[15] The first extant publication which argues a case against the traditional location was written by the German pilgrim Jonas Korte in 1741, a few years after his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

[14][16] In 1812, also Edward D. Clarke rejected the traditional location as a "mere delusion, a monkish juggle"[17] and suggested instead that the crucifixion took place just outside Zion Gate.

[14] During the 19th century travel from Europe to the Ottoman Empire became easier and therefore more common, especially in the late 1830s due to the reforms of the Egyptian ruler, Muhammad Ali.

[21] Motivated by these concerns, some Protestants in the nineteenth century looked elsewhere in the attempt to locate the site of Christ's crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

[23] A few years later the same identification was endorsed by the American industrialist Fisher Howe,[24] who was also one of the founding members of the board of directors of Union Theological Seminary in New York.

[26] Instead, he pointed to the hill containing Jeremiah's Grotto as the true Calvary, though he had only argued this view in length in an essay published in 1871, just after his death.

Another early proponent of the theory that Skull Hill is Golgotha was the English scholar and clergyman Canon Henry Baker Tristram, who suggested that identification in 1858 during his first visit to the Holy Land, chiefly because of its proximity to the northern gate, and hence also to the Antonia Fortress, the traditional site of Christ's trial.

There are those who would willingly look upon it as the real place of the Saviour's Tomb, but I confess that, for myself, having twice witnessed the annual orgy which disgraces its walls, the annual imposture which is countenanced by its priests, and the fierce emotions of sectarian hate and blind fanaticism which are called forth by the supposed miracle, and remembering the tale of blood connected with the history of the Church, I should be loth to think that the Sacred Tomb had been a witness for so many years of so much human ignorance, folly, and crime.Based on topographical and textual considerations, Conder argued that it would be dangerous and unlikely, from a town-defense point of view, for the walls to have previously been east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, concluding that the Church would have been inside the city walls and thus not the authentic tomb of Christ.

He also pointed to a Christian tradition which associated that general area with the martyrdom of St. Stephen as additional evidence that it was a public place of execution during the New Testament era.

In his writings Conder refers to Skull Hill by the Arabic name El-Heidhemiyeh which he interpreted as "the rent", and which he proposed was a corruption of El-Heiremiyeh – "the place of Jeremiah".

In 1879 the French scholar Ernest Renan, author of the influential and controversial Life of Jesus also considered this view as a possibility in one of the later editions of his book.

His name has become so entwined with Skull Hill that many contemporary news articles and guide books erroneously state that Gordon was the first to discover the site.

[40] This typological interpretation is obviously theological and not scientific in nature, which leads to a very skeptical mention by a prominent detractors of "Gordon's Calvary", the researcher and Army officer Charles W.

[41] Gordon also commented on the appropriateness of the location in a letter he sent to his sister on January 17, 1883, his second day in Jerusalem: I feel, for myself, convinced that the Hill near the Damascus Gate is Golgotha.

[42] In the 20th century, archaeological findings enhanced the discussion concerning the authenticity of the traditional site at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Besides the skull-like appearance (a modern-day argument), there are a few other details put forward in favour of the identification of Skull Hill as Golgotha.

The location of the site would have made executions carried out there a highly visible sight to people using the main road leading north from the city; the presence of the skull-featured knoll in the background would have added to the deterrent effect.

[48][49] The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia states that the Talmudic-period rabbis created the concept that "Adam was created from the dust of the place where the sanctuary was to rise for the atonement of all human sin", i.e. the Jerusalem Temple's Holy of Holies, so that sin should not constitute a constant or characteristic attribute of human nature;[49] Christians adapted this thought and relocated Adam's grave to what they considered to be the new place of atonement, Jesus' crucifixion site at Golgotha.

[49] The earliest detailed investigation of the tomb itself was a brief report prepared in 1874 by Conrad Schick, a German architect, archaeologist and Protestant missionary, but the fullest archaeological study of the area has been the seminal investigation by Gabriel Barkay, professor of Biblical archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Bar-Ilan University, during the late twentieth century.

[50] In 2010, the director of the garden, Richard Meryon, claimed in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that each camp had academic and archaeological evidence in favor of the actual location, and that only one of the two could be right, but that the important thing was the symbolism of the place and especially the history of Jesus and not a guarantee of the exact site.

[51] In the same interview, Steve Bridge, a retired pastor volunteering in the garden, claimed that Catholic groups came to the site regularly, and that the guides did not play politics, with the emphasis on the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.

[dubious – discuss][citation needed] The British author, barrister and civil servant, Arthur William Crawley Boevey (1845–1913) produced for the Committee of the Garden Tomb Maintenance Fund in Jerusalem an introduction and guidebook to the site in 1894.