It has become almost axiomatic to assume that any responsible “quest for the historical Jesus” will value the Synoptic gospels–particularly Mark–as primary and more historically reliable in contrast to the gospel of John, which is viewed as secondary, and thus much more theological than historical. ((The Jesus Seminar lists this…
The influential Israeli newspaper HaAretz offers a nice profile of our 2016 Mt Zion excavation highlighting some of our new finds and offering a summary of past seasons and what we are concluding. Archaeologists excavating in the heart of ancient Jerusalem have begun to uncover the neighborhood that housed the elite…
According to the Jewish historian Josephus (Jewish War 7:389-406), when the Roman Tenth Legion finally captured the desert fortress of Masada in the spring of 73 CE, bringing a tragic end to the Jewish Revolt, 960 Jewish defenders of Masada–men, women, and children–perished at their own hands the night before…
They sent over a young archaeologist by the name of Amos Kloner. He climbed into the tomb and came out literally shaking. I’ll never forget. I asked him what he saw and he repeatedly muttered ‘I never saw such a thing….I never saw such a tomb.’ Last year Simcha Jacobovici…
The magazine Popular Archaeology has just done a very nice cover story feature on our Suba “John the Baptist” cave excavation for their Spring issue. We conducted from 2000-2011—overlapping with our Mt Zion dig. Even though that excavation is largely finished Shimon Gibson and I are bringing to completion our academic…
The mystery deepens…the plot thickens… Few have heard anything about the “Abba Cave,” discovered in 1971 in the north Jerusalem suburb of Givat Hamivtar–not far from the tomb of “Yehohanan,” the famous “crucified man,” discovered in 1968–about which much has been written. The Abba cave held the remains of another…
Many years ago a man from the BBC came to me and he asked me if the Dead Sea Scrolls will harm Christianity. I said to him that nothing can harm Christianity. The only thing which could be dangerous to Christianity would be to find a tomb with the sarcophagus…
There are two distinctive paths on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, both leading down to the Old City, intersecting at the Kidron Valley near the traditional Garden of Gethsemane. Both are thousands of years old, though paved with asphalt, with worn bed-rock showing here and there, indicating that…
The following is the impressive case put forth by Rami Arav that Bethsaida of the New Testament, home of several of Jesus’ disciples, has been not only located but extensively excavated. Please subscribe to Near Eastern Archaeology for more articles of this sort. Readers interested in the Bible and archaeology should…
I am often asked a question at lectures and programs that I find hard to answer–“What is your greatest archaeological discovery in the field of Christian Origins?” I have been privileged to be involved in the Tomb of the Shroud in Akeldama, the Suba “John the Baptist” cave, the Talpiot…