The world’s most famous (and powerful) oracle resided at Delphi, high up the slopes of Mount Parnassus in the Temple of Apollo. In ancient times, supplicants would wind up the mountainside, patiently hoping for words of wisdom from the priestess (called the Pythia) in the temple’s adyton (inner chamber). Corbis

Archaeologists are good at recovering things left behind by the past, such as buildings, incense altars, tools and relief carvings. What they are not so good at recovering are the ideas, feelings and emotions—the innerness—of sentient ancient beings. It’s one thing to examine a temple’s holy of holies; it’s another thing to understand what went on there and what people experienced. Sometimes, however, there’s an exception to the rule.

Numerous classical authors report that natural phenomena played an essential part in one of their most sacred religious rituals: the oracle at Delphi. According to the geographer Strabo (c. 64 B.C.–25 A.D.), for example, “the seat of the oracle is a cavern hollowed down in the depths … from which arises pneuma [breath, vapor, gas] that inspires a divine state of possession” (Geography 9.3.5). Over the past five years, a team of researchers—a geologist, an archaeologist, a chemist and a toxicologist—has put that claim to the test, making it much more likely that we will actually understand what happened at Delphi.

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When ancient Greeks and Romans had to make decisions, they consulted the gods—by drawing lots, casting dice, interpreting dreams and analyzing such signs as sneezes, thunderbolts and flying birds. But for matters of the utmost importance, they sought to hear the words of the gods in the mouths of oracles.^a

Pythias were virgins who dedicated their lives to prophesying on behalf of the god Apollo. The first Pythia is said to have been the goddess Themis, who is depicted on a fifth-century B.C. cup (shown here) sitting on a tripod and holding a bowl and a sprig of laurel (Apollo’s sacred tree). According to Strabo (c. 64 B.C.–25 A.D.) and other sources, the Pythia was inspired by mysterious vapors, though these accounts have been largely ignored by modern researchers. Now, however, a team of archaeologists and geologists have proved that the Temple of Apollo sat directly above fault lines that likely released intoxicating carbon-based gases into the adyton. Was this the oracle’s secret?

Paradoxically, in male-dominated classical Greece the most influential voice, the Delphic oracle, belonged to a woman. The oracular temple was perched on the south slope of Mount Parnassus, surrounded by high cliffs, about 75 miles west of Athens. Getting to Delphi required either a long trek across the mountains or a sea voyage to the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth. However difficult the journey, thousands of visitors sought guidance from the holy woman, called the Pythia,^b who spoke on behalf of the gods.

The Pythia dealt less in visions of the future than in right choices: where to locate a new colony, when to attack an enemy, how to lift a curse, whom to choose as leader, what offering to make to which god. No kingdom, city or private person could afford to make critical decisions without consulting the Pythia. Thanks to her prestige, Delphi became the richest and most famous Hellenic sanctuary. The Greeks called it the omphalos, or “navel of the world.”

How could a mere mortal command such respect? The answer lies in the belief that Apollo—the god of revelation and inspiration—used the Pythia as his mouthpiece, taking possession of her during oracular sessions. The Pythia would fall into a trance, and the words she spoke were supposedly those of Apollo, delivered in a voice very unlike her normal tones.

Most scholars believe the Delphic oracle was established around the eighth century B.C., when founders of new colonies would consult the Pythia before setting out for the western Mediterranean, North Africa, Asia Minor or the Black Sea. The origins of the oracle are recounted in a story about a goatherd named Koretas, who pastured his flock on the slope of Mount Parnassus. Koretas noticed that when the goats grazed near a certain fissure in the mountainside, they began to bleat strangely. Approaching the fissure, he was filled with a prophetic spirit. Eventually, a woman—the first Pythia—was appointed to sit on a tripod over the cleft and give prophecies. Before she could mount the tripod, however, a goat had to be sacrificed to ensure that the day was propitious.

Image: Frank Ippolito.

During the classical period, supplicants would line up at dawn to walk along the Sacred Way, a steep path snaking up through the sanctuary toward the Temple of Apollo. The priests and temple attendants determined the order of the queue, giving priority to state embassies and then working their way down through military commanders, athletes, poets and, last of all, mere heads of families concerned about a child or an investment. The supplicants filed past bronze statues, war monuments and treasure houses dedicated in the past by grateful visitors. It would have been late in the day by the time the ordinary men at the rear reached the terrace of the temple and viewed the famous inscriptions, “Know Thyself” and “Nothing in Excess.”

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From here the way led up a ramp to a great colonnade of Doric columns, and then through a double door into the temple itself. Inside burned a constant pinewood fire tended by women of Delphi. The final approach to the oracle led downward into a sunken space below the level of the temple floor, where the visitor would be confronted by a gold statue of Apollo and the omphalos stone that marked the sacred spot. The Pythia sat in a recessed inner sanctum called the adyton, a Greek word meaning “not to be entered.” Standing outside the adyton, visitors would ask their questions and await the response.

Unlike itinerant prophets and omen-interpreters, the Pythia derived her power from the place—she could only prophesy while seated in the adyton within the Temple of Apollo. According to Strabo, the pneuma arose from a small opening (chasma ges) in the adyton: “Over the mouth [of the opening] a high tripod is set. Mounting this, the Pythia inhales the pneuma and then speaks prophecies in verse or in prose. The latter are versified by poets on duty in the temple” (Geography 9.3.5.).

Strabo was not the only ancient source to describe the adyton and the intoxicating gas. The second-century A.D. traveler Pausanias told of a spring in the temple’s adyton that made the Pythia prophetic. Also, in On the Obsolescence of the Oracles, the biographer Plutarch (c. 46–120 A.D.), who served as a priest of Apollo at Delphi, described an exhalation of vapor in the adyton that sent the Pythia into a trance.
Despite these testimonies, no serious scholar over the last 50 years has accepted the idea that the Pythia’s trance was caused by a gaseous emission.

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Modern investigations began in the 1890s, when French archaeologists began to excavate the sanctuary at Delphi. They first moved the modern village of Kastri, household by household, from above the ancient sanctuary to the town of Delphi, west of the sanctuary. The French archaeologists uncovered the boundary wall of the ancient sanctuary, an entry gate, and the lower stretches of the Sacred Way. By 1893 they had reached the terrace of the Temple of Apollo—where they found that scarcely a stone remained in place above the floor. The columns had toppled, and the statuary had been carried off or destroyed. In the lower chamber, where the oracle once spoke, no trace of the ancient structure remained. Even the archaeologists’ attempts to reach bedrock were frustrated as water filled the excavated areas.

While the French team was excavating the temple, a young English scholar named A.P. Oppé published a report based on his visit to the site. Oppé proposed that the ancient sources had confused the fissure with a nearby gorge, and that the vapor was simply a fiction that had been passed down from source to source.¹

In 1927, after a hiatus precipitated by World War I, a scholar named M.F. Courby published the French team’s final report of the temple excavations. He described the bedrock under the center of the temple as “fissured by the action of the waters”—suggesting that the ancient traditions of an opening in the rock may have been correct.² By then, however, Oppé’s theory that the ancients simply misconstrued the facts had taken too strong a hold among scholars for the issue to be reconsidered. The final blow came in 1950: Pierre Amandry of the École Française d’Athènes stated definitively—or so it was widely believed—that exhalations of intoxicating gas could never have existed at Delphi. Only volcanic activity could produce such gas, Amandry (incorrectly) noted, and Delphi does not lie in a volcanic area.³ For almost half a century, debates about the geological origins of the oracle virtually ceased.^c

The first step toward a modern reassessment of the evidence was made in the 1980s by geologist (and co-author) Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, the senior member of our project in Delphi. De Boer was conducting surveys, under the auspices of the United Nations and the Greek government, to identify active fault lines. One area he studied was the south slope of Mount Parnassus, where he noted an exposed fault both east and west of the sanctuary of Apollo—though it could not be seen at the site of the temple, where it was covered by ancient construction and debris from rock slides. De Boer suspected that the fault did indeed run under the temple, but he gave the matter no more thought.

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It was not until the summer of 1995 that Zeilinga de Boer encountered an archaeologist, co-author John Hale of the University of Louisville, who assured him, first, that he could not possibly have seen any such feature at Delphi and, second (after Zeilinga de Boer described the fault in detail), that this might be a discovery of major importance. We decided to continue investigations at Delphi, eventually adding a chemist (Jeff Chanton of Florida State University and the U.S. Geological Survey Magnetic Laboratory) and a toxicologist (Henry Spiller of the Kentucky Poison Center) to the team.

In 1996, with the support of Rozina Kolonia, the director of the Delphi Museum, we conducted a survey of the site and found that the sections of exposed fault on either side of the sanctuary were indeed part of the same fault—an active fault extending about 13 miles east-west along the southern flank of Mount Parnassus. We named this fault the Delphi Fault.

This egg-shaped stone—the very stone described by the Greek writer Pausanias, who visited Delphi in the second century A.D.—represents the omphalos, or “navel of the world.” According to Greek legend, Delphi was fixed as the center of the world when Zeus released two eagles, one from the west and the other from the east, which met in the sky above Delphi. The original omphalos stone, now lost, was probably an archaic cult object that supplicants draped with wreaths, resembling the wreaths carved in relief on this stone. Erich Lessing

In subsequent seasons we identified a second fault, extending approximately southeast-northwest. This fault could be traced along a line of springs running through the center of the sanctuary. The highest spring, above the temple, is called the Kerna Spring; its water is currently channeled westward to modern Delphi. Further down the slope, though still above the temple, a mass of travertine (a kind of limestone) deposited by calcite-rich waters indicates another spring. There is also an elaborate channel for a spring built into the southern foundation wall of the temple itself. Although this spring is dry today, the early 20th-century French archaeologists found it difficult to reach bedrock within the sanctuary because their holes kept filling up with water. Down the slope below the temple, yet another spring emerges from a cleft in the bedrock near the Treasury of the Athenians.
We have named this southeast-northwest fault the Kerna Fault, after its highest spring. In de Boer’s opinion, the Kerna Fault intersects the Delphi Fault at or near the site of the temple.

What the ancient authors described as a fissure (chasma ges) in the rock over which the Pythia sat was probably a small fracture extending up from the intersection of these two faults. Very likely, this is also what M.F. Courby, in his 1927 publication of the French team’s excavations, was describing when he wrote that the bedrock was “fissured by the action of the waters.”

Greek geologists had already identified the limestone under the temple as bituminous (oil-bearing), with a petrochemical content as high as 20 percent. These petrochemicals appeared to be a possible source of gases. But how exactly could they be released from the rock into the atmosphere?

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The Delphi Fault is linked to one of Greece’s most geologically active features: the great rift, or graben, that today is filled by the waters of the Gulf of Corinth. This is a recent feature, geologically speaking, having formed roughly two million years ago. The rift continues to widen; as it does, motion occurs along faults and earthquakes are triggered. In 373 B.C., for example, earthquakes almost completely destroyed the Delphic temple on the north side of the gulf, as well as coastal towns on the south side.

As slippage occurs along the fault lines, adjacent rock masses are heated, vaporizing the lighter petrochemicals in the limestone and expelling gases upward along the face of the faults. Once faulting has opened such a pathway, gases continue to rise, although the volume would slowly decrease over time. We believe that this is exactly what happened at Delphi: The rock masses deep in the earth were heated, and they intermittently produced gases that rose up along the intersection of the two fault lines, eventually entering the adyton of the temple through one or more fissures over which the Pythia sat.

Read about the discovery in ancient Hierapolis of Pluto’s Gate, a site shrouded in misty poisonous vapors and considered sacred to the underworld deity Pluto.

Exhalations of gases from bituminous limestone have been observed by geologists studying underwater faults in the Gulf of Mexico. There light hydrocarbon gases—methane, ethane and ethylene, all of them intoxicants—have been found bubbling up from the rock below. Closer to Delphi, similar exhalations were detected near the Isthmus of Corinth, as well as on the island of Zakynthos.

We decided to test the spring water at Delphi, along with samples of the travertine rock that the ancient springs had deposited on the retaining walls and slopes around the temple. If significant quantities of gases had been emitted with the spring water, traces of these gases might be found in the travertine deposits. The very presence of travertine rock, formed from dissolved calcites in warm spring water, is evidence that the springs along the Kerna Fault had their origin at deep levels.

The water and travertine from the sanctuary of Apollo, which were analyzed by Jeff Chanton, revealed traces of the light hydrocarbon gases found in the Isthmus of Corinth and on Zakynthos. Could this explain the Pythia’s state of intoxication in ancient times?

Apollo sits on a carved ompholos stone—perhaps even a representation of the stone shown in the previous photo—on a coin (shown here) minted in Antioch in 225–223 B.C. Clearly, the Delphic oracle and its association with Apollo were well known throughout the ancient world in Hellenistic times. By the first century A.D., however, the Pythia’s powers were failing, perhaps because the volume of gases flowing into the adyton had decreased—and by the fourth century, the demise of the oracle was complete. Photo: American Numismatic Society.

The ancient sources describe two distinct types of prophetic trance experienced by the Pythia. First, and more normally, she would lapse into benign semi-consciousness, during which she remained seated on the tripod, responding to questions—though in a strangely altered voice. According to Plutarch, once the Pythia recovered from this trance, she was in a composed and relaxed state, like a runner after a race. A second kind of trance involved a frenzied delirium characterized by wild movements of the limbs, harsh groaning and inarticulate cries. When the Pythia experienced this delirium, Plutarch reports, she died after only a few days—and a new Pythia took her place.

According to toxicologist Henry Spiller, both of these symptoms are associated with the inhalation of hydrocarbon gases. Spiller studies the effects of such inhalants on young people, known as “huffers,” who breathe in fumes from gas, glue, paint thinner and other substances because of their intoxicating properties. Perhaps the Pythia too was high on one of these hydrocarbon gases.

