I looked back through my email and see that it was two years ago, during a study of Judges, that the study leader suggested Moriah and Golgotha were the same mountain height. It was in the context of Samson carrying the doors and posts of the city gate up to Hebron (Judges 16:3). That effort reminded me of Christ carrying the cross. That Sunday's reading was from Genesis 22: Isaac carrying the wood up Mt. Moriah.

And, having been in Jerusalem, I challenged the suggestion: Christ was crucified outside the city (Hebrews 13:12, 'though this could be metaphorical) and the Temple was built upon Mt. Moriah (2 Chronicles 3:1). It's assumed that the Second Temple was built in the same place as the First.

How, then, could Christ have been crucified on Mt. Moriah, where the Temple stands? And why do the Gospels say differently?


The only way to believe that these are the same mountain height is to say, as some do, that the heights are in the same range. Qualified in those terms, it's simpler to say that the sacrifice of Isaac and the crucifixion of Christ happened in the same city! Why get romantic about it? Are mountains likewise sacred to us?

But is that even true? Did the events happen in the same city?

The Jewish Encyclopedia has something interesting to say on the subject of the sacrifice of Isaac:

Most modern biblical scholars, however, regard the name as a reference to the Amorites, losing the initial a via aphesis; the name is thus interpreted as meaning land of the Amorites. This also agrees with the biblical text as it appears in the Syriac Peshitta - where the near-sacrifice occurs at the land of the Amorites, and in the Septuagint, where, for example, 2 Chronicles 3:1 refers to the location as Ἀμωρία - Amōriā.

Some scholars also identify it with Moreh, the location near Shechem at which Abraham built an altar, according to Genesis 12:6. Hence a number of scholars believe that Moriah refers to a hill near Shechem, supporting the Samaritan belief that the near-sacrifice of Isaac occurred on Mount Gerizim - a location near Shechem.

Also from Wiki:

In the book of Chronicles it is reported that the location of Araunah's threshing floor is "in mount Moriah" and that the Temple of Solomon was built over Araunah's threshing floor.

This has led to the classical rabbinical supposition that this is at the peak of Moriah; a later Islamic tradition recounts that Moriah is the same location as the Foundation Stone, which Jewish tradition holds to be the former location of the Temple of Solomon.

However, this tradition is not reported by the centuries earlier Books of Samuel, and biblical scholars view the tradition as somewhat implausible; according to a Biblical passage concerning Melchizedek, Jerusalem was already a city with a priest at the time of Abraham, and thus is unlikely to have been founded after this, at the site of a sacrifice made by Abraham in the wilderness.

Why revisit all this two years later? Because I am now studying Genesis 22 and the study guide alludes to Christ's death during its treatment of Isaac, rather obliquely, "Many centuries later God would provide another 'lamb' who would die on this same mountain". Hmm. Who says that Christianity doesn't deal in myth?

(Of course, I love myth, but let's be conscious of it, alright?)

An amazing interactive map of Jerusalem.

cf. Reasons why the Garden Tomb isn't it.

tags technorati : christian myth