your life where important things happened to you; Golgotha was the most important place for Jesus. But not only that, it’s also the most important place for all of humanity because of what happened there.