It may even be possible to identify the kind of gas. Plutarch—who, we recall, was a priest of Apollo at the Delphic sanctuary—noted that the intoxicating pneuma had a sweet smell, like expensive perfume. Of the hydrocarbon gases, only ethylene has a sweet smell—so ethylene was probably a component in the gaseous emission inhaled by the Pythia.

Now, there is a good deal of evidence concerning ethylene intoxication, particularly from the early 20th century. In laboratory tests involving human subjects, the pioneering anesthesiologist Isabella Herb and other scientists studied the effects of light doses of ethylene. Ethylene worked twice as fast as nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and achieved similar effects with only half the quantity. In high concentrations, ethylene produced complete unconsciousness; in low concentrations, it induced a trance state. Ultimately, ethylene’s use as a medical anesthetic was discontinued because of its combustibility: A spark from electrical equipment in the operating room could ignite the ethylene canister, causing it to explode.⁴

From the evidence of “huffers” and the experiments with ethylene, we know that subjects normally react to inhaling small quantities of these gases by entering a benign “out-of-body” trance. They can remain seated and answer questions, but their tone of voice and typical speech patterns are altered. Recovery takes place as soon as the subject is removed from exposure to the gas, and complete amnesia about the trance follows. In a minority of cases (about one in six) in the ethylene experiments, subjects experienced delirium, or a “bad trip.” Experimenters had to use restraints to hold down those undergoing this delirium, which was accompanied by groaning, shrieking and a thrashing of the arms and legs.

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Unfortunately, no detailed accounts of the Pythia’s behavior survive from the golden age (seventh to fifth century B.C.) of the Delphic oracle. By the time Plutarch took office as priest of Apollo at Delphi, the oracle’s powers had significantly diminished. According to Plutarch, emissions of pneuma in the adyton were slight and unpredictable, leading to the decline of the oracle itself. He suggested that whatever produced the pneuma in the rock below the temple had become exhausted, or that the fissures in the rock had been blocked up in the 373 B.C. earthquake. The Delphic oracle never recovered its former prestige after this earthquake, even though the temple was rebuilt.

The diminished flow of gas may not have been the only reason for the decline of the institution. Plutarch opined that the pneuma was merely a trigger for the prophetic trance, and that the Pythia’s lifelong training and psychological preparation played the most important role in her spiritual possession. In a memorable simile, Plutarch compared Apollo to a musician, the Pythia to a lyre, and the pneuma to the musician’s uncanny ability to produce music by touching the instrument. Perhaps there were socio-cultural reasons for the decline of the institution, or perhaps, as the gaseous emissions became less powerful, devoting one’s life to the oracle became less attractive.

Whatever the reasons for the oracle’s demise, we can no longer dismiss ancient traditions concerning its origins and power. Strabo, Plutarch and the others have been rescued by science from a century of calumny.

Read the Bible History Daily feature Medicine in the Ancient World.

The House of Apollo: A History

The Delphic oracle appears often in Greek myth, even in the account of the repopulating of the earth after a great flood. The high god Zeus, distressed over mankind’s wickedness, sends a flood to cover the earth, but two pious human beings, Deucalion (Prometheus’s son) and Pyrrha (Prometheus’s niece), survive by climbing Mount Parnassus. With the ebbing of the flood, the two descend the mountain and come upon the Delphic temple site, where they hear a voice: “Veil your heads and cast behind you the bones of your mother!” Like many of the Delphic oracles, this one is initially enigmatic, but Deucalion and Pyrrha soon realize that the earth is their mother; so they throw rocks over their shoulders, and the rocks are transformed into men and women, saving humanity from perdition.

Photo: Erich Lessing.

Another famous, or infamous, visit to the oracle was made by the young Oedipus—who, having been adopted as a baby, wanted to know the identity of his parents. (The third-century A.D. marble relief above shows Oedipus [center] sacrificing to the Delphic oracle in front of a statue of Apollo [left].) However, the Delphic oracle informed the young man that he would murder his father and commit incest with his mother. To foil the prophecy, Oedipus left Corinth, which he (erroneously) believed to be his native land. On his journey he killed another chariot-driver in a fit of ancient road rage—but unknown to him, the other driver was his father Laius, King of Thebes.

The oracle at Delphi was also consulted by non-mythical figures. In the sixth century B.C., King Croesus of Lydia, in western Anatolia, inquired whether he should attack King Cyrus of Persia. “If you attack,” replied the Pythia, “you will destroy a great kingdom.” Croesus attacked the Persians, suffered total defeat, and saw his kingdom absorbed into the Persian Empire. Croesus had destroyed a great kingdom—his own.

Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

More than a century later, the philosopher Socrates—shown above in a Hellenistic bust—reminded the Athenians at his trial in 399 B.C. that the oracle had declared him the wisest of men, a fact that did not save him from execution.

Photo: David Harris/Collection Israel Museum

After Greece was conquered by Rome, a number of Roman emperors posed questions to the oracle. Nero (54–68 A.D.) was warned to beware the 73rd year, and he was later assassinated by troops who made the 73-year-old Galba emperor in his place. Hadrian (117–138 A.D.), shown in the bronze statue above, ever the intellectual, wanted to know the birthplace of the poet Homer. (The Pythia’s answer: Homer was the grandson of Odysseus and born at Ithaca.) The oracle advised Diocletian (284–305 A.D.) to persecute Christians—which Christians avenged by destroying a number of oracle sites in the fourth century A.D. Finally, the envoys of the pagan Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (361–363 A.D.) received word of the oracle’s demise from the Pythia: “Tell the king the fair-built hall has fallen; Apollo now has no house or oracular laurel or prophetic spring; the water is silent.”

Notes

a. The oracle at Delphi was not the only ancient oracle, though it was the most powerful. Other Greek oracles were located at Epidaurus and in Asia Minor at Colophon and Didyma. Italy’s most famous oracle was at Cumae (near Naples), where a sibyl, or priestess, prophesied in a cavern; originally, the sibyl’s utterances were inscribed on palm leaves.

b. “Pythia” derives from the original name of the site, Pytho. Homer, for instance, refers to Apollo’s “shrine in Pytho” (Odyssey 8.94). The name “Delphi” came later.

c. However, this was not so among such Greek scholars as Spyridon Marinatos (1901–1974), the excavator of ancient Thera (modern Santorini), which was buried in a volcanic eruption around 1638 B.C. Marinatos argued that Delphi’s active geological history made it difficult to know what changes might have occurred over the past two millennia. He also made a report on an anemotrypa (wind hole) in the modern town of Delphi—a small cleft in the rock that emitted gas with a sulfurous smell. Scholars outside Greece ignored these ideas.

1. A.P. Oppé, “The Chasm at Delphi,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 24 (1904), pp. 214–240.

2. M.F. Courby, Topographie et architecture: la terasse du Temple: Fouilles de Delphes (1927), vol. 11, pp. 65–66.

3. Pierre Amandry, La mantique apollinienne a Delphes: Boccard (Paris, 1950), pp. 215–230.

4. See Isabella Herb, “Ethylene: Notes Taken from the Clinical Records,” in Anesthesia and Analgesia (December, 1923), pp. 210, 231–232; Herb, “Further Clinical Experiments with Ethylene-Oxygen Anesthesia,” Anesthesia and Analgesia (December, 1927), pp. 258–262; A.B. Luckhardt and J.B. Carter, “Physiologic Effects of Ethylene: A New Gas Anesthetic,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 80 (January–June 1923), pp. 765–770.

“Was She Really Stoned?” by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and John R. Hale appeared in the November/December 2002 issue of Archaeology Odyssey. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in May 2013.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Lay That Ghost: Necromancy in Ancient Greece and Rome

Solomon, Socrates and Aristotle

Who Were the Minoans?

Stoa Poikile Excavations in the Athenian Agora

The Gospel of the Lots of Mary

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Yahweh Ṣebaot Inscription

Stone block bearing invocation of a curse by Yhwh, Lord of Hosts (BLMJ 4663). Photo: BLMJ Collection.

This limestone inscription from a burial cave in Judah c. 800–750 B.C.E. is written in Paleo-Hebrew script and reads “Cursed be Hagaf son of Hagab by Yahweh Ṣebaot.” The phrase Yahweh Ṣebaot, often translated as “Lord of Hosts,” appears over two hundred times in the Hebrew Bible, especially in prophetic books such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. The museum’s inscription is perhaps the earliest non-Biblical evidence for this name. The name Hagab, which means “grasshopper,” also appears in Ezra 2:46.

Learn more about the Paleo-Hebrew script in “How Ancient Taxes Were Collected Under King Manasseh” and “Precursor to Paleo-Hebrew Script Discovered in Jerusalem.”

The Larsa Tablet

Cuneiform tablet recording temple service from the fifteenth to the twenty-third day of the month of Shabatu (BLMJ 3127). Photo: Moshe Caine.

This Akkadian tablet, which contains over 630 lines, comes from the southern Mesopotamian city of Larsa during the second year of King Rim-Sîn’s reign, c. 1821 B.C.E. The tablet registers the rites performed in Larsa’s many temples from the fifteenth until the twenty-fourth day of the month of Shabaṭu, the month identical to the Biblical month of Shebat (Zechariah 1:7). This one-of-a-kind tablet sheds light on the practices of the region from where Abraham is said to have come. For example, on the sixteenth day of the month of Shabaṭu, a cloak, a bright linen and a male slave were given to Enki, the god of wisdom and the creator of humankind.

The Quadrilingual Darius I Jar

Jar with quadrilingual inscription of Darius 1 (BLMJ 1979). Photo: BLMJ Collection.

Darius I of Persia, also known as “Darius the Great,” is mentioned in the Biblical books of Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel. The museum has a Persian calcite jar with four inscriptions that praise Darius in four different languages, one more language than the Rosetta Stone. The Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian inscriptions read “Darius, great king” and the Egyptian hieroglyphs read “King of Upper and Lower Egypt, lord of the two lands, Darius, living eternally, year 36.” Coincidentally, the 36th year of Darius’s reign (486 B.C.E.) was also his last.

The Lion and Calf Bowl

Bowl decorated with recumbent lions and calves before the symbol of the god An (BLMJ 4564). Photo: David Harris.

According to Isaiah’s prophecy of peace, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the lion and the fatling [will dwell] together” (11:6). On the museum’s unique serpentinite bowl from southern Mesopotamia c. 3300–2900 B.C.E., lions and calves are depicted lying down peacefully one after the other. The animals are crouched before a bundle of stylized reeds (not shown), much like the reeds carved into a door at the base of the Ziggurat of Anu, one of the oldest and most important Sumerian gods.

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Relief of Ark-like Image

Orthostat showing two tribute bearers carrying a container on a pole and buckets in their hands (BLMJ 1111). Photo: David Moster.

According to Exodus 25:10–16, the Ark of the Covenant was a rectangular box carried on poles. The museum has a Basalt Relief from Arslan Tash (Northern Syria, ancient Hadatu) from c. 800–750 B.C.E. which depicts two men carrying a rectangular box on poles. Notice the buckets, which are found in a number of Assyrian ritualistic reliefs and suggest that the men might be priests. Two key differences between this image and the Biblical description is that the Bible’s ark had its poles at its base, not its top, and that the Bible’s ark had two poles, not one.

The Jonah Sarcophagus

Sarcophagus lid depicting the Jonah cycle (BLMJ 4296). Photo: David Harris

The sarcophagus of a 4th-century C.E. Christian from Rome named Glycon depicts three scenes from the Biblical book of Jonah. On the left Jonah is cast overboard into the mouth of a terrifying fish (Jonah 1:1– 2:1). On the right Jonah is cast ashore (Jonah 2:10), where God provides him with a plant in order to teach him compassion (Jonah 4:4–11). According to Matthew 12:40, Jonah is analogous to the resurrection: “For as Jonah remained in the belly of the sea-monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of God be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.”

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The Ivory Cherub

Inlay depicting a cherub (BLMJ 3428). Photo: Moshe Caine.

According to the Bible, cherubs were placed in both the Tabernacle and the Temple (Exodus 37:7–9; 1 Kings 6:23–30). While the descriptions about these creatures are vague, the museum has an ivory Phoenician-style cherub from Arslan Tash (Northern Syria, ancient Hadatu) from c. 850–800 B.C.E. This cherub, which was probably called a kuribu in Akkadian (similar to Hebrew kerub [כרוב]), was most likely used to decorate a chair, perhaps the throne of the Hazael, king of Damascus, who is mentioned in the books of Kings, Chronicles and Amos.

The Christogram Sarcophagus

Sarcophagus of Julia Latronilla (BLMJ 1057). Photo: David Harris.

This large Roman sarcophagus belonged to a Christian woman named Julia Latronilla, who died in approximately 330 C.E.—shortly after Constantine’s Edict of Toleration, which allowed Christians to worship freely. The sarcophagus depicts a number of Hebrew Bible and New Testament scenes, e.g., Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22), the miracle at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine (John 2:1-11), and Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (e.g., Matthew 21:1–11). The circle in the center is one of the earliest known depictions of the christogram, a symbol that combines the first two letters of the Greek name for Christ, chi (X) and rho (P).

Learn about the earliest image of Jesus on the cross—the staurogram—in Bible History Daily.

The Rab-Shaqeh Stela

Stela of a Rab-Shaqeh, a cupbearer-In-chief (BLMJ 1066). Photo: M. Amar and M. Greyevsky.

In 2 Kings 18:18–37, which recounts the events of 701 B.C.E., an Assyrian official called the Rab-Shaqeh (“Chief Cupbearer”) besieges and taunts the people of Jerusalem. The museum has a stele commissioned by a Rab-Shaqeh who served a century and a half before the Bible’s Rab-Shaqeh, approximately 859–825 B.C.E., during the reign of Shalmeneser III. The inscription commemorates this Rab-Shaqeh’s deeds within his province. The image is that of a seated god with a horned helmet and a sun disk.

