Annotation CXXII

”They came to the place called Golgotha, which is the place of Calvary [the Skull].” — Matthew 27:33

Whether Adam was buried on Mount Calvary.

Origen, treatise 35 on Matthew, seems to refer the cause why that place was called “of Calvary” to the skull of Adam, the first parent, buried there; concerning which he brings forth this: “The place of Calvary is said to have [this] dispensation — that there should die [he] who was about to die for men. For a certain tradition of this kind has come to me: that the body of Adam, the first man, is buried there, where Christ was crucified — so that, as in Adam all die, so in Christ all may be made alive: that in that place, which is called ‘the place of Calvary,’ that is, ‘the place of the head,’ Adam, the head of the human race, may find resurrection, together with the whole people, through the resurrection of the Savior, who there suffered and rose again.” Epiphanius, at the end of the first book against heresies, explaining this matter more fully, wrote thus: “One may wonder that our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified in Golgotha, and nowhere else than where the body of Adam lay. For, having gone out from Paradise, he [Adam] afterward departed thither, and, in this place — namely of Jerusalem — paying the debt of nature, was there buried in the place [of] Golgotha. Whence it deservedly had the surname ‘of Calvary,’ because the skull and relics of Adam, the first-formed man, were there. Christ, therefore, in a riddle showed forth our salvation, when — crucified there — he began with his blood to besprinkle the relics of the first father from the beginning of the human mass [race], that he might show us the besprinkling of his blood made unto the cleansing of the whole human defilement. Wherefore here too was fulfilled that which was said, ‘Rise, thou that sleepest, and rise again from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten thee.’” Very many embrace this ancient narration as most true — among others especially Athanasius, in the book On the Lord’s Passion; Cyprian, in the sermon On the Resurrection; Ambrose, in book 5 of the Letters, letter 19, and on Luke chapter 23; Theophylact, on Matthew chapter 27, and on Mark chapter 15, and on Luke 23, and on John chapter 19; Euthymius too, on chapter 27 of Matthew; and many others, whom for brevity’s sake I pass over. Jerome, exploding this kind of tradition as fabulous, spoke thus in the fourth book on Matthew: “I have heard someone expound the place of Calvary [to be that] in which Adam was buried, and [that] it was so called because the head of the ancient man was buried there; and that this is [what] the Apostle says, ‘Rise, thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten thee.’ A favorable interpretation, soothing the ears of the people, yet not true. For outside the city, and beyond the gate, are the places in which the heads of the condemned are cut off; and therefore the Lord was crucified there, that where before was the ground of the condemned, there the standards of martyrdom might be raised. But if anyone shall wish to contend that he was crucified there so that his blood might trickle upon the tomb of Adam: let us ask him why the other thieves too were crucified in the same place. From which it appears that Calvary is not the sepulcher of the first man, but signifies the place of the beheaded; that where sin abounded, grace might super-abound. But Adam we read to have been buried near

near Hebron and Arbee, in [the book of] Joshua, son of Nun, we read.” Thus far Jerome — who repeats the same in book 3 of the commentary on the epistle to the Ephesians.