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Excavating Jesus
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Book critique
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4/28/2013
Nana Akua Boadu
Who was Jesus Christ and what was so important about him? Why does he seem to cause
different controversial debates amongst scholars, writers and religious heads? Or is it just us
misinterpreting his teachings? Amongst Christians, Jesus Christ, the Son of God is their messiah who
is to come back to take them with him to heaven. The most exciting part of their adventure is being
able to visit the country with which he roamed; Israel. According to John Dominic Crossan and
Jonathan L. Reed, there are two ways to answer the questions of why Jesus happened, when and
where. As the authors explain, “imagine two ways of answering those questions: by stone or text,
by ground or gospel, by material remains or scribal remains, by the work of the archaeologist or the
work of the exegete. Imagine, next, every one of those four italicized ors replaced by equally
emphasized ands” (xvii). And according to the authors, the purpose of the book Excavating Jesus is
to “integrate the archaeology of ground and the exegesis of gospel by giving each its full explanatory
power and by refusing to privilege one over the other” (xvii). This statement is important because
there is not one way of unveiling what really happened in the New Testament or better yet, in Jesus’
time.
I honestly wasn’t sure what I was getting into signing up to take this class, besides the fact that I
had to take it as a LASC class. However, this class has definitely taught me a lot not solely on
archaeology but how it ties in with the Bible times that I have read throughout my whole childhood.
There are definitely something’s I don’t fully agree with but it is eye opening to see what these
archaeologists and scholars find and how they connect things intellectually back to the Bible. Some
connections do seem quite outrageous but I can also see how they might have come up with them.
Funny how you can learn so much from digging into the ground of an ancient ruin.
The book, Excavating Jesus, is all about “digging down archaeologically amidst the stones to
reconstruct his world and digging down exegetically amidst the texts to reconstruct his life” (1). It
was important to understand that the stones or the texts on their own could not speak to the
archaeologist or the exegesist, so it needed interpretations which might not always have been
accurate but rather more controversial for some. There are ten discoveries that are considered to
be the “most important archaeological discoveries and the ten most important exegetical
discoveries” which would help people understand the book’s process of unearthing Jesus. Starting
with the archaeological discoveries, there was the:
1. The ossuary of James, the brother of Jesus
2. The ossuary of the high priest Joseph Caiaphas
3. The inscription of the prefect Pontius Pilate
4. The skeleton of the crucified Yehochanan
5. The Lake of Tiberias: Peter’s House and Galilee Boat
6. Caesarea and Jerusalem: cities of Herod the Great
7. Sepphoris and Tiberias: cities of Herod Antipas
8. Masada and Qumran: monuments of Jewish resistance
9. Gamla and Jodefat: first century Jewish villages in Galilee
10. Stone vessels and stepped pools: Jewish religion
I will then go ahead and say a little bit about each of these discoveries before going on into the
exegetical discoveries.
1. The ossuary of James was discovered in November 2002 and happened to belong to an
antiquities collector in Israel. The ossuary boxes are normally made out of limestone, in
which the bones of the dead was kept in after the flesh had decomposed and this ossuary
had an Aramaic inscription of James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus on it. If the inscriptions
are legitimate that means that first of all we have the bones of an individual claiming to be
the brother of Jesus and secondly we may have some substantial evidence of the mere
existence of Jesus.
2. The ossuary of Joseph Caiaphas was discovered in November 1990 accidentally by some
construction workers who broke into burial cave which turned out to be the family tomb of
the high priest Caiaphas. Joseph Caiaphas was involved in the crucifixion of Jesus according
to some books in the bible; Matthew 26 and John 18. This finding shows us that the story of
the crucifixion may have happened because now we have the burial site of the high priest
who was directly involved in it.
3. Inscription of Pontius Pilate was discovered in 1962 by Italian archaeologists who were
clearing sand and overgrowth from the ruined theater at Caesarea Maritima. “The
inscription settled scholarly quibbles over Pilates exact title and ruling authority by naming
him a prefect rather than an inferior procurator, but was more celebrated as the first
tangible witness to such a prominent New Testament figure” (3). I personally thought the
authors would be more interested to know that Pontius Pilate was the one who made the
final ruling for Jesus’ execution and figured they would rather spend their energy figuring out
how the two are connected and not about Pilate’s title.
4. Crucified Yehochanan’s skeleton was discovered in some burial caves northeast of Jerusalem
in 1968 by Vassilios Tzaferis of the Israel Antiquities Authority. This is my personal favorite
because I did not know that they actually crucified people as a practice in the Roman times.
In this man’s ossuary were some bones of two men and a young child and in the heel of one
of the men was a 41/2 inch nail still attached to a small wooden board. “But the nail had bent
as it was hammered into the hard olive-wood upright of the cross and could not easily be
removed after his death, so it and the wooden board were still attached to his body when
taken off the cross” (3). Interesting thing was his arms were tied to the cross and not nailed
and his legs were not broken. Jesus seemed to have gotten the worst treatment because his
arms were nailed to the cross according to the bible.
