Where/what is Golgotha/Calvary?

The Greek is κρανίον, 'a skull.' The word 'Calvary' is from the Latin Calvaria, having a like signification; agreeing also with the Hebrew GOLGOTHA, which has the same meaning. Matt. 27:33; Luke 23:33. The place where the Lord was crucified, and near to which the tomb was situated in which He was buried. The traditional site of the Holy Sepulchre is now well within the city of Jerusalem, and great efforts have been made to prove that this spot was at that time outside the city, but this is not at all credible. A much more probable place is that pointed out by the Jews on the north of the city, near the Grotto of Jeremiah. Visitors have declared that this site has, at a distance, the natural contour of a human skull. It would have been near the city yet outside it, and near also to where there could have been a garden, in which a tomb could have been cut. It is also a spot from whence the crucifixion could have been seen by the passers-by (on the road from the Damascus gate). This site has therefore several points in its favour.

GOLGOTHA

GOLGOTHA (Hebrew), Calvary (Latin)—“a skull” or “the place of a skull,” outside the walls of Jerusalem, thought to be a hill two hundred and fifty yards west of Damascus gate was the last scene of the Saviour’s sufferings and sorrow.

Gol’ go tha - A skull: place of a skull

Calvary is not called a 'hill' or 'mount' in scripture, though often so designated in poetry, and as it was called by an early traveller known as the Bordeaux Pilgrim, in A.D. 333.

580 "Skull," i.e., Golgotha a name avoided, as Gethsemane, etc., in view of Gentile readers. "Calvary" of A.V. is from the Latin Vulgate.

About A.D. 30 He made His exit from this world by way of a malefactor’s cross, erected at Golgotha, just outside Jerusalem. Rejected by the world, stripped and dishonoured, He died. Is it likely that the violence then done to Him is never to be reversed? Is He to lie for ever under the shadow of apparent defeat? Is there no more to be expected?

A more literal translation is "in glory" rather than "into glory". Mankind took Christ outside the city and gave Him the most despicable, despised place in the universe, "And when they came to the place which is called Skull, there they crucified him" (Luke 23:33). This was where they burned the carcasses of animals that were sacrificed in the temple, they did not want Him, they said "We will not have this man to reign over us" (Luke 19:14), "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15), "Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas: (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)" (Luke 23:18-19), and "His blood be on us, and on our children" (Matt.27:25). The nation of Israel, the Romans and men generally gave Him the very lowest place on earth, but God has given the Lord Jesus Christ the highest place in heaven, as there is no place in heaven too high for the Lord Jesus.

It is interesting to note here that Mark speaks of bringing Him to Golgotha. The word translated "bring" really means "bear" (translated thus in Mark 2:3 and Luke 23:26). "And they bear Him unto the place Golgotha." They had to hold Him up. The blessed Servant had spent His strength. What appearance He must have presented after all the scourging and cruel indignities! His face from the awful blows was marred. No wonder that His real human body was weak. But could He succumb? Never. No one could take His life. It could not be touched by man or Satan; death (the result of sin) had no claim on Him. He gave His life for a ransom. Mark also reports exclusively that the wine they offered Him was mingled with myrrh. This was considered an anodyne, to relieve and deaden the pain. The Servant who had come to spend all He had and to give Himself did not need it, but refused the concoction. Mark gives the hour of crucifixion as "the third hour." In John's Gospel (19:14) the sixth hour is mentioned when Pilate said, "Behold your King." The critics triumphantly point to this as a discrepancy. But John gives the Roman way of reckoning the civil day and Mark adheres to the Jewish timekeeping.

As the other Gospels show, the Lord had used such expressions as "taking his cross," and "bearing his cross," as figurative of the fact that His disciple must be prepared to come under the death sentence of the world. The full force of that figure is seen here, for, "He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull." The place got its name from the peculiar configuration of the rock, but it is significant for all that! A skull speaks of the humiliating end of all man's power and glory. In some living man it may once have held as brilliant and powerful a brain as ever existed; and it has come to this! The Son of God accepted the judgment of death as from man's hand, and to a place which set forth symbolically the end of all man's glory He went to bear it.

It is fitting that the place of execution should bear the gruesome name of Golgotha, Calvary, "the place of a skull." Indeed, the whole world was that in the eyes of God, a lifeless, hideous travesty of what had come so fair from his hands. It is more than mere scorn when the cynic says: "Every face, however full, Padded round with flesh and fat, Is but modelled on a skull."

Calvary was thus a witness of the moral condition of the whole world, also of the love and grace which would come down to the very place where the hideousness of sin was manifested, there to triumph over it. From the skull of Calvary springs the beauty of the resurrection; not only for the Son of God over whom indeed death had no power, and whom it could not disfigure, though it might eclipse His beauty to the eye of man, but for the whole family of the redeemed who are risen with Christ, eternally beyond the power of death to mar or disfigure.