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'The Holy Sepulchre' refers to the tomb in which the Body of Jesus Christ was laid after his death. The New Testament says that it was Joseph of Arimathea's own new monument, which he had hewn out of a rock, and that it was closed by a great stone rolled to the door. It was in a garden in the place of the Crucifixion, and was near to the cross which was erected outside the walls of Jerusalem, in a place called Calvary, but close to the city and by a street. That it was outside the city is consistent with the well-known fact that Jews at that time did not permit burial inside the city except in the case of kings.
No further mention of the place of the Holy Sepulchre is found until the beginning of the fourth century. But nearly all scholars maintain that the knowledge of the place was handed down by oral tradition, and that the correctness of this knowledge was proved by the investigations caused to be made in 326 by the Emperor Constantine, who then marked the site for future ages by erecting over the tomb of Christ a basilica, in the place of which, according to an unbroken written tradition, now stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.