Gethsemane

2 definitions found

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Gethsemane
     oil-press, the name of an olive-yard at the foot of the Mount of
     Olives, to which Jesus was wont to retire (Luke 22:39) with his
     disciples, and which is specially memorable as being the scene
     of his agony (Mark 14:32; John 18:1; Luke 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."
     

From Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (late 1800's) [hitchcock]:

  Gethsemane, a very fat or plentiful vale