How old was Mary when Jesus was crucified? How long did Jesus walk to reach Golgotha?

Mary would have been somewhere around 50 years old at the time of Jesus’ Crucifixion. We don’t have hard evidence for this, but it’s an educated guess based on the timeline of the lives of Mary and Jesus. Mary was a young virgin when she conceived Jesus, and scholars propose that she was probably between 14 and 17 years old at the time. Based on this and the fact that Jesus died at 33 years old, Mary would have been somewhere between about 47 and 52 years old.

There’s much more debate around your second question, about how long the walk was to Golgotha. Time-wise, it took about two or three hours for Jesus to walk from Pilate to Golgotha. That gives us a general range of no more than a mile–maybe two at the absolute most (although considering Jesus’ condition, a two mile walk is highly unlikely). Jesus’ starting location was the Antonia Fortress, where Pilate’s praetorium was. The problem is that people still debate the exact location of his endpoint, Golgotha. Different people have claimed different hills to be the “holy hill” of the Crucifixion. However, it has traditionally been held to be at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. If this is the case, then the route was approximately 2000 feet (a little under half a mile). This route is known as the Via Dolorosa and is preserved even today in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Chris Cammarata

Disclaimer!
The views, thoughts, opinions presented here belong solely to the author and are not necessarily the official view of the Jesus youth movement.

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