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A builders’ workplace, sanctified retrospectively by a dubiously attested religious history, for the political purposes of the nascent Christian Empire . . But that is Jerusalem. Back up the steps, we can now finally proceed, past the Chapel of the Derision (an altar to memorialize the deriding of Jesus by the mob), up the stairway by the south wall, to Golgotha itself, or Calvary (to give it its usual English name; Golgotha is the original Hebrew name for the place, as the Gospels indicate). The rock itself is under glass (beneath the altar there is a hole through which you can touch it), and the small chapel is owned and decorated by the Greeks with glittering lamps and icons and an image of the Crucifixion.

From rejecting sex with prostitutes, Paul has moved to lauding a spiritual union with God (a far harder idea to promote). It would seem—and this is the hardest idea of all—that the physical union of bodies in sex prevents a spiritual union with the Lord. For this reason the next chapter of the Letter to the Corinthians, from which I have been quoting, praises virginity as an ideal for Christians. But the image on which this whole passage relies is the Temple. Now each person’s body is a Temple.

He put the two together and decided that this must be the tomb of Jesus. Being a “can-do” sort of fellow, he immediately began to write articles in support of his theory and to gather support from archaeologists and the great and good of English theological circles. Eventually a fund was set up to buy the site for posterity. Gordon’s arguments were bizarre in the extreme. He consulted the relief map of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus that was drawn up by Captain Warren (the explorer, archaeologist, and adventurer who will reappear in several guises in this book).