Dictionaries :: Gethsemane

Gethsemane:

oil-press, the name of an olive-yard at the foot of the Mount of Olives, to which Jesus was wont to retire (Luk 22:39) with his disciples, and which is specially memorable as being the scene of his agony (Mar 14:32; Jhn 18:1; Luk 22:44). The plot of ground pointed out as Gethsemane is now surrounded by a wall, and is laid out as a modern European flower-garden. It contains eight venerable olive-trees, the age of which cannot, however, be determined. The exact site of Gethsemane is still in question. Dr. Thomson (The Land and the Book) says: "When I first came to Jerusalem, and for many years afterward, this plot of ground was open to all whenever they chose to come and meditate beneath its very old olivetrees. The Latins, however, have within the last few years succeeded in gaining sole possession, and have built a high wall around it...The Greeks have invented another site a little to the north of it...My own impression is that both are wrong. The position is too near the city, and so close to what must have always been the great thoroughfare eastward, that our Lord would scarcely have selected it for retirement on that dangerous and dismal night...I am inclined to place the garden in the secluded vale several hundred yards to the north-east of the present Gethsemane."

Gethsemane:

a very fat or plentiful vale

Gethsemane:

geth-sem'-a-ne (Gethsemanei (for other spellings and accents see Thayer, under the word); probably from the Aramaic gath shemanim, "oil press"): Mentioned (Mt 26:36; Mr 14:32) as a place (chorion), margin "enclosed piece of ground," to which Jesus and the disciples retired after the last supper; in Joh 18:1 it is described as a "garden" (kepos), while Lu (22:40) simply says "place" (topos). From Joh 18:1 it is evident that it was across the Kidron, and from Lu 22:39, that it was on the Mount of Olives. Very possibly (Lu 21:37; 22:39) it was a spot where Jesus habitually lodged when visiting Jerusalem. The owner-whom conjecture suggests as Mary the mother of Mark-must have given Jesus and His disciples special right of entry to the spot.

Tradition, dating from the 4th century, has fixed on a place some 50 yds. East of the bridge across the Kidron as the site. In this walled-in enclosure once of greater extent, now primly laid out with garden beds, by the owners-the Franciscans-are eight old olive trees supposed to date from the time of our Lord. They are certainly old, they appeared venerable to the traveler Maundrell more than two centuries ago, but that they go back to the time claimed is impossible, for Josephus states (BJ, VI, i, 1) that Titus cut down all the trees in the neighborhood of Jerusalem at the time of the siege. Some 100 yards farther North is the "Grotto of the Agony," a cave or cistern supposed to be the spot "about a stone's cast" to which our Lord retired (Lu 22:41). The Greeks have a rival garden in the neighborhood, and a little higher up the hill is a large Russian church. The traditional site may be somewhere near the correct one, though one would think too near the public road for retirement, but the contours of the hill slopes must have so much changed their forms in the troubled times of the first and second centuries, and the loose stone walls of such enclosures are of so temporary a character, that it is impossible that the site is exact. Sentiment, repelled by the artificiality of the modern garden, tempts the visitor to look for a more suitable and less artificial spot farther up the valley. There is today a secluded olive grove with a ruined modern olive press amid the trees a half-mile or so farther up the Kidron Valley, which must far more resemble the original Gethsemane than the orthodox site.

Written by E. W. G. Masterman

Gethsemane: Definition Of

A garden near Jerusalem

Gethsemane: Jesus Betrayed In

Mat 26:36-50; Mar 14:32-46; Luk 22:39-49; Jhn 18:1, 2

Gethsemane:

(an oil‐press) a small "farm," (Matthew 26:36; Mark 14:32) situated across the brook Kedron (John 18:1) probably at the foot of Mount Olivet (Luke 22:39) to the northwest and about one‐half or three quarters of a mile English from the walls of Jerusalem, and 100 yards east of the bridge over the Kedron. There was a "garden," or rather orchard, attached to it, to which the olive, fig and pomegranate doubtless invited resort by their hospitable shade. And we know from the evangelists (Luke 22:39). And (John 18:2) that our Lord ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples. But Gethsemane has not come down to us as a scene of mirth; its inexhaustible associations are the offspring of a single event- the agony of the Son of God on the evening preceding his passion. A garden, with eight venerable olive trees, and a grotto to the north detached from it, and in closer connection with the church of the sepulchre of the Virgin, are pointed out as the Gethsemane. Against the contemporary antiquity of the olive trees it has been urged that Titus cut down all the trees about Jerusalem. The probability would seem to be that they were planted by Christian hands to mark the spot unless, like the sacred olive of the Acropolis, they may have reproduced themselves.