5. The Lake of Tiberias was an excavation site where according to the two Franciscan
archaeologists Fathers Corbo and Loffreda, was found the home of Peter, one of Jesus’
disciple and a buried boat, which they claimed to the boat Jesus used.
6. Caesarea Maritima and Jerusalem, both excavation sites, have unearthed a lot of artifacts for
archaeologist but the most exciting finds were the huge monumental structures built by
Herod the Great. He made it a point to beautify and expand the Jewish Temple to show his
loyalty to Rome and his dedication to the Jewish God.
7. Sepphoris and Tiberias, both excavation sites, where “spectacular discoveries such as a
Roman-style theater, a massive underground aqueduct, and the Dionysiac mosaic,
discoveries from throughout the Roman period, raise the question of the extent to which
Antipas had earlier imposed a Greco-Roman architectural veneer onto the life of the Jewish
population and the impact of his kingdom building in Galilee” (3).
8. Masada and Qumran are the two sites off the shore of the Dead Sea that show the Jewish
resistance against Rome. Archaeology discovered some Roman siege works and the Jewish
historian Josephus’s story of the Sicarii’s suicide can be illustrated in these sites.
9. Jodefat and Gamla are two villages that were destroyed by Roman legions in 67 C.E and laid
buried and undisturbed until was excavated. These towns showed an excerpt of how Jewish
life was at the time of Jesus.
10. Stone vessels of different shapes and sizes made from soft white chalk stone, called
miqwaoth, are found wherever Jews lived in Galilee. These items showed Jewishness to its
fullness and set them apart as distinct people.
Now on to the ten most important exegetical discoveries. Now we have to remember that these
findings were texts that were up to different interpretations and some people may agree with these
findings and see their significance, whereas, others may outright reject them. The discoveries were:
1. The Dead Sea Scrolls
2. The Nag Hammadi Codices
3. The dependence of Matthew and Luke on Mark
4. The dependence of Matthew and Luke on the Q Gospel
5. The dependence of John on Mark, Matthew and Luke
6. The independence of the Gospel of Thomas from the canonical gospels
7. The common sayings traditions in the Q Gospel and the Gospel of Thomas
8. The independence of The Teachings (Didache) from the gospels
9. The existence of an independent source in the Gospel of Peter
10. The class between James and Paul as reflected back on the historical Jesus
I will go ahead and say a little bit about each of these exegetical discoveries as well.
1. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of Jewish documents written by a sectarian group that
separated themselves from the priestly authorities of Jerusalem’s Temple in order to be able
to fully live to the proper ritual purity and correct calendrical observance. These scrolls were
discovered in 1947 at Khirbet Qumran and they were gathered from eleven caves. Some of
the texts were complete and others were not, the library’s content showed the “theory and
practice of the Essenes, a sect known from several ancient writers, and they provide precious
data on a specific lifestyle within the first century Jewish homeland that is valuable as
foreground from Judaism and background for Christianity” (7).
2. The Nag Hammadi Codices are Christian documents that were discovered in 1945 about 370
miles south Cairo. These documents were written in Coptic, an Egyptian written with an
expanded Greek alphabet and the genres and theologies show an emphasis on Gnosticism.
These documents are important because they indicated that there were some theories of
pre- Christian Gnosticism.
3. Mark, Matthew and Luke, the books in the bible, have become obvious to everyone how
similar they are in both sequence and content. In 1789- 1790, Johann Jakob Griesbach put
out a theory that stated that Matthew came first, then Mark copied from Matthew and
finally Luke decided to copy from both authors. However Karl Lachmann in 1835, came up
with a different explanation; he said that Mark came first, then Matthew and Luke copied
from it separately. This theory is quite the most popular one now and it is “the layering of
Mark within Matthew and Luke that justifies our use of excavation for exegesis as well as
archaeology” (8).
4. Q Gospel was basically a source that people claimed to have also been integrated into the
writings of the three books; Matthew, Mark and Luke. Was called ‘another common source’.
A lot of the rest of the discoveries are fascinating but a little confusing because they keep going back
and forth with the possible interpretation. The Gospel of Thomas however is extremely enthralling
because it “contains only aphorisms, parables or short dialogues of Jesus and almost no narratives
at all, especially no birth stories, miracle stories, or passion and resurrection stories” (9). This seems
to be an abomination to the Christian faith, whether it is legitimate or not, who is to tell?
Reading this book was definitely something I would not have done on my own but I am glad I
took this class which forced me to understand an archaeologist and an exegesist point of view.
Work Cited
Crossan, John D and Jonathan L. Reed. Excavating Jesus; Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.