General Gordon, the Palestine Exploration Fund and the Origins of 'Gordon's Calvary' in the Holy Land

Abstract

With Charles George Gordon’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1883 as our focus, we argue that Gordon was not only an essential fi gure in the foundation of the Garden Tomb, but that he was the penultimate symbol of Victorian England’s perception of the Holy Land, embodying the new elements of biblical critique and evangelism in the same person. He was more than a symbol of his era but also one of the last prominent Englishmen to wrestle with these confl icting ideologies. In this paper, the religious, mystical motivations for his visit to the Holy Land and its implications are highlighted, as well as his semi-ascetic retirement. Based on primary sources, including his letters written in 1883, and his sketches, maps, and other sources, we focus on his theological ideas with special reference to his view of Calvary, which led to the founding of the Garden Tomb Association in the year 1894, and to the creation of the Jerusalem Protestant Garden Tomb which exists to the present, outside the Old City walls of Jerusalem.