The Skull of Adam and Christ’s Crucifixion

Recently Mel Gibson featured on Joe Rogan’s Podcast ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’. Mel Gibson is a practicing Catholic and the conversation naturally moved on to issues surrounding Mel’s faith and the filming of his upcoming movie The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection. During the conversation, Mel made a curious statement regarding the site of the crucifixion:

‘…they say that Golgotha, the place where the crucifixion happened, it’s called Golgotha, the place of the skull, because that’s where Adam’s head is buried.’

This statement has been discussed widely recently and as a historian, I would like to offer my analysis of Mel’s statement and explore the location of the Skull of Adam and Christ’s crucifixion.

Golgotha/Calvary

The site of Christ’s crucifixion was known as Golgotha or Calvary. Calvary was a hill located just outside the city walls of Jerusalem. The four Gospels name this place as either Golgotha or Calvary. For instance Mark 15:22:
‘They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”).‘

Calvary derives from the Latin word ‘calva’ referring to a blad head or a skull. Golgotha derives from Ancient Greek and Aramaic referring similarly to the place of the skull. The two words Calvary and Golgotha have been used interchangeable since early Christianity. Some scholars claim the hill was shaped like a skull, this is now no longer visible as this is now the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre originally built in the 4th Century. Yet Mel claimed the reason for the name of the site was because it was the burial place of Adam’s skull.

None of the four Gospels mention this connection with the skull of Adam, perhaps this was common knowledge at the time and the authors felt no need to make this explicit reference.

Adam’s Skull?

The first reference to Adam’s skull buried at this location that I can find is from Origen of Alexandria (c. 185 – c. 253). He was an early Christian, a friend of the Bishop of Jerusalem and a prolific writer. Origen spent two decades of his life in the Holy Land. He claimed that there was a Hebrew tradition that placed Adam’s burial at Calvary.

Similarly in the fourth century, Athanasius of Alexandria, another early Church theologian claimed that Christ suffered at the place where, according to Hebrew tradition, Adam was buried. A litany of early Church fathers and theologians including John Chrysostom state that Calvary was the site of Adam’s burial, or at least the resting place of Adam’s skull.

It was believe that Adam was buried at the very centre of the earth and the universe and this place was Jerusalem. The place of the burial of Adam’s body at Calvary seems to have been taken for granted in the Hebrew tradition, early Christian tradition and this view was prelevant well into the Middle Ages.

St Epiphanius of Salamis writing in the fourth century explained that Adam resided in Jerusalem, for a time, hence this was the site of his final resting place:

‘I too have found in the literature – that our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on Golgotha, nowhere else than where Adam’s body lay buried. For after leaving Paradise, living opposite it for a long time and growing old, Adam later came and died in this place, I mean Jerusalem, and was buried there, on the site of Golgotha.’¹

Within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lies Adam’s chapel, the supposed burial site of Adam. This is one of 30 chapels located within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and can be found directly underneath the site of Calvary. Indeed, Matthew’s version of the crucifixion refers to an earthquake and the splitting of the earth at Calvary:

‘And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open.’

Matthew 27:50-52.

Could this be a reference to the tomb of Adam?

The Blood of Christ

The walls of the chapel of Adam contain a red substance, believed to blood, moreover, believed to be the blood of Christ.

This early 12th Century Byzantine mosaic includes a skull at the base of the cross with blood flowing from Christ’s body onto the skull of Adam. Epiphanius explained the significance of Christ’s blood flowing onto Adam’s bones:

‘By being crucified above [the remains of Adam] our Lord Jesus Christ mystically showed our salvation, through the water and blood that flowed from him through his pierced side . . . beginning to sprinkle our forefather’s remains, to show us too the sprinkling of his blood for the cleansing of our defilement and that of any repentant soul; and to show, as an example of the leavening and cleansing of the filth our sins have left, the water which was poured out on the one who lay buried beneath him, for his hope and the hope of us his descendants.‘²

Indeed, humanity died through original sin, through Adam’s sin, Christ was the new Adam, through whom humanity could be saved:

‘For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.’

1 Corinthians 15:22

The site of Christ’s crucifixion was no mere accident a site chosen by chance. Christ was intended to be crucified at this significant site, the place where the first man lay buried. Through Christ’s sacrifice, life was restored to humanity. The site of Christ’s crucifixion, as we have seen, was referred to as the site of Adam’s burial palce, by early Church Fathers, the earliest of whom was writing within two centuries after Christ’s death. His assertations could have easily been challenged as he was writing so close to the time of the events he described. Yet this belief that Christ was crucified at the site of Adam’s resting place seemingly holds up against scrutiny throughout early Church history and well into the medieval period thus offering some weight to this assertion.

After only a little research, there is ample evidence to support Mel Gibson’s claims that the skull of Adam lay buried at the site of Christ’s crucifixion.

For a similar post from me, see Bede and the Conversion of King Edwin.

1. F. Williams (eds and trans.) The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1-46) (2009), p. 379. ↩︎
2. F. Williams (eds and trans.) The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1-46) (2009), p. 379. ↩︎