The main arguments in favour of the present site are two. The first, insisted on by the Comte de Vogüé and others, is the existence of an undoubted Jewish tomb, just outside the rotunda of the Church of the Sepulchre, and now called the Tomb of Nicodemus. This has been cited as evidence that the place was outside the old city-wall, but we know from the Rabbis that the Tombs of the Kings of Judah were left within Jerusalem, and there seems good reason to suppose that they actually refer to the ancient tomb now called the Sepulchre of Nicodemus. The second argument, brought forward by Chateaubriand, is that tradition had handed down the site, and that its exact position was known in the fourth century, because Hadrian had built a Temple to Venus on the spot. Of the latter fact we have no intimation in any known author of the time of Hadrian, though several buildings of his in Jerusalem are noticed by contemporary writers. Coins of Antoninus Pius representing a Temple to Venus in Jerusalem have been found, but no ancient author pretends that any tradition was handed down to the fourth century respecting the site of the Holy Sepulchre. Moreover, as regards continuity of tradition, we have a break during the time when the Christians, flying to Pella, were absent from the city; finally we have no sound reason for supposing that the early Christians paid any attention to the site of the Sepulchre. As Jews, their horror of dead bodies would naturally have prevented their visiting a place which would pollute them; and had it been considered important to hand down the exact position of the Tomb, we should surely have had sufficient indications in the Gospel narrative to fix its locality, whereas nothing can be gathered from the New Testament, further than the statement of the Epistle that "Christ suffered without the gateâ (Heb. xiii. 12), with the incidental remarks of St. John, that the Sepulchre was "nigh at handâ to Calvary (John xix. 42), and that Calvary was "nigh unto the cityâ (20).
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands near the centre of the lower part of modern Jerusalem, but this is unimportant, if it can be shown to have been outside Jerusalem in the time of Christ.