Subject: [M-R] Venus on GolgothaEsteemed Listmembers,Can anybody help me track down the source(s) of the tradition according to which there was a statue of Venus, with proper pagan worship, on the rock where Christ was crucified? Thanks a million.When St. Helena was searching for the cross, she had a dream directing her to dig beneath a temple to Venus and there she found the three crosses. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History II.1, says "'Pagans had concealed that spot under much heaped up earth and elevated what before was quite depressed, as it looks now, and the more effectually to conceal them, had enclosed the entire place...and ornamented the whole locality... They also erected a temple to Aphrodite and set up a little image so that those who repaired thither to worship Christ would appear to bow the knee to Aphrodite and thus the true cause of offering worship in that place would be forgotten."Jo Ann