The Nile Boat

Model boat (BLMJ 2089). Photo: David Harris.

The Nile plays a prominent role in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Exodus story. The Pharaoh of Joseph dreams of cows at the river (Genesis 41:1–3), baby Moses is placed in a basket at the riverbank (Exodus 2:3) and the first Egyptian plague occurs when the river turns to blood (Exodus 7:15–24). The museum has a model Nile boat made of wood, plaster and linen that comes from the early Middle Kingdom, c. 2000–1900 B.C.E. The boat has a pilot standing on the prow, a steersmen sitting on the stern and eighteen rowers in between. The boat is currently equipped for sailing downstream (north) but would have also had sails to travel upstream (south). Boats such as these were often placed in tombs for the journey of the afterlife.

A very special thank you to Olla Vengerovsky and the staff of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem for their help with this article.

David Z. Moster, PhD, is a Research Fellow in Hebrew Bible at Brooklyn College and a Lecturer in Rabbinics at Nyack College. He is the author of the upcoming book Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). His websites are www.929chapters.com and brooklyn-cuny.academia.edu/DavidMoster.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 28, 2015.

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The post 10 Great Biblical Artifacts at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. Did Jesus of Nazareth exist as a real human being? Outside of the New Testament, what is the evidence for his existence? In this article, author Lawrence Mykytiuk examines the extra-Biblical textual and archaeological evidence associated with the man who would become the central figure in Christianity. Here Jesus is depicted in a vibrant sixth-century C.E. mosaic from the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy. Photo: Sant’Apollinare Nuovo Ravenna, Italy/Bridgeman Images.

After two decades toiling in the quiet groves of academe, I published an article in BAR titled “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible.”^a The enormous interest this article generated was a complete surprise to me. Nearly 40 websites in six languages, reflecting a wide spectrum of secular and religious orientations, linked to BAR’s supplementary web page.^b Some even posted translations.

I thought about following up with a similar article on people in the New Testament, but I soon realized that this would be so dominated by the question of Jesus’ existence that I needed to consider this question separately. This is that article:¹

Did Jesus of Nazareth, who was called Christ, exist as a real human being, “the man Christ Jesus” according to 1 Timothy 2:5?

The sources normally discussed fall into three main categories: (1) classical (that is, Greco-Roman), (2) Jewish and (3) Christian. But when people ask whether it is possible to prove that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, as John P. Meier pointed out decades ago, “The implication is that the Biblical evidence for Jesus is biased because it is encased in a theological text written by committed believers.² What they really want to know is: Is there extra-Biblical evidence … for Jesus’ existence?”^c

Therefore, this article will cover classical and Jewish writings almost exclusively.³

Roman historian Tacitus. Photo: Bibliotheque nationale, Paris, France / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.

Tacitus—or more formally, Caius/Gaius (or Publius) Cornelius Tacitus (55/56–c. 118 C.E.)—was a Roman senator, orator and ethnographer, and arguably the best of Roman historians. His name is based on the Latin word tacitus, “silent,” from which we get the English word tacit. Interestingly, his compact prose uses silence and implications in a masterful way. One argument for the authenticity of the quotation below is that it is written in true Tacitean Latin.⁴ But first a short introduction.

Tacitus’s last major work, titled Annals, written c. 116–117 C.E., includes a biography of Nero. In 64 C.E., during a fire in Rome, Nero was suspected of secretly ordering the burning of a part of town where he wanted to carry out a building project, so he tried to shift the blame to Christians. This was the occasion for Tacitus to mention Christians, whom he despised. This is what he wrote—the following excerpt is translated from Latin by Robert Van Voorst:

TACIT CONFIRMATION. Roman historian Tacitus’s last major work, Annals, mentions a “Christus” who was executed by Pontius Pilate and from whom the Christians derived their name. Tacitus’s brief reference corroborates historical details of Jesus’ death from the New Testament. The pictured volume of Tacitus’s works is from the turn of the 17th century. The volume’s title page features Plantin Press’s printing mark depicting angels, a compass and the motto Labore et Constantia (“By Labor and Constancy”). Photo: Tacitus, Opera Quae Exstant, trans. by Justus Lipsius (Antwerp, Belgium: Ex officina Plantiniana, apud Joannem Moretum, 1600). Courtesy of the Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Co. (PRB&M).

[N]either human effort nor the emperor’s generosity nor the placating of the gods ended the scandalous belief that the fire had been ordered [by Nero]. Therefore, to put down the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the most unusual ways those hated for their shameful acts … whom the crowd called “Chrestians.” The founder of this name, Christ [Christus in Latin], had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate … Suppressed for a time, the deadly superstition erupted again not only in Judea, the origin of this evil, but also in the city [Rome], where all things horrible and shameful from everywhere come together and become popular.⁵

Tacitus’s terse statement about “Christus” clearly corroborates the New Testament on certain historical details of Jesus’ death. Tacitus presents four pieces of accurate knowledge about Jesus: (1) Christus, used by Tacitus to refer to Jesus, was one distinctive way by which some referred to him, even though Tacitus mistakenly took it for a personal name rather than an epithet or title; (2) this Christus was associated with the beginning of the movement of Christians, whose name originated from his; (3) he was executed by the Roman governor of Judea; and (4) the time of his death was during Pontius Pilate’s governorship of Judea, during the reign of Tiberius. (Many New Testament scholars date Jesus’ death to c. 29 C.E.; Pilate governed Judea in 26–36 C.E., while Tiberius was emperor 14–37 C.E.⁶)

Tacitus, like classical authors in general, does not reveal the source(s) he used. But this should not detract from our confidence in Tacitus’s assertions. Scholars generally disagree about what his sources were. Tacitus was certainly among Rome’s best historians—arguably the best of all—at the top of his game as a historian and never given to careless writing.

Earlier in his career, when Tacitus was Proconsul of Asia,⁷ he likely supervised trials, questioned people accused of being Christians and judged and punished those whom he found guilty, as his friend Pliny the Younger had done when he too was a provincial governor. Thus Tacitus stood a very good chance of becoming aware of information that he characteristically would have wanted to verify before accepting it as true.⁸

CHRESTIANS OF CHRIST. Book XV of Tacitus’s Annals is preserved in the 11th–12th-century Codex Mediceus II, a collection of medieval manuscripts now housed in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy, along with other manuscripts and books that belonged to the Medici family. Highlighted above is the Latin text reading “… whom the crowd called ‘Chrestians.’ The founder of this name, Christ, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate …” Photo: Codex Mediceus 68 II, fol. 38r, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, Italy.

The other strong evidence that speaks directly about Jesus as a real person comes from Josephus, a Jewish priest who grew up as an aristocrat in first-century Palestine and ended up living in Rome, supported by the patronage of three successive emperors. In the early days of the first Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.), Josephus was a commander in Galilee but soon surrendered and became a prisoner of war. He then prophesied that his conqueror, the Roman commander Vespasian, would become emperor, and when this actually happened, Vespasian freed him.

“From then on Josephus lived in Rome under the protection of the Flavians and there composed his historical and apologetic writings” (Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz).⁹ He even took the name Flavius, after the family name of his patron, the emperor Vespasian, and set it before his birth name, becoming, in true Roman style, Flavius Josephus.

Most Jews viewed him as a despicable traitor. It was by command of Vespasian’s son Titus that a Roman army in 70 C.E. destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Temple, stealing its contents as spoils of war, which are partly portrayed in the imagery of their gloating triumph on the Arch of Titus in Rome.¹⁰ After Titus succeeded his father as emperor, Josephus accepted the son’s imperial patronage, as he did of Titus’s brother and successor, Domitian.

Yet in his own mind, Josephus remained a Jew both in his outlook and in his writings that extol Judaism. At the same time, by aligning himself with Roman emperors who were at that time the worst enemies of the Jewish people, he chose to ignore Jewish popular opinion.

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Josephus stood in a unique position as a Jew who was secure in Roman imperial patronage and protection, eager to express pride in his Jewish heritage and yet personally independent of the Jewish community at large. Thus, in introducing Romans to Judaism, he felt free to write historical views for Roman consumption that were strongly at variance with rabbinic views.

Jewish historian Josephus is pictured in the ninth-century medieval manuscript Burgerbibliothek Bern Codex under the Greek caption “Josippos Historiographer.” Photo: Burgerbibliothek Bern Cod. 50, f.2r.

In his two great works, The Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities, both written in Greek for educated people, Josephus tried to appeal to aristocrats in the Roman world, presenting Judaism as a religion to be admired for its moral and philosophical depth. The Jewish War doesn’t mention Jesus except in some versions in likely later additions by others, but Jewish Antiquities does mention Jesus—twice.

The shorter of these two references to Jesus (in Book 20)¹¹ is incidental to identifying Jesus’ brother James,¹² the leader of the church in Jerusalem. In the temporary absence of a Roman governor between Festus’s death and governor Albinus’s arrival in 62 C.E., the high priest Ananus instigated James’s execution. Josephus described it:

Being therefore this kind of person [i.e., a heartless Sadducee], Ananus, thinking that he had a favorable opportunity because Festus had died and Albinus was still on his way, called a meeting [literally, “sanhedrin”] of judges and brought into it the brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah … James by name, and some others. He made the accusation that they had transgressed the law, and he handed them over to be stoned.¹³

James is otherwise a barely noticed, minor figure in Josephus’s lengthy tome. The sole reason for referring to James at all was that his death resulted in Ananus losing his position as high priest. James (Jacob) was a common Jewish name at this time. Many men named James are mentioned in Josephus’s works, so Josephus needed to specify which one he meant. The common custom of simply giving the father’s name (James, son of Joseph) would not work here, because James’s father’s name was also very common. Therefore Josephus identified this James by reference to his famous brother Jesus. But James’s brother Jesus (Yehoshua) also had a very common name. Josephus mentions at least 12 other men named Jesus.¹⁴ Therefore Josephus specified which Jesus he was referring to by adding the phrase “who is called Messiah,” or, since he was writing in Greek, Christos.¹⁵ This phrase was necessary to identify clearly first Jesus and, via Jesus, James, the subject of the discussion. This extraneous reference to Jesus would have made no sense if Jesus had not been a real person.

Visit the historical Jesus study page in Bible History Daily to read more free articles on Jesus.

JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS. In Jewish Antiquities, parts of which are included in this mid-17th-century book of translations, Josephus refers to a James, who is described as “the brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah.” Josephus’s mention of Jesus to specify which James was being executed by the high priest Ananus in 62 C.E. affirms the existence of the historical Jesus. Photo: Josephus, Famovs and Memorable Works of Josephvs, trans. by Thomas Lodge (London: J. L. for Andrew Hebb, 1640).

Few scholars have ever doubted the authenticity of this short account. On the contrary, the huge majority accepts it as genuine.¹⁶ The phrase intended to specify which Jesus, translated “who is called Christ,” signifies either that he was mentioned earlier in the book or that readers knew him well enough to grasp the reference to him in identifying James. The latter is unlikely. First-century Romans generally had little or no idea who Christus was. It is much more likely that he was mentioned earlier in Jewish Antiquities. Also, the fact that the term “Messiah”/“Christ” is not defined here suggests that an earlier passage in Jewish Antiquities has already mentioned something of its significance.¹⁷ This phrase is also appropriate for a Jewish historian like Josephus because the reference to Jesus is a noncommittal, neutral statement about what some people called Jesus and not a confession of faith that actually asserts that he was Christ.

This phrase—“who is called Christ”—is very unlikely to have been added by a Christian for two reasons. First, in the New Testament and in the early Church Fathers of the first two centuries C.E., Christians consistently refer to James as “the brother of the Lord” or “of the Savior” and similar terms, not “the brother of Jesus,” presumably because the name Jesus was very common and did not necessarily refer to their Lord. Second, Josephus’s description in Jewish Antiquities of how and when James was executed disagrees with Christian tradition, likewise implying a non-Christian author.¹⁸

This short identification of James by the title that some people used in order to specify his brother gains credibility as an affirmation of Jesus’ existence because the passage is not about Jesus. Rather, his name appears in a functional phrase that is called for by the sense of the passage. It can only be useful for the identification of James if it is a reference to a real person, namely, “Jesus who is called Christ.”

This clear reference to Jesus is sometimes overlooked in debates about Josephus’s other, longer reference to Jesus (to be treated next). Quite a few people are aware of the questions and doubts regarding the longer mention of Jesus, but often this other clear, simple reference and its strength as evidence for Jesus’ existence does not receive due attention.

The longer passage in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities (Book 18)¹⁹ that refers to Jesus is known as the Testimonium Flavianum.

If it has any value in relation to the question of Jesus’ existence, it counts as additional evidence for Jesus’ existence. The Testimonium Flavianum reads as follows; the parts that are especially suspicious because they sound Christian are in italics:²⁰

Around this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.²¹ For he was one who did surprising deeds, and a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who in the first place came to love him did not give up their affection for him, for on the third day, he appeared to them restored to life. The prophets of God had prophesied this and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, have still to this day not died out.²²

All surviving manuscripts of the Testimonium Flavianum that are in Greek, like the original, contain the same version of this passage, with no significant differences.

The main question is: Did Flavius Josephus write this entire report about Jesus and his followers, or did a forger or forgers alter it or possibly insert the whole report?²³ There are three ways to answer this question:²⁴

Alternative 1: The whole passage is authentic, written by Josephus.

Alternative 2: The whole passage is a forgery, inserted into Jewish Antiquities.

Alternative 3: It is only partly authentic, containing some material from Josephus, but also some later additions by another hand(s).

Regarding Alternative 1, today almost no scholar accepts the authenticity of the entire standard Greek Testimonium Flavianum. In contrast to the obviously Christian statement “He was the Messiah” in the Testimonium, Josephus elsewhere “writes as a passionate advocate of Judaism,” says Josephus expert Steve Mason. “Everywhere Josephus praises the excellent constitution of the Jews, codified by Moses, and declares its peerless, comprehensive qualities … Josephus rejoices over converts to Judaism. In all this, there is not the slightest hint of any belief in Jesus”²⁵ as seems to be reflected in the Testimonium.

The bold affirmation of Jesus as Messiah reads as a resounding Christian confession that echoes St. Peter himself!²⁶ It cannot be Josephus. Alternative 1 is clearly out.

Regarding Alternative 2—the whole Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery—this is very unlikely. What is said, and the expressions in Greek that are used to say it, despite a few words that don’t seem characteristic of Josephus, generally fit much better with Josephus’s writings than with Christian writings.²⁷ It is hypothetically possible that a forger could have learned to imitate Josephus’s style or that a reviser adjusted the passage to that style, but such a deep level of attention, based on an extensive, detailed reading of Josephus’s works and such a meticulous adoption of his vocabulary and style, goes far beyond what a forger or a reviser would need to do.

Even more important, the short passage (treated above) that mentions Jesus in order to identify James appears in a later section of the book (Book 20) and implies that Jesus was mentioned previously.

THE TESTIMONY OF JOSEPHUS. This 15th-century manuscript, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, contains the portion of Josephus’s Testimonium Flavianum that refers to Jesus (highlighted in blue). The first sentence of the manuscript, highlighted in green, reads, from the Greek, “Around this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.” The majority of scholars believe this passage of the Testimonium is based on the original writings of Josephus but contains later additions, likely made by Christian scribes. Photo: Codex Parisinus gr. 2075, 45v. Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

The best-informed among the Romans understood Christus to be nothing more than a man’s personal name, on the level of Publius and Marcus. First-century Romans generally had no idea that calling someone “Christus” was an exalted reference, implying belief that he was the chosen one, God’s anointed. The Testimonium, in Book 18, appropriately found in the section that deals with Pilate’s time as governor of Judea,²⁸ is apparently one of Josephus’s characteristic digressions, this time occasioned by mention of Pilate. It provides background for Josephus’s only other written mention of Jesus (in Book 20), and it connects the name Jesus with his Christian followers. The short reference to Jesus in the later book depends on the longer one in the earlier (Book 18). If the longer one is not genuine, this passage lacks its essential background. Alternative 2 should be rejected.

Alternative 3—that the Testimonium Flavianum is based on an original report by Josephus²⁹ that has been modified by others, probably Christian scribes, seems most likely. After extracting what appear to be Christian additions, the remaining text appears to be pure Josephus. As a Romanized Jew, Josephus would not have presented these beliefs as his own. Interestingly, in three openly Christian, non-Greek versions of the Testimonium Flavianum analyzed by Steve Mason, variations indicate changes were made by others besides Josephus.³⁰ The Latin version says Jesus “was believed to be the Messiah.” The Syriac version is best translated, “He was thought to be the Messiah.” And the Arabic version with open coyness suggests, “He was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.” Alternative 3 has the support of the overwhelming majority of scholars.

We can learn quite a bit about Jesus from Tacitus and Josephus, two famous historians who were not Christian. Almost all the following statements about Jesus, which are asserted in the New Testament, are corroborated or confirmed by the relevant passages in Tacitus and Josephus. These independent historical sources—one a non-Christian Roman and the other Jewish—confirm what we are told in the Gospels:³¹

1. He existed as a man. The historian Josephus grew up in a priestly family in first-century Palestine and wrote only decades after Jesus’ death. Jesus’ known associates, such as Jesus’ brother James, were his contemporaries. The historical and cultural context was second nature to Josephus. “If any Jewish writer were ever in a position to know about the non-existence of Jesus, it would have been Josephus. His implicit affirmation of the existence of Jesus has been, and still is, the most significant obstacle for those who argue that the extra-Biblical evidence is not probative on this point,” Robert Van Voorst observes.³² And Tacitus was careful enough not to report real executions of nonexistent people.
2. His personal name was Jesus, as Josephus informs us.
3. He was called Christos in Greek, which is a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, both of which mean “anointed” or “(the) anointed one,” as Josephus states and Tacitus implies, unaware, by reporting, as Romans thought, that his name was Christus.
4. He had a brother named James (Jacob), as Josephus reports.
5. He won over both Jews and “Greeks” (i.e., Gentiles of Hellenistic culture), according to Josephus, although it is anachronistic to say that they were “many” at the end of his life. Large growth in the number of Jesus’ actual followers came only after his death.
6. Jewish leaders of the day expressed unfavorable opinions about him, at least according to some versions of the Testimonium Flavianum.
7. Pilate rendered the decision that he should be executed, as both Tacitus and Josephus state.
8. His execution was specifically by crucifixion, according to Josephus.
9. He was executed during Pontius Pilate’s governorship over Judea (26–36 C.E.), as Josephus implies and Tacitus states, adding that it was during Tiberius’s reign.

Some of Jesus’ followers did not abandon their personal loyalty to him even after his crucifixion but submitted to his teaching. They believed that Jesus later appeared to them alive in accordance with prophecies, most likely those found in the Hebrew Bible. A well-attested link between Jesus and Christians is that Christ, as a term used to identify Jesus, became the basis of the term used to identify his followers: Christians. The Christian movement began in Judea, according to Tacitus. Josephus observes that it continued during the first century. Tacitus deplores the fact that during the second century it had spread as far as Rome.

As far as we know, no ancient person ever seriously argued that Jesus did not exist.³³ Referring to the first several centuries C.E., even a scholar as cautious and thorough as Robert Van Voorst freely observes, “… [N]o pagans and Jews who opposed Christianity denied Jesus’ historicity or even questioned it.”³⁴

Nondenial of Jesus’ existence is particularly notable in rabbinic writings of those first several centuries C.E.: “… [I]f anyone in the ancient world had a reason to dislike the Christian faith, it was the rabbis. To argue successfully that Jesus never existed but was a creation of early Christians would have been the most effective polemic against Christianity … [Yet] all Jewish sources treated Jesus as a fully historical person … [T]he rabbis … used the real events of Jesus’ life against him” (Van Voorst).³⁵

Thus his birth, ministry and death occasioned claims that his birth was illegitimate and that he performed miracles by evil magic, encouraged apostasy and was justly executed for his own sins. But they do not deny his existence.³⁶

Want more on Biblical figures? Read “53 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically,” “New Testament Political Figures: The Evidence“ and “Herod the Great and the Herodian Family Tree“ by Lawrence Mykytiuk.

Lucian of Samosata (c. 115–200 C.E.) was a Greek satirist who wrote The Passing of Peregrinus, about a former Christian who later became a famous Cynic and revolutionary and died in 165 C.E. In two sections of Peregrinus—here translated by Craig A. Evans—Lucian, while discussing Peregrinus’s career, without naming Jesus, clearly refers to him, albeit with contempt in the midst of satire:

It was then that he learned the marvelous wisdom of the Christians, by associating with their priests and scribes in Palestine. And—what else?—in short order he made them look like children, for he was a prophet, cult leader, head of the congregation and everything, all by himself. He interpreted and explained some of their books, and wrote many himself. They revered him as a god, used him as a lawgiver, and set him down as a protector—to be sure, after that other whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.³⁷

For having convinced themselves that they are going to be immortal and live forever, the poor wretches despise death and most even willingly give themselves up. Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshiping that crucified sophist himself and living according to his laws.³⁸

Although Lucian was aware of the Christians’ “books” (some of which might have been parts of the New Testament), his many bits of misinformation make it seem very likely that he did not read them. The compound term “priests and scribes,” for example, seems to have been borrowed from Judaism, and indeed, Christianity and Judaism were sometimes confused among classical authors.

Lucian seems to have gathered all of his information from sources independent of the New Testament and other Christian writings. For this reason, this writing of his is usually valued as independent evidence for the existence of Jesus.

This is true despite his ridicule and contempt for Christians and their “crucified sophist.” “Sophist” was a derisive term used for cheats or for teachers who only taught for money. Lucian despised Christians for worshiping someone thought to be a criminal worthy of death and especially despised “the man who was crucified.”

• Celsus, the Platonist philosopher, considered Jesus to be a magician who made exorbitant claims.³⁹
• Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor and friend of Tacitus, wrote about early Christian worship of Christ “as to a god.”⁴⁰
• Suetonius, a Roman writer, lawyer and historian, wrote of riots in 49 C.E. among Jews in Rome which might have been about Christus but which he thought were incited by “the instigator Chrestus,” whose identification with Jesus is not completely certain.⁴¹
• Mara bar Serapion, a prisoner of war held by the Romans, wrote a letter to his son that described “the wise Jewish king” in a way that seems to indicate Jesus but does not specify his identity.⁴²

Other documentary sources are doubtful or irrelevant.⁴³

One can label the evidence treated above as documentary (sometimes called literary) or as archaeological. Almost all sources covered above exist in the form of documents that have been copied and preserved over the course of many centuries, rather than excavated in archaeological digs. Therefore, although some writers call them archaeological evidence, I prefer to say that these truly ancient texts are ancient documentary sources, rather than archaeological discoveries.

Some ossuaries (bone boxes) have come to light that are inscribed simply with the name Jesus (Yeshu or Yeshua‘ in Hebrew), but no one suggests that this was Jesus of Nazareth. The name Jesus was very common at this time, as was Joseph. So as far as we know, these ordinary ossuaries have nothing to do with the New Testament Jesus. Even the ossuary from the East Talpiot district of Jerusalem, whose inscription is translated “Yeshua‘, son of Joseph,” does not refer to him.⁴⁴

As for the famous James ossuary first published in 2002,^d whose inscription is translated “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Yeshua‘,” more smoothly rendered, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” it is unprovenanced, and it will likely take decades to settle the matter of whether it is authentic. Following well established, sound methodology, I do not base conclusions on materials whose authenticity is uncertain, because they might be forged.⁴⁵ Therefore the James ossuary, which is treated in many other publications, is not included here.⁴⁶

As a final observation: In New Testament scholarship generally, a number of specialists consider the question of whether Jesus existed to have been finally and conclusively settled in the affirmative. A few vocal scholars, however, still deny that he ever lived.⁴⁷

“Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible” by Lawrence Mykytiuk originally appeared in the January/February 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on December 8, 2014.

Lawrence Mykytiuk is associate professor of library science and the history librarian at Purdue University. He holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic Studies and is the author of the book Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200–539 B.C.E. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004).

Notes:

a. Lawrence Mykytiuk, “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible,” BAR, March/April 2014.

b. See biblicalarchaeology.org/50

c. John P. Meier, “The Testimonium,” Bible Review, June 1991.

d. See André Lemaire, “Burial Box of James the Brother of Jesus,” BAR, November/December 2002; Hershel Shanks, “‘Brother of Jesus’ Inscription Is Authentic!” BAR, July/August 2012.

1. I gratefully dedicate this article to my brother, Thomas S. Mykytiuk, to the memory of his wife, Nancy E. Mykytiuk, and to their growing tribe of descendants. I wish to thank Dr. Stuart D. Robertson of Purdue University, a Josephus scholar who studied under the great Louis H. Feldman, for kindly offering his comments on an early draft of this article. As the sole author, I alone am responsible for all of this article’s errors and shortcomings.

The previous BAR article is supplemented by two more persons, officials of Nebuchadnezzar II, mentioned in the “Queries and Comments” section, BAR, July/August 2014, bringing the actual total to 52. That previous article is based on my own research, because few other researchers had worked toward the twin goals I sought: first, developing the necessary methodology, and second, applying that methodology comprehensively to archaeological materials that relate to the Hebrew Bible. In contrast, this article treats an area that has already been thoroughly researched, so I have gleaned material from the best results previously obtained (may the reader pardon the many quotations).

Another contrast is that the challenge in the research that led to the previous article was to determine whether the inscriptions (down to 400 B.C.E.) actually referred to the Biblical figure. In the present article, most of the documents very clearly refer to the Jesus of the New Testament. Only in relatively few instances, such as some rabbinic texts, is the reference very unclear. The challenge in this article has been to evaluate the relative strength of the documents about Jesus as evidence, while keeping in mind whether they are independent of the New Testament.

2. Of course, the New Testament is actually a small library of texts, as is the Hebrew Bible.

3. Because Meier only covered writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, his article stays within the first century. This article covers writings that originated in the first several centuries C.E. These non-Christian sources deserve to be welcomed and examined by anyone interested in the historical aspect of Scripture. At the same time, Christian sources found in the New Testament and outside of it have great value as historical evidence and are not to be discounted or dismissed.

The Gospels, for example, are loosely parallel to writings by members of a Prime Minister’s or President’s cabinet, in that they are valuable for the firsthand information they provide from inner circles (F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, Knowing Christianity [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974], pp. 14–15). While allowance must be made for human limitations (at least lack of omniscience) and bias (such as loyalty to a particular person or deity), no good historian would completely discard them.

An example that is more to the point is Bart D. Ehrman’s strong affirmation of Jesus’ existence in his Did Jesus Exist? (New York: HarperOne, 2012), pp. 142–174. It is based on New Testament data and is noteworthy for its down-to-earth perception. Ehrman bases his conclusion that Jesus existed on two facts: first, that the apostle Paul was personally acquainted with Jesus’ brother James and with the apostle Peter; and second, that, contrary to Jewish messianic expectation of the day, Jesus was crucified (Did Jesus Exist?, p. 173).

In the last analysis, all evidence from all sources must be considered. Both Biblical and non-Biblical sources “are in principle of equal value in the study of Jesus” (Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998], p. 23). An excellent, up-to-date resource on both Christian and non-Christian sources is Craig A. Evans, ed., Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus (New York: Routledge, 2008).

4. “As Norma Miller delightfully remarks, ‘The well-intentioned pagan glossers of ancient texts do not normally express themselves in Tacitean Latin,’ and the same could be said of Christian interpolators” (Norma P. Miller, Tacitus: Annals XV [London: Macmillan, 1971], p. xxviii, quoted in Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000], p. 43).

5. Annals XV.44, as translated in Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 42–43. Instead of the better-documented reading, “Chrestians,” the word “Christians” appears in a more traditional translation by Alfred J. Church and William J. Brodribb, Annals of Tacitus (London: Macmillan, 1882), pp. 304–305.

6. Along with these corroborations, Tacitus’s statement also contains difficulties that might cause concern. Three that I consider the most important are treated in this note. Although debates will continue, proper use of historical background offers reasonable, tenable solutions that we may hold with confidence while remaining open to new evidence and new interpretations if they are better. Every approach has difficulties to explain. I prefer those that come with this article’s approach, because I consider them smaller and more easily resolved than the problems of other approaches.

First, it is common for scholars to observe that Pontius Pilate’s official title when he governed Judaea (26/27–36 C.E.) was not procurator, as in the quotation from Tacitus above, but praefectus (in Latin, literally, “placed in charge”; in English, prefect), as stated on the “Pilate stone” discovered in 1961. This stone was lying in the ruins of the theater in the ancient city of Caesarea Maritima, on Israel’s northern seacoast. The stone had been trimmed down to be re-used twice, so the first part of the title is broken off, but the title is not in doubt. With square brackets marking missing letters that scholars have filled in, two of its four lines read “[Po]ntius Pilate . . . [Pref]ect of Juda[ea]”:

line 2 […PO]NTIUS PILATUS
line 3 […PRAEF]ECTUS IUDA[EA]E

The inscription could potentially be dated to any time in Pilate’s career, but a date between 31 and 36 C.E. seems most likely. See Clayton Miles Lehmann and Kenneth G. Holum, The Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Caesarea Maritima, Joint Expedition to Caesarea Excavation Reports V (Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2000), pp. 67–70, no. 43, p. 249 Pl. XXVI.

The family name Pontius was common in some parts of Italy during that era, but the name Pilatus was “extremely rare” (A. N. Sherwin-White, “Pilate, Pontius,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. 3 [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986], p. 867). Because of the rarity of the name Pilatus and because only one Pontius Pilatus was ever the Roman governor of Judea, this identification should be regarded as completely certain.

It is possible that “procurator” in the quotation above is a simple error, but the historical background reveals that it is not so much an error as it is an anachronism—something placed out of its proper time, whether intentionally or by accident. As emperor until 14 C.E., Augustus gave governors of western and southern Judea the title praefectus. But later, Claudius (r. 41–54 C.E.) began conferring the title procurator pro legato, “procurator acting as legate” on new provincial governors. A procurator, literally, “caretaker,” was a steward who managed financial affairs on behalf of the owner. Roman governmental procurators managed taxes and estates on behalf of the emperor and had administrative duties. The English verb to procure is derived from the same root.

From then on, the title procurator replaced praefectus in many Roman provinces, including Judea. “So the early governors of western and southern Judea, after it became a Roman province in A.D. 6, were officially entitled praefecti. Later writers, however, usually referred to them anachronistically as procurators or the Greek equivalent …” (A. N. Sherwin-White, “Procurator,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, p. 979.)

Writing in 116 or 117 C.E., Tacitus, who was above all a careful writer, might have intentionally chosen to use the then-current title procurator in keeping with the anachronistic way of speaking that was common in his day. Even today, we accept titles used anachronistically. One might read comparable statements about “U.S. Secretaries of Defense from Henry Stimson during World War II to Chuck Hagel,” even though Stimson’s actual title was Secretary of War, and the current title is Secretary of Defense. Readers who are unfamiliar with Stimson’s title would nevertheless understand which position he held in the government.

Whether procurator was used intentionally or not, in effect this anachronistic term helped readers quickly understand Pilate’s official position and avoided confusing people who were not familiar with the older title.

The second difficulty is that Tacitus’s word for “Christians” is spelled two different ways in existing Latin manuscripts of Annals: both Christianoi and Chrestianoi. The name Chrestus, meaning “good, kind, useful, beneficent,” was commonly given to slaves who served Roman masters. In spoken conversation, people in Rome could easily have mistakenly heard the Latinized foreign word Christus as the familiar name Chrestus. Chrestianoi, “good, kind, useful ones,” is found in the oldest surviving manuscript of this passage in Tacitus.

[T]he original hand of the oldest surviving manuscript, the Second Medicean (eleventh century), which is almost certainly the source of all other surviving manuscripts, reads Chrestianoi, “Chrestians.” A marginal gloss “corrects” it to Christianoi. Chrestianoi is to be preferred as the earliest and most difficult reading and is adopted by the three current critical editions and the recent scholarship utilizing them. It also makes better sense in context. Tacitus is correcting, in a way typical of his style of economy, the misunderstanding of the “crowd” (vulgus) by stating that the founder of this name (auctor nominis eius) is Christus, not the name implicitly given by the crowd, Chrestus. Tacitus could have written auctor superstitionis, “the founder of this superstition,” or something similar, but he calls attention by his somewhat unusual phrase to the nomen [name] of the movement in order to link it directly—and correctly—to the name of Christ (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 43–44. See also John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Anchor Bible Reference Library [New York: Doubleday, 1991], p. 100, note 7.).

It is very common for ancient classical writings to be represented by manuscripts that were copied many centuries later. For example, the earliest manuscript of the Odyssey is from the 900s C.E., yet it is traditionally ascribed to the blind Greek poet Homer, who is dated variously from about the 800s to the 500s B.C.E., roughly 1,400 to 1,700 years earlier. Similarly, it is not unusual for the earliest surviving manuscripts of various works of the Greek philosopher Plato to date from over 1,000 years after he wrote.

For a technical, critical discussion of Christus and Chrestus in English, see Robert Renahan, “Christus or Chrestus in Tacitus?” Past and Present 23 (1968), pp. 368–370.

The third difficulty is more apparent than real: Why did it take about 85 years for a classical author such as Tacitus to write about Jesus, whose crucifixion occurred c. 29 C.E.? (The A.D. system, devised by the Christian Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus [“Dennis the Small”] in the 525 C.E. and used in our present-day calendar, was not perfectly set on the exact year of Jesus’ birth, though it was close. As a result, Jesus was born within the years we now refer to as 6 to 4 B.C.E. That would put the beginning of his ministry, around age 30 (Luke 3:23), at c. 25 C.E. In the widely held view that Jesus’ ministry lasted 3.5 years before his death, a reasonable date for the crucifixion is c. 29 C.E.)

The following two observations made by F. F. Bruce are relevant to works by Tacitus and by several other classical writers who mention Jesus:

1. Surprisingly few classical writings, comparatively speaking, survive from the period of about the first 50 years of the Christian church (c. 29 to 80 C.E.). (Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, p. 17.)
2. Roman civilization paid almost no attention to obscure religious leaders in faraway places, such as Jesus in Judea—just as today’s Western nations pay almost no attention to religious leaders in remote parts of the world, unless the national interest is involved. Rome became concerned only when Christians grew numerous. (Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, pp. 17–18. For thorough discussion, see Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 68–71.)

A time factor that affects Tacitus in particular is:

3. In the Annals, the reference to Jesus appears only in connection with the cruel treatment of Christians in Rome by Nero, as part of a biography of Nero (d. 68 C.E.). By happenstance, Tacitus did not get around to composing Nero’s biography until the last group of narratives he wrote before he died. A writer for most of his life, Tacitus began with works on oratory, ethnography of German tribes and other subjects. His book Histories, written c. 100–110, which covers the reigns of later Roman emperors after Nero, was actually written before his book Annals, which covers the earlier reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Thus Tacitus wrote his biography of Nero at the end of his career.

7. Asia was the name of a Roman province in what is now western Turkey (Asia Minor).
8. Perhaps he compared it to Roman records, whether in general governmental archives or in records concerning various religions. I have read one analysis by an author who arbitrarily assumes that Tacitus got his information only from Christians—no other source. Then, on the sole basis of the author’s own assumption, the analysis completely dismisses Tacitus’s clear historical statement about “Christus.” This evaluation is based on opinion, not evidence. It also undervalues Tacitus’s very careful writing and his discernment as a historian. He likely had access to some archives through his status, either as Proconsul of Asia, as a senator—or, as is often overlooked, from his connections as a high-ranking priest of Roman religion. In 88 C.E., he became “a member of the Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis [“The Board of Fifteen for Performing Sacrifices”], the priestly organization charged, among other things, with … supervising the practice of officially tolerated foreign cults in the city … [and facing] the growing necessity to distinguish illicit Christianity from licit Judaism” (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 52), or, given Jewish resistance to oppressive measures taken by Rome, at least to keep a close watch on developments within Judaism. Indeed, “a Roman archive … is particularly suggested by the note of the temporary suppression of the superstition, which indicates an official perspective” (Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, p. 83). Membership in this priestly regulatory group very likely gave Tacitus access to at least some of the accurate knowledge he possessed about Christus. With characteristic brevity, he reported the facts as he understood them, quickly dismissing the despised, executed Christus from the Annals (see Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, p. 90).

Tacitus himself tells us … that in 88 [C.E.] both in his capacity as priest of the college of quindecimviri sacris faciundis and as a praetor he had been present at and had paid close attention to the ludi saeculares [“secular games”] celebrated by Domitian in that year… [Annals, XI.11, 3–4]. It rather sounds as if he took his religious office seriously …

Tacitus presents himself as a man concerned to preserve traditional Roman religious practice, convinced that when religious matters are allowed to slide or are completely disregarded, the gods will vent their anger on the Roman people to correct their error. What on his view angers the gods is not so much failure to observe the niceties of ritual practice, as disdain for the moral order that the gods uphold” (Matthew W. Dickie, “Magic in the Roman Historians,” in Richard Lindsay Gordon and Francisco Marco Simón, eds., Magical Practice in the Latin West: Papers from the International Conference Held at the University of Zaragoza, 30 Sept. – 1st Oct. 2005, Religions in the Greco-Roman World, vol. 168 [Leiden: Brill, 2010], pp. 82, 83).

Tacitus was in his twenties in 79 C.E., when an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius annihilated the city of Pompeii. One can reasonably suppose how he might have interpreted this disaster in relation to the Roman gods.

9. Quoted from Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, p. 64.

10. Titus’s troops captured and treated as war booty the sacred menorah that had stood in the holy place inside the Temple. See articles on the menorah as depicted on the Arch of Titus, in Yeshiva University’s Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project, etc., at yeshiva.academia.edu/StevenFine/Menorah-Arch-of-Titus-Digital-Restoration-Project.

11. Jewish Antiquities, XX.200 (or, in Whiston’s translation of Jewish Antiquities, XX.9.1).

12. James’s name was actually Jacob. Odd as it may seem, the English name James is ultimately derived from the Hebrew name Jacob.

13. Jewish Antiquities, XX.9.1 in Whiston’s translation (§200 in scholarly editions), as translated by Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, p. 57. Meier’s original passage includes the phrases in square brackets [ ]. The omitted words indicated by the ellipsis (…) are in Greek, to let scholars know what words are translated into English.

14. Winter asserts that Josephus mentions about twelve others named Jesus. Feldman puts that number at 21. See Paul Winter, “Excursus II: Josephus on Jesus and James: Ant. xviii 3, 3 (63–64) and xx 9,1 (200–203),” in Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, 3 vols., rev. and ed. by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Matthew Black and Martin Goodman (Edinburgh: Clark, 1973–1987), vol. 1, p. 431; Louis H. Feldman, “Introduction,” in Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, eds., Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1987), p. 56.

15. See Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, pp. 57–58. Messiah, the Hebrew term for “anointed (one),” came through Greek translation (Christos) into English as Christ.

16. See Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, p. 59, note 12; pp. 72–73, note 12.

17. Richard T. France, The Evidence for Jesus, The Jesus Library (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986), p. 26.

18. Josephus says James was executed by stoning before the Jewish War began, but Christian tradition says he was executed during the Jewish War by being thrown from a height of the Temple, then, after an attempt to stone him was prevented, finally being clubbed to death. See Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, p. 58.

19. XVIII.63–64 (in Whiston’s translation: XVIII.3.3).

20. It was modern scholar John P. Meier who put these passages in italics.

21. Christians believe that Jesus was fully human, but also fully Divine, having two natures in one person. To refer to him as “a wise man,” as the earlier part of the sentence does, would seem incomplete to a Christian. This clause seems intended to lead toward the two boldly Christian statements that come later.

22. This straightforward translation from Greek, in which I have italicized three phrases, is by Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, pp. 65–66.

In his Bible Review article (Meier, “The Testimonium,” Bible Review, June 1991, p. 23), John P. Meier subtracts these three apparently Christian portions from the Testimonium. What remains is a very plausible suggestion, possibly the authentic, smoothly flowing report written by Flavius Josephus—or very close to it. Here is the remainder:

Around this time there lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was one who did surprising deeds, and a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who in the first place came to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, have still to this day not died out (Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, pp. 65–66, after deleting the apparent Christian additions as Meier would).

23. Regarding differing religious convictions of readers that have generated disagreements about this passage at least since medieval times, see Alice Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times, Studies in Biblical Literature, vol. 36 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). Whealey’s observations in her conclusion, pp. 203–207, may be summarized as follows:

In the High Middle Ages (c. 1050–1350), Jewish scholars claimed it was a Christian forgery that was inserted into Josephus’s text, and Christians simply claimed it was entirely authentic. The problem was that with few exceptions, both sides argued from a priori assumptions with no critical examination of evidence. In the late 1500s and the 1600s, some Protestant scholars made the public charge of forgery. By the mid-1700s, based on textual evidence, scholarly opinion had rejected the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum and the controversy largely ended for over two centuries.

Twentieth-century scholars, however, revived the controversy on the basis of “new” variations of the text and whole works from ancient times that had been overlooked. Instead of the generally Protestant character of the earlier controversy, the controversy that began in the twentieth century is “more academic and less sectarian … marked by the presence of Jewish scholars for the first time as prominent participants on both sides of the question, and in general the attitudes of Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and secular scholars towards the text have drawn closer together” (p. 206).

24. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, p. 65–69. Meier, “The Testimonium,” Bible Review, June 1991, gives the third answer.

25. Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), p. 229.

26. Matthew 16:16; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20.

27. According to Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, pp. 66–67, unless otherwise noted, these phrases that are characteristic of Josephus include: 1) Calling Jesus “a wise man” and calling his miracles “surprising deeds”; 2) Use of one of Josephus’s favorite phrases, “accept the truth gladly,” that in the “gladly” part includes the Greek word for “pleasure” which for Christian writers of this era, as a rule, had a bad connotation; 3) The reference to attracting “many of the Greeks” (meaning Hellenistic Gentiles), which fits better with Rome in Josephus’s time than with the references to Gentiles in the Gospels, which are few (such as John 12:20–22). On the style being that of Josephus, see also Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 89–91; 4) “The execution of Jesus by Pilate on the denunciation of the Jewish authorities shows acquaintance with legal conditions in Judaea and contradicts the tendency of the Christian reports of the trial of Jesus, which incriminate the Jews but play down Pilate’s responsibility” (Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, p. 67); 5) Calling Christians a “tribe” tends to show a Jewish perspective.

28. On whether the Testimonium Flavianum interrupts the structure of its literary context, see Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, pp. 67–68, under “The interpolation hypothesis.” They describe E. Norden’s analysis (in German) of the context in Jewish Antiquities. Also see France, Evidence for Jesus, pp. 27–28, which mentions that Josephus’s typical sequencing includes digressions. Josephus’s key vocabulary regarding revolts is absent from the section on Jesus, perhaps removed by a Christian copyist who refused to perpetuate Josephus’s portrayal of Jesus as a real or potential rebel political leader.

29. Various scholars have suggested that Josephus’s original text took a hostile view of Jesus, but others, that it took a neutral to slightly positive view of him. See Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, pp. 68–71 (hostile views) and pp. 71–74 (neutral to slightly positive views).

30. Josephus scholar Steve Mason observes, “Long after Eusebius, in fact, the text of the testimonium remained fluid. Jerome (342–420), the great scholar who translated the Bible and some of Eusebius into Latin, gives a version that agrees closely with standard text, except that the crucial phrase says of Jesus, ‘He was believed to be the Messiah’” (Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, p. 230, italics his. A decades-long, simmering debate continues about whether Jerome’s translation accurately represents what Josephus wrote.).

Besides Jerome’s Latin version, other examples of variation in manuscripts that are mentioned by Mason include an Arabic rendering and a version in Syriac. The Syriac language developed from Aramaic and is the (or an) official language of some branches of Orthodox Christianity.

A passage in a tenth-century Arabic Christian manuscript written by a man named Agapius appears to be a version of the Testimonium Flavianum. Shlomo Pines gives the following translation from the Arabic:

Similarly Josephus [Yūsīfūs] the Hebrew. For he says that in the treatises that he has written on the governance [?] of the Jews: ‘At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. His conduct was good, and [he] was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.

This is what is said by Josephus and his companions of our Lord the Messiah, may he be glorified (Shlomo Pines, An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and Its Implications [Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971), pp. 8–10).

Feldman thinks that Agapius mixed in source material from writers besides Josephus and provided “a paraphrase, rather than a translation” (Louis H. Feldman, Josephus and Modern Scholarship, 1937–1980 [New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984], p. 701). John P. Meier tends not to attribute much significance to Agapius’s description of the Testimonium Flavianum; see Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, pp. 78–79, note 37.

Of the three apparently Christian portions that are italicized in the translation of the Greek text above, the first is missing, and the other two are phrased as neutral statements (“they reported” he was alive, “he was perhaps” the Messiah), rather than as affirmations of Christian faith, such as, “He was” the Messiah, “He appeared” alive again.

Mason also refers to Pines’s translation of a version in Syriac found in the writings of Michael, the Patriarch of Antioch:

The writer Josephus also says in his work on the institutions of the Jews: In these times there was a wise man named Jesus, if it is fitting for us to call him a man. For he was a worker of glorious deeds and a teacher of truth. Many from among the Jews and the nations became his disciples. He was thought to be the Messiah. But not according to the testimony of the principal [men] of [our] nation. Because of this, Pilate condemned him to the cross, and he died. For those who had loved him did not cease to love him. He appeared to them alive after three days. For the prophets of God had spoken with regard to him of such marvelous [as these]. And the people of the Christians, named after him, has not disappeared till [this] day” (Pines, Arabic Version, pp. 26–27).

Pines adds a note about the Syriac text of the sentence “He was thought to be the Messiah”: “This sentence may also be translated Perhaps he was the Messiah.”

These Latin, Arabic and Syriac versions most likely represent genuine, alternative textual traditions. “The Christian dignitaries who innocently report these versions as if they came from Josephus had no motive, it seems, to weaken their testimony to Jesus” (Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, p. 231). Actually, Christians tended to make references to Jesus more glorious. Nor is there any indication that anti-Christian scribes reduced the references to Jesus from glorious to mundane, which would likely have been accompanied by disparagement. “It seems probable, therefore, that the versions of Josephus’s statement given by Jerome, Agapius and Michael reflect alternative textual traditions of Josephus which did not contain” the bold Christian confessions that appear in the standard Greek version (Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, p. 231). They contain variations that exhibit a degree of the fluidity that Mason emphasizes (Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, pp. 230–231). But these versions are not so different that they are unrecognizable as different versions of the Testimonium Flavianum. They use several similar phrases and refer to the same events, presenting phrases and events in a closely similar order, with few exceptions. Thus, along with enough agreement among the standard Greek text and the non-Greek versions to reveal a noteworthy degree of stability, their differences clearly exhibit the work of other hands after Josephus. (It is by this stability that we may recognize many lengthy additions and disagreements with the manuscript texts of the Testimonium Flavianum that are found in a passage sometimes called the Testimonium Slavianum that was apparently inserted into the Old Russian translation, called the Slavonic version, of Josephus’s other major work, The Jewish War.)

In the process of finding the similarities of phrases and references in extant manuscripts, one can come to recognize that the standard Greek form of the Testimonium Flavianum is simply one textual tradition among several. On balance, the Greek version is not necessarily supreme over all other textual traditions (Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, pp. 234–236). Despite a degree of stability in the text, the fluidity that is evident in various textual traditions is plain evidence that what Josephus wrote was later altered. When viewed from the standpoint of the Latin, Arabic and Syriac versions, the Greek text looks deliberately altered to make Josephus seem to claim that Jesus was the Messiah, possibly by omitting words that indicated that people called him Christos or thought, said, reported or believed that he was. Also, although of course the evidence is the crucial factor, alternative 3 also happens to have the support of the overwhelming majority of scholars, far more than any other view.

31. Almost all of the following points are listed and elaborated in Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 99–102.

32. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 99.

33. “The non-Christian testimonies to Jesus … show that contemporaries in the first and second century saw no reason to doubt Jesus’ existence” (Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, p. 63).

34. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 15. His footnote attached to this sentence states, with reference to Justin Martyr:

The only possible attempt at this argument known to me is in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, written in the middle of the second century. At the end of chapter 8, Trypho, Justin’s Jewish interlocutor, states, “But [the] Christ—if indeed he has been born and exists anywhere—is unknown, and does not even know himself, and has no power until Elijah comes to anoint him and make him known to all. Accepting a groundless report, you have invented a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake you are unknowingly perishing.” This may be a faint statement of a nonexistence hypothesis, but it is not developed or even mentioned again in the rest of the Dialogue, in which Trypho assumes the existence of Jesus (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 15, note 35).

Even in this statement, in which Trypho tries to imply that an existing report of Jesus as the Christ is erroneous, his reason is not necessarily that Jesus did not exist. Rather, he might well have wanted to plant the doubt that—although Jesus existed, as Trypho consistently assumes throughout the rest of the dialogue— the “report” that Jesus was the Christ was “groundless,” and that later on, someone else might arise who would prove to be the true Christ. Trypho was attempting to raise hypothetical doubt without here stating any actual grounds for doubt. These suggestions, more likely taunts, from Trypho, which he immediately abandons, cannot be regarded as an argument, let alone a serious argument. They are simply an unsupported doubt, apparently regarding Jesus’ being the Messiah.

35. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 133–134.

36. The chief difficulty in working with rabbinic writings that might be about Jesus is that

it is not always clear if Jesus (variously called Yeshua or Yeshu, with or without the further designation ha-Noṣri [meaning “the Nazarene”]) is in fact the person to whom reference is being made, especially when certain epithets are employed (e.g. Balaam, Ben Pandira, Ben Stada, etc. … Another serious problem in making use of these traditions is that it is likely that none of it is independent of Christian sources (Craig A. Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” in Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans, eds., Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, 2nd impression, New Testament Tools and Studies, vol. 6 (Boston: Brill, 1998, 1994), pp. 443–444).

Thus Van Voorst finds that “most passages alleged to speak about him in code do not in fact do so, or are so late as to have no value” (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 129).

From among the numerous rabbinic traditions, many of which seem puzzling in their potential references to Jesus, a fairly clear example is as follows:

And it is tradition: On the eve of the Passover they hanged Yeshu ha-Noṣri. And the herald went forth before him for forty days, “Yeshu ha-Noṣri is to be stoned, because he has practiced magic and enticed and led Israel astray. Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and speak concerning him.” And they found nothing in his favor. And they hanged him on the eve of the Passover. Ulla says, “Would it be supposed that Yeshu ha-Noṣri was one for whom anything in his favor might be said? Was he not a deceiver? And the Merciful has said, ‘Thou shalt not spare, neither shalt thou conceal him’ [Deuteronomy 13:8]. But it was different with Yeshu ha-Noṣri, for he was near to the kingdom’” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a; compare Sanhedrin 67a).

The following paragraph summarizes Craig A. Evans’s comments on the above quotation from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a:

According to John 18:28 and 19:14, Jesus’ execution occurred during Passover. The phrase “near to the kingdom” might refer to the Christian tradition that Jesus was a descendant of King David (Matthew 1:1; Mark 10:47, 48), or it could refer to Jesus’ proclamation that the kingdom of God was at hand (Mark 1:15). Deuteronomy 13:1–11 prescribes death by stoning for leading other Israelites astray to serve other gods, giving a sign or wonder, and Deuteronomy 21:21–22 requires that “when a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, you shall hang him on a tree” (compare the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 6:4, “All who have been stoned must be hanged”). When Judea came under Roman rule, which instituted crucifixion as a legal punishment, apart from the question of whether it was just or unjust, Jews roughly equated it with hanging on a tree. (Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 448)

The passage above simultaneously implies the rabbis’ view that Jesus really existed and encapsulates the rabbis’ uniformly negative view of his miracles as magic and his teachings as deceit (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 120).

37. Passing of Peregrinus, §11, as translated in Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 462.

38. This paragraph is a separate quotation from Passing of Peregrinus, §11, again as translated in Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 462.

39. On Celsus: in c. 176 C.E., Celsus, a Platonist philosopher in Alexandria, wrote The True Word (this title is also translated as The True Doctrine, or The True Discourse, or The True Account, etc.) to lodge his severe criticisms of Judaism and Christianity. Although that work has not survived, it is quoted and paraphrased in Origen’s reply in defense of Christianity, Against Celsus (c. 248 C.E.). Prominent among his many accusations to which Origen replies is as follows:

Next he makes the charge of the savior that it was by magic that he was able to do the miracles which he appeared to have done, and foreseeing that others also, having learned the same lessons and being haughty to act with the power of God, are about to do the same thing, such persons Jesus would drive away from his own society.

For he says, “He was brought up in secret and hired himself out as a workman in Egypt, and having tried his hand at certain magical powers he returned from there, and on account of those powers gave himself the title of God” (Origen, Against Celsus, 1.6, 38, as translated in Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 460).

It is unknown whether Celsus became aware of information about Jesus, including reports of his miracles, from the Gospel tradition(s) or independently of them. Thus it cannot be said that Celsus adds any new historical material about Jesus, though it is clear that in accusing Jesus of using magic for personal gain, Celsus assumed his existence.

Charges that Jesus was a magician are common in ancient writings, and Christian replies have been published even very recently. Evans refers readers to “an assessment of the polemic that charges Jesus with sorcery”: Graham N. Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth: A Magician and a False Prophet Who Deceived God’s People?” in Joel B. Green and Max Turner, eds., Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ: Essays on the Historical Jesus and New Testament Christology, I. Howard Marshall Festschrift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 166–182 (Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 460, note 45).

40. On Pliny the Younger: A friend of Tacitus, and like him the governor of a Roman province (in 110 C.E.), Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (c. 61–113 C.E.), known as Pliny, seems to have been excessively dependent on the Emperor Trajan for directions on how to govern. In his lengthy correspondence with Trajan, titled Epistles, X.96, along with his inquiries about how to treat people accused of being Christians, Pliny wrote:

They [the Christians] assured me that the sum total of their error consisted in the fact that that they regularly assembled on a certain day before daybreak. They recited a hymn antiphonally to Christus as to a god and bound themselves with an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, breach of faith, and embezzlement of property entrusted to them. After this, it was their custom to separate, and then to come together again to partake of a meal, but an ordinary and innocent one (Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 459)

The things that Pliny wrote about Christians can be found in or deduced from the New Testament. He reveals nothing new about Jesus himself, nor can his letters be considered evidence for Jesus’ existence, only for Christian belief in his existence. One may note what seems to have been early second century Christian belief in Jesus as deity, as well as the sizable population of Christians worshiping him in Pliny’s province, Bithynia, in Asia Minor, despite Roman prohibition and punishments.

41. On Suetonius: In c. 120 C.E., the Roman writer, lawyer and historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. 70–140 C.E.), a friend of Pliny, wrote the following in his history, On the Lives of the Caesars, speaking of an event in 49 C.E.: “He [Claudius] expelled the Jews from Rome, because they were always making disturbances because of the instigator Chrestus” (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 30).

In the first place, the term “the Jews” could refer to Christians, whom Romans viewed as members of a Jewish sect. So the “disturbances” could be understood as riots among Jews, among Christians viewed as Jews, or, most likely, between those whom we would call Jews and Christians.

The use of the name “Chrestus” creates more ambiguity in this passage than the term “Chrestians” did in the passage in Tacitus treated above. Tacitus implicitly corrected the crowd. Here, with Suetonius speaking of events in 49 C.E., we have two options to choose from. The first option is that it’s a spelling of a mispronunciation of Christus, which Romans thought was Jesus’ name. If so, then Suetonius misunderstood Christus, whom he called “Chrestus,” to be an instigator. Suetonius’s key appositive phrase, “impulsore Chresto,” is much more accurately translated “the instigator Chrestus” (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 31) than the usual “at the instigation of Chrestus” (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 29). Another logical result would be that the uproarious disputes in 49 C.E. were actually disturbances sparked by disagreement about who Jesus was and/or what he said and did. Considering the two sides, namely, the rabbinic view that he was a magician and deceitful teacher, versus early Christians whose worship was directed to him “as to a god” (as described from the Roman perspective of Pliny the Younger), one can see how synagogues could become deeply divided.

The second option is that it refers to an otherwise unknown “instigator” of disturbances who bore the common name of slaves and freedmen, Chrestus. Actually, among hundreds of Jewish names in the catacombs of Rome, there is not one instance of Chrestus being the name of a Jew (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 33). For this and other reasons, it seems more likely that Suetonius, who often uncritically repeated errors in his sources, was referring to Christus, that is, Jesus, but misunderstood him to be an agitator who lived in Rome in 49 C.E. (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 29–39).

42. On Mara bar Serapion: In the last quarter of the first century C.E., a prisoner of war following the Roman conquest of Samosata (see under Lucian), Mara bar Serapion wrote a letter to his son, Serapion. In Stoic fashion, he wanted his son to seek wisdom in order to handle life’s misfortunes with virtue and composure.

For what advantage did the Athenians gain by the murder of Socrates, the recompense of which they received in famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, because in one hour their country was entirely covered in sand? Or the Jews by the death of their wise king, because from that same time their kingdom was taken away? God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given (Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” pp. 455–456)

All we know of the author comes from this letter. Mara does not seem to have been a Christian, because he does not refer to a resurrection of Jesus and because his terminology, such as “wise king,” is not the usual Christian way of referring to Jesus. It is entirely possible that Mara received some knowledge of Jesus from Christians but did not name him for fear of displeasing his own Roman captors. His nameless reference makes the identification of “the wise king” as Jesus, though reasonable, still somewhat uncertain.

43. Doubtful sources contain “second- and third-hand traditions that reflect for the most part vague acquaintance with the Gospel story and controversies with Christians. These sources offer nothing independent” (Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 443). Doubtful sources include the following:

Many rabbinic sources, including the Sepher Toledot Yeshu, “The Book of the Generations of Jesus” (meaning his ancestry or history; compare Matthew 1:1). It might be generally datable to as early as the eighth century C.E. but “may well contain a few oral traditions that go back to the third century.” It is “nothing more than a late collection of traditions, from Christian as well as from Jewish sources … full of fictions assembled for the primary purpose of anti-Christian polemic and propaganda,” and has no historical value regarding the question of Jesus’ existence (Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 450).

The Slavonic (or Old Russian) Version of Josephus’s Jewish War “contains numerous passages … [which] tell of Jesus’ amazing deeds, of the jealousy of the Jewish leaders, of bribing Pilate,” etc. (Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” p. 451). These additions have no demonstrated historical value. The Yosippon (or Josippon) is a medieval source which appears in many versions, often with many additions. Its core is a Hebrew version of portions of Josephus’s writings that offers nothing from before the fourth century C.E. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain no contemporary references to Jesus or his followers. Islamic traditions either depend on the New Testament or are not clearly traceable to the early centuries C.E.

44. Regarding archaeological discoveries, along with many other scholars, I do not find that the group of ossuaries (bone boxes) discovered in the East Talpiot district of Jerusalem can be used as a basis for any conclusions about Jesus of Nazareth or his family. See the variety of views presented in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), especially the essay by Rachel Hachlili, “What’s in a Name?” pp. 125–149. She concludes, “In light of all the above the East Talpiot tomb is a Jewish family tomb with no connection to the historical Jesus family; it is not the family tomb of Jesus and most of the presented facts for the identification are speculation and guesswork” (p. 143).

45. See Nili S. Fox, In the Service of the King: Officialdom in Ancient Israel and Judah, Monographs of the Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 2000), pp. 23–32; Christopher A. Rollston, “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests,” Maarav 10 (2003), pp. 135–193, and his “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic,” Maarav 11 (2004), pp. 57–79.

46. See Craig A. Evans, Jesus and the Ossuaries (Waco, TX: Baylor Univ. Press, Markham Press Fund, 2003), pp. 112–115. Regarding identification of the people named in the James ossuary inscription, even if it is authentic, the question as to whether it refers to Jesus of Nazareth has not been clearly settled. It is worth observing that its last phrase, “the brother of Jesus,” whose authenticity is disputed, is not the characteristic Christian way of referring to Jesus, which would be “the brother of the Lord,” but this observation hardly settles the question.

47. On G. A. Wells and Michael Martin, see Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996), pp. 27–46. On others who deny Jesus’ existence, see Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? , especially pp. 61–64, 177–264.

The post Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The translation suggested to me that an unmarried Jewish couple was traveling a long distance unaccompanied by other family members. And the woman—still only pledged in marriage—was in an advanced state of pregnancy. If such a situation is still scandalous in the Middle East, how much more in first-century Judea!¹

Were Mary and Joseph married or engaged when they traveled to Bethlehem? Seen here is a mosaic of the Journey to Bethlehem from the Chora Church in Istanbul.

Later I checked other translations of Luke 2:5. The English Standard Version (ESV) uses “betrothed,” an archaic Middle English word. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) uses “engaged,” while the New Living Translation (NLT) says “fiancée.” Again, these English versions suggest that the couple’s marriage was incomplete. This discovery led me into an in-depth word study as well as a look at ancient marriage. And what I found was surprising.

Matthew’s Gospel seems to be clearer. In the genealogy, Joseph is called the “husband of Mary,” who gave birth to Jesus (Matthew 1:16). Describing the background of their relationship, Matthew 1:18 reads, “His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph.” Here Matthew uses the same Greek verb as Luke. However, after Joseph decides to divorce Mary because of her unexpected pregnancy, an angel warns him in a dream not to do so. The angel advises him to “take Mary as his wife” (Matthew 1:20). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel commanded him: He took Mary as his wife (Matthew 1:24). Luke’s version seemingly contradicts Matthew’s, according to present English translations.

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The Greek verb mnēsteuō is used eight times in the Septuagint (the third-century B.C.E. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). Four uses in Deuteronomy (22:23, 25, 27, 28) deal with the legal issues surrounding an engaged woman having illicit sexual relations. If the incident happens in a city (22:23), both the man and the woman are to be stoned to death; if a rape happens in the country, only the man is to be stoned. The man is considered guilty because he has violated another man’s wife (22:24).

In the three uses in Hosea, God himself is speaking. Regarding Israel’s future day of redemption in 2:16, God declares: “You will call me ‘my husband.’” Then he states in verses 19–20: “And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD.” The NRSV translates “wife” here, while the NIV, ESV and New King James Version (NKJV) all read: “I will betroth you.” Because of the context wherein God declares that he is a husband forever, it is clear that his relationship with Israel extends beyond an engagement stage; they will metaphorically be husband and wife.

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The Hebrew verb aras, translated mnēsteuō in Greek, refers to Jewish marriage practice in which the groom contractually pays a bride-price (mohar) to the bride’s father (Genesis 34:12). According to Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart, “This was the final step in the courtship process, virtually equivalent in legal status to the wedding ceremony.”² According to the Mishnah Ketubbot 5.2, the betrothal would last a year, with the bride remaining in the home of her father. Recalling the legal texts in Deuteronomy mentioned earlier plus the equation of David’s betrothal to Michal as marriage (2 Samuel 3:14), we see that under Jewish law, a betrothed woman was considered to be married.

Returning to Joseph, he would have paid the bride price to Mary’s father at their engagement (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:27). Despite his misgivings, Joseph then obeyed the angel’s command to marry Mary (Matthew 1:20). The time of formal engagement, whether a full year or not, had passed between them. So Joseph and Mary had begun to live together except for sexual relations (Matthew 1:25). Luke’s understanding of mnēsteuō must be expanded to include both the betrothal/engagement as well as marital cohabitation. Therefore a better translation of Luke 2:5 would be: “Mary his wife who was expecting a child.” (The NKJV attempts a hybrid with “betrothed wife.”) English translations that suggest the couple was still only in the engagement stage of fiancé/fiancée must be discarded. Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem as a full husband and wife under ancient Jewish law.

Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is a popular teacher on BAS Travel/Study tours. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research fellow in Biblical archaeology. He is currently Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is the author of Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor and Victory through the Lamb: A Guide to Revelation in Plain Language. He is a frequent lecturer at BAS’s Bible Fests.

Notes

1. Joseph Fitzmyer anticipated my questions by suggesting that readers and listeners should not be overliteral because the account does not intend to answer questions such as: “What was she doing on a journey with Joseph, if she were merely his fiancée or betrothed? And worse still, pregnant as well”; see Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I–IX (New York: Doubleday, 1981), p. 407. To ask such questions, according to Fitzmyer, is to miss the point of Luke’s story. But in liturgical use such authorial nuances are lost. He also notes that Luke never calls Mary the “wife” of Joseph and perhaps was not aware of Palestinian Jewish marriage customs. This blog post assumes that Luke, because of his knowledge of Jewish customs and possible interview with Mary herself (cf. Luke 1:2), used familiar marital language that had a broader semantic range than translators give it today.

2. Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 31 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), p. 59.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 12, 2017.

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The post Were Mary and Joseph Married or Engaged at Jesus’ Birth? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

WHAT IS COPTIC, AND WHO WERE THE COPTS? Dated to the fourth–fifth century C.E., the Codex Grazier is written in the Coptic language—the fifth and final stage of ancient Egyptian language—and contains part of the Book of Acts (Acts 1:1–15:3).

The Coptic language is the final stage of ancient Egyptian language. Even though it looks very different from texts written in Old Egyptian using hieroglyphs, the two are related.

In his article “Coptic—Egypt’s Christian Language” in the November/December 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Leo Depuydt gives a short history of the development of ancient Egyptian language and shows where the Coptic language fits in that timeline, as well as answering the question: Who were the Copts.

What Is Coptic?

The Coptic language developed around 300 C.E. in Egypt. It is Egyptian language written using the Greek alphabet, as well as a couple of Demotic signs. This script was much easier to learn than the earlier writing systems used in ancient Egypt: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic scripts.

Coptic was the lingua franca of Egypt when Egypt was predominantly Christian. Many assume that the Coptic language was developed primarily to spread Christianity, but Depuydt disagrees. He supports the great Belgian Coptologist Louis Théophile Lefort’s theory that the Coptic language was created by another group—the Jews.

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Who Were the Copts?

Egypt’s Coptic period—also called Egypt’s Christian period—lasted 500 years, from the fourth century to the ninth century C.E., when the majority of Egypt’s population was Christian. The major shift in religion—from the old Egyptian religion to Christianity—occurred in Egypt between 200 and 400 C.E. This change was undoubtedly accelerated when Constantine declared Christianity a legal religion in 313 C.E.

We refer to Egyptian Christians from this period as Copts. (This was not a term they called themselves, nor did they refer to their language as “Coptic.”)

Another shift in religion brought about the end of Egypt’s Coptic period in the ninth century. Arabic-speaking Muslims conquered Egypt in 640 C.E. Although Christianity and Coptic remained the predominant religion and language for several centuries after the conquest, eventually most of Egypt’s population adopted the new religion, Islam, and language, Arabic, of their conquerors.

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Egyptians stopped speaking Coptic between 1000 and 1500 C.E. Depuydt estimates that there were few Coptic speakers in Egypt during the 12th or 13th centuries and that by 1500 C.E., nearly everyone spoke Arabic. However, far from going extinct, the Coptic language survived—as did a Christian minority in Egypt—and is still read by the clergy of the Coptic Church today.

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The Five Stages of Ancient Egyptian Language

As mentioned earlier, the Coptic language is the final stage of ancient Egyptian language. Now that we’ve looked at the end of Egyptian language, perhaps we should look at its beginning.

The Egyptian language holds the record as being the longest written language in the world: It was spoken and written for more than 3,500 years. It is also possibly the oldest written language in the world. The earliest attestations of primitive Egyptian language date to before 3000 B.C.E., making it a potential rival of the oldest form of Sumerian.

Egyptian language can be divided into five main stages, which mark how the spoken language changed over the course of three and a half millennia. These stages are: Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic. Depuydt summarizes the stages:

The first three [stages] are (1) Old Egyptian, (2) Middle Egyptian and (3) Late Egyptian and date roughly to, respectively, the (1) Old Kingdom (2600–2100 B.C.E.), (2) First Intermediate Period, Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period (2100–1500 B.C.E.), and (3) New Kingdom (1500–1000 B.C.E.). All three are written either in hieroglyphic writing, which consists of pictures denoting meanings or sounds, or in hieratic, a cursive form of hieroglyphic writing … The fourth phase of Egyptian is Demotic, written in a highly cursive form of hieroglyphs also called demotic and attested from about 650 B.C.E. onward … The fifth and final phase of the Egyptian language is Coptic, which is written with the Greek alphabet augmented by a handful of signs borrowed from Demotic. Full-fledged written Coptic emerged around 300 C.E. Coptic ceased being spoken sometime between 1000 C.E. and 1500 C.E., but the clergy has remained able to read it (more or less) down to the present day.

To learn more about Egypt’s Coptic Christian period and the Coptic language, read Leo Depuydt’s full article “Coptic—Egypt’s Christian Language” in the November/December 2015 issue of BAR.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Coptic—Egypt’s Christian Language” by Leo Depuydt in the November/December 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Ancient Amulets with Incipits

Is the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife a Fake?

“Down the Rabbit Hole”: Owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Papyrus Unmasked

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The Gospel of Thomas: Jesus Said What?

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Nag Hammadi Codices Shed New Light on Early Christian History

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on November 22, 2015.

The post What Is Coptic and Who Were the Copts in Ancient Egypt? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Arch of Titus in Rome. Photo: Courtesy of Steven Fine, the Arch of Titus Project.

How did Rome look in ancient times?

Usually when we envision ancient Rome, we imagine a world of gleaming white marble edifices and statues. This, however, is not an accurate picture. Although many Roman—and Greek—statues and monuments now appear white (or grey), they were originally brightly colored. The whiteness we see today is the result of years of weathering.

One of the most famous monuments in ancient Rome is the Arch of Titus, constructed by Roman emperor Domitian around 81 C.E. after the death of his brother and predecessor, emperor Titus. The arch celebrates Titus’s military victories during the First Jewish-Roman War (66–74 C.E.)—when the Romans infamously burned the Temple in Jerusalem. One of the arch’s panels depicts Roman soldiers carrying captured treasures from Jerusalem’s Temple, including a large menorah, through the streets of Rome.

The arch’s menorah panel. How did the Arch of Titus in ancient Rome look? The Arch of Titus Project has shown that the arch’s menorah panel was once brightly colored, but over time its colors faded, and today it appears colorless. Photo: Courtesy of Steven Fine, the Arch of Titus Project.

Today the Arch of Titus appears colorless, but how did this monument look in ancient Rome?

Using technology, an international team of scholars has digitally restored a panel from the Arch of Titus to its original color—offering us a glimpse of what ancient Rome looked like. Steven Fine of Yeshiva University, Peter J. Schertz of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Donald H. Sanders of the Institute for the Visualization of History detail their restoration efforts in the article “True Colors: Digital Reconstruction Restores Original Brilliance to the Arch of Titus,” published in the May/June 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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The team focused on the menorah panel. After creating a 3D scan of this panel, they could see the scene in more detail than ever before, which enabled them to digitally restore portions of it—even reconstructing the table of showbread and some of the Roman victors’ heads that had been lost long ago. Next the team scanned the panel for signs of color. Traces of yellow pigment were discovered on the menorah, which confirmed that the menorah had originally been painted yellow. These results aligned with the Jewish historian Josephus’s account of the Roman victory parade, wherein he describes the menorah as being gold.

This uncolored rendering of the 3D scan of the Arch of Titus’s menorah panel was created by UNOCAL, a scanning firm in Milan. Photo: Courtesy of Steven Fine, the Arch of Titus Project.

The team then added color to the rest of the panel—bringing the ancient scene to life. They colored the background sky blue, the tunics off-white, the overgarments reddish-purple, the wreaths green, the laurel berries purple, the sacred vessels gold, the trumpets silver, and the leather and wood brown. They colored the arch (in the far right of the panel) white, black and gold. Further, they added labels to the three signs held by the Roman victors; these labels were based loosely on Josephus’s text.

This digital reconstruction shows the Arch of Titus’s menorah panel after it has been restored and colored by the Arch of Titus Project and the Institute for the Visualization of History. This offers us a glimpse of what ancient Rome looked like. Photo: © 2017 Institute for the Visualization of History, Inc.

To confirm that their reconstructions are correct, the team hopes to return to the Arch of Titus soon to scan the rest of the menorah panel for color. Learn more about this project in “True Colors: Digital Reconstruction Restores Original Brilliance to the Arch of Titus” by Steven Fine, Peter J. Schertz and Donald H. Sanders in the May/June 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full article “True Colors: Digital Reconstruction Restores Original Brilliance to the Arch of Titus” by Steven Fine, Peter J. Schertz and Donald H. Sanders in the May/June 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

The Arch of Titus in Color

Jewish Captives in the Imperial City

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A Second Triumphal Arch of Titus Discovered

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 24, 2017.

The post The Arch of Titus’s Menorah Panel in Color appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Funeral meal. Painted stone relief from a Roman stele. Location: Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier, Germany. Photo: Erich Lessing.

Living in the Greco-Roman world, early Christians were able to draw from a set of rich artistic paradigms when they set out to depict their stories and beliefs in decorative contexts. This often led to the assimilation of well-established pagan artistic styles and images into early Christian art. The sculptors, fresco painters and mosaic artists who created Christian images did so by using the prolific examples of art and decoration that shaped their artistic landscape.

The earliest known Christian art can be found in the catacombs of Rome. This nascent and largely populist religion was viewed with varying degrees of hostility by the Roman authorities in the first few centuries after Jesus’ death, ranging from disdainful tolerance to outright persecution. Not surprisingly, early Christians were discreet in their worship, and their art was executed quite literally underground. With the issuance of Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan, which effectively legalized Christianity, Christian art became much more overt and widespread.

Third-century scene of a feast decorating a Christian tomb in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus in Rome, Italy. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

And yet, although the dogma and belief systems were in many ways markedly different from pagan religion, many of the images early Christians generated were quite similar to those that adorned the walls and floors of buildings belonging to their pagan neighbors. Thus the pagan image of Endymion sleeping under the watchful eye of the goddess Selene became the prototype of Jonah asleep beneath the vine (Jonah 4). Likewise, the scenes of jovial dinners (symposia) that were often depicted in Greek funerary contexts (and later in Roman ones, with a slightly less exuberant tone) became models for the Christian funerary images of the rewards of heaven.*

This is not so strange; as emerging underdogs in a nation with a long and well-established artistic tradition, those same artisans and craftsman who were now creating art in a Christian context naturally turned to images and styles that were familiar to them. Thus the early images of Christ portray a young, beardless man who bears a strong resemblance to the god Apollo of the Greco-Roman world. This is not to say that Christians necessarily confused the two, but rather that they chose an image of a pre-established deity with noble associations to portray their own idea of the sacred.

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Helios, Greek sun god. Cornerstone of a metope-triglyphs frieze from the Athena Temple in Troy (Ilion). After 300 B.C. Marble, 85.8 x 201.2 cm. Inv. 9582.

Helios, the Greek god of the sun (who was later often identified with Apollo, the god of light), is another ancient pagan figure whose image reverberated through monotheistic art; both Christians and Jews used the image of the Greek god of the sun in religious contexts. The Greek deity was most commonly depicted in a chariot drawn by four horses (the quadriga). The chariot represented the sun, and according to Greek mythology, the daily journey taken by the god across the sky was the source of sunlight.

This depiction of Helios appears, surprisingly, as part of an elaborate mosaic floor uncovered in an ancient synagogue at Sepphoris. In the mosaic, Helios is surrounded by the 12 signs of the zodiac. Sepphoris was not unique; Helios and the zodiac appear in at least seven synagogues from about 400 to 500 C.E. Photo: Gabi Laron/Courtesy Zeev Weiss.

In a Christian funerary context, the image of Christ as Helios is commonly interpreted as being representative of the resurrection. In early Jewish depictions, it has been hypothesized that the image of Helios, or simply the sun as in the case of the mosaic at Sepphoris, represents God’s omnipotence.** In the context of ancient Jewish synagogues in Israel, the image of Helios is set within the context of zodiac symbols. For some, this reinforces the thesis that the early Jews saw Israel as being subject to planetary influence, and that early Judaism may have been characterized by a belief in minor deities in addition to Yahweh.***

The mythological figure of Orpheus, who enchanted all of nature with his poetry and music, is another example of a pagan artistic type that was used in both early Christian as well as Jewish iconography. For the early Jews, the association of music and poetry with Orpheus likely led to the same image being used to represent King David, who famously sang his praises to God. Indeed, instances of David depicted with Orpheus imagery are well and firmly documented.†

Equally well documented are images of Christ as Orpheus, particularly in the catacombs of Rome. One of the most famous aspects of the Orpheus myth from antiquity is the story of Orpheus’s determined descent into Hades to rescue his love Eurydice, who had been snatched from him by an untimely death. While he was ultimately not successful in recovering Eurydice, he himself emerged from the underworld alive. This particular aspect of the myth resonated with early Christians, who saw this as an allegorical reference to Christ’s descent into and return from the fiery depths of hell. Orpheus thus became a symbol of victory over death, and a symbol of eternal life.

Marcello Provenzale’s 1608 micro-mosaic represents Cardinal Scipione Borghese as Orpheus, an allusion to his talent for persuasiveness.

Of course, the image of Orpheus with the accompanying cadre of beautiful plants and exquisitely detailed animals, both real and imagined, made for a beautiful ornamental design in any context. Sometimes, even during the Christian period, a decorative image of Orpheus was simply that: an image of Orpheus.‡ In the case of the famous sixth-century A.D. Jerusalem mosaic (now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum), which depicts an exquisitely detailed image of Orpheus that was originally interpreted as a representation of Christ, it is likely that the figure is simply an artistic panel that recalls a quaint and harmless story from an older time.

Check out “Double Identity: Orpheus as David. Orpheus as Christ?” in the March/April 2009 issue of BAR for more information about pagan imagery.

This image, which strongly recalls the image of the Hermes/shepherd figure depicted in pagan funerary contexts, represents Christ as the Good Shepherd. This third-century fresco is located on the ceiling of a Christian cubiculum tomb in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome, Italy.

An even more common motif featured in early Christian art that draws directly from pagan funerary art is that of the Good Shepherd. Commonly represented as a young, beardless man holding a sheep across his shoulders, we see this representation in pagan funerary contexts long before the advent of Christianity. Initially, this image seems to have an association with the pagan god Hermes, who was the patron deity of shepherds and who would accompany the souls of the deceased into Hades. Eventually, however, the image seems to have developed into a symbol of care and comfort in the afterlife. In antiquity, this widely disseminated image was an ideal candidate for artistic syncretism. The Gospels’ story of Christ as the Good Shepherd (John 10:1–9) and similar parables that make allegorical reference to the image of a benevolent and protective shepherd (Luke 15:3–7; Matthew 18:12–13) was an excellent fit for an image that was already known, used and associated with divine protectiveness.

The use by the Christians of pagan sacred imagery is not necessarily confined solely to the Greco-Roman world. The cultural and religious syncretism that took place in Greek and Roman society with other, even older civilizations meant that many early Christians had a wealth of artistic examples that may have originated outside of their immediate cultural landscape. One example is an Egyptian artistic motif: Scholars have long hypothesized that the image of Mary nursing or holding the Christ child close to her breast is an iconographic image borrowed from the ancient Egyptian motif of the goddess Isis nursing the infant Horus.

The image of the Egyptian statue of Isis with the infant Horus on the left was a common one in ancient Egypt. The medieval icon on the right is an example of an artistic composition believed by many scholars to mimic the ancient maternal pose presented in Egyptian art.

The custom of borrowing images from the pagan world to represent the sacred ideal did not die out in antiquity. Renaissance art by very definition looked back toward the watershed achievements of ancient artists and recreated them in a Christian context. Pagan figures such as Orpheus, Apollo and Hercules were often firmly placed within a Christian context by the Renaissance period. One of the most notable examples is Michelangelo’s use of the noble face of the Apollo Belvedere as the face of Christ in the Last Judgment. Already in the Vatican collection at the time Michelangelo was painting his masterpiece, the artist likely had constant access to the statue that was one of the sources of his inspiration.

This Apollo Belvedere (left) is a second-century A.D. copy of a Greek original, now lost. Photo: © Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons. The Apollo Belvedere was already installed in the Vatican collection by the time Michelangelo began his work on the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel and would have had regular access to one of the sources of his inspiration for his frescoed image of Christ (right).

While Christian art certainly evolved, changed and developed countless works of art that demonstrate unique styles and images, artists did not shy away from creating new meaning from established artistic models. Indeed, many believe that this approach only serves to enrich and elevate beautiful and meaningful representations of faith—no matter what the religion.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in August 2012.

Sarah K. Yeomans is an archaeologist, former Director of Educational Programs at the Biblical Archaeology Society and a faculty member at West Virginia University. She spent six years living, teaching and researching in Italy, and is a certified archaeological speleologist with the city of Rome.

Notes:

*See Robin A. Jensen, “Dining in Heaven,” BAR, October 1998.

**See Zeev Weiss, “The Sepphoris Synagogue Mosaic,” BAR, September/October 2000.

***See Lucille A. Roussin, “Helios in the Synagogue,” BAR, March/April 2001.

†See Connie Kestenbaum Greene, “King David’s Head from Gaza Synagogue Restored,” BAR, March/April 1994.

‡See Jas Elner, “Double Identity: Orpheus as David. Orpheus as Christ?” BAR, March/April 2009.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

The Archaeological Quest for the Earliest Christians

The Archaeological Quest for the Earliest Christians

Jewish Worship, Pagan Symbols

A Feast for the Senