Over the recent Easter season, the death and burial of Jesus was at the forefront of the minds of the world’s Christians. After all, the discovery of his empty tomb was the beginning of the Christian story of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. As the Gospel of Luke narrates, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
For there to be an empty tomb, of course, there had to be a tomb in the first place. So, where was the tomb of Jesus? Does it still exist, even to this day?
Many people, of course, deny that there ever was a tomb, or even a Jesus to bury in it. The latter claim is rejected by most serious historians. The weight of evidence is clear on the historicity of Jesus.
What about his tomb, though? Well, there are plenty of people who no one would seriously deny existed and whose once-famous tombs have vanished. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, for instance. Unlike those two, though, Jesus was not famous in his lifetime, so his tomb was not some fabulous sepulchre but a mere cave cut in rock.
Does history give us any reliable evidence of where it might have been or still is?
Over the centuries, several different sites have been offered as the possible location of Jesus Christ’s burial. Scholars largely believe that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains Jesus’ tomb, though compelling arguments have been made for other locations as well, including the Garden Tomb.
The primary textual source for information about Jesus’ tomb is the Gospels.
The Bible states that Jesus Christ was crucified near Golgotha, or the “place of the skulls.” It also says that after Jesus’ death, one of his wealthy followers named Joseph of Arimathea asked Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ body. Pilate let Joseph have it, and Joseph prepared Jesus’ body for burial.
“Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock,” Matthew 27:59–60 states. “He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away.”
John confirms the location near Golgotha and that it was a new tomb in a garden ‘at the place where Jesus was crucified’.
The earliest archaeological expedition, of sorts, to find Jesus’ tomb took place just three centuries after his death. In 325–6 AD, Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, sent a delegation to Jerusalem to search for the most important tomb in Christianity.
Jerusalem had changed since the time of Jesus. For example, Jesus’ crucifixion was described as taking place “near the city” and “outside the gate,” indicating that it happened outside of the city walls. But by the time Constantine’s delegation arrived, the city’s walls had shifted.
Still, locals told Constantine’s men that they knew where to find the burial place of Jesus Christ. They claimed that it lay beneath temple to Venus which had been built under Hadrian. Constantine’s men tore the pagan temple down, and discovered a tomb cut into a limestone cave.
This matched the Biblical description (“cut out of the rock”), so Constantine ordered the construction of a church at the site called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Though it’s been destroyed by wars and natural disasters over the centuries, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands to this day.
A shrine dubbed the Aedicule marks the supposed location of Jesus’ burial inside the church. It was clad with marble in 1555 to prevent damage or robbery. In 2016, during restoration work, research showed that a piece of mortar in the Aedicule had been laid in the fourth century – backing the story of Constantine’s delegation. But was it the burial place of Jesus, as they supposed?
Many believe so, but it’s not the only place that’s been suggested […]
Other possible sites have also been floated over the years as well. One such site is the Garden Tomb.
A rock-cut tomb discovered in 1867, the Garden Tomb is near Gordon’s Calvary, a rocky hillside in the shape of a skull which some believe could be the true site of Golgotha. Thousands of years ago, it was the site of an ancient garden, replete with cisterns and a wine press. Significantly, the Bible states that Jesus Christ was crucified near a “garden.”
However, the Garden Tomb may be too old. The Gospel sources agree that Jesus was buried in a new tomb. The Garden Tomb, though, appears to be from the eighth or seventh centuries BC.
More importantly, new evidence backs the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Gospels emphasise that the tomb was in a garden. It now appears that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was indeed the site of a since-vanished garden.
In early 2025, archaeologists took a look at soil samples from beneath the church’s stone floor. They found the remains of olive trees and grapevines from roughly 2,000 years ago, suggesting that the the Church of the Holy Sepulchre could have once been the site of a garden.
It’s impossible, of course, to say with certainty just where Jesus was buried. But recall that there’s no physical evidence that the Great Library of Alexandria ever existed, either.
Wherever Jesus was buried, his tomb remains one of the most important sites to Christianity – and to 2,000 years of world history.
