And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
All Commentaries on Matthew 27:33 Go To Matthew 27
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
And they came unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull. "Calvary" is the bare skull of a man; Golgotha means the same; so called from its roundness; from the root "gal" or "gabal," to roll about. Some suppose that S. Matthew wrote in Greek and himself explained the Hebrew; others that the explanation was given by the Greek translator of the original Hebrew.
But why was the place so called? Some say because Adam was there buried, and redeemed, too, by Christ on the same spot by the Blood of the Cross, and restored to the life of grace. See note on Eph. v14 , and the Fathers there quoted. For there was a tradition that Noah took the bones of Adam into the ark, and after the deluge gave the skull, and Juda with it, to Shem, his favourite son. Such respect did the ancients pay to their dead from believing in the immortality of the soul. "Christ," says S. Ambrose (in Luke xxiii.), "was crucified in Golgotha because it was fitting that the first-fruits of our life should rest in the very spot from which our death had come." Others give a more literal and obvious reason, that it was because criminals were there beheaded. Baronius and others reject this view, on the ground that beheading was not a Jewish practice. But it is certain that after the Roman conquest criminals were beheaded, as John the Baptist by Herod Antipas and S. James by Herod Agrippa. Besides this, there were lying about on that spot the skulls of those who had died in various other ways.
Mystically: Gretser says, "It was prophetically called Golgotha, because Christ our Lord, our true Head, there died."
It was Christ"s own will to be crucified in a dishonourable place like this, in order to expiate our infamous and execrable sins. He thus converted it into one of honour and adoration, for Christians in Calvary reverence and adore Christ crucified. For Christ, as Sedulius says,—
"With glory all our sufferings hath arrayed,
And sanctified the torments He endured."
Song of Solomon , too, Seneca (Cons. ad Helvidiam) says that Socrates entered the prison to take away the ignominy from the place.
Bede (de Locis Sanctis, cap. ii.) observes, from S. Jerome and S. Augustine (Serm. lxxi. de temp.), that Abraham offered up his son on this very mountain. For Mount Moriah and Calvary are close together, and they look like one mountain parted into two ridges or hills.
The Apostle ( Hebrews 13. xi seq.) gives four reasons for Christ being crucified outside Jerusalem, and thence concludes, "Let us go forth to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach." It was chiefly to signify that the virtues of His Cross were to be transferred from the Jews to all nations, that "the Cross of Christ might be the altar, not of the temple, but of the world" (S. Leo, Serm. ix. de Pass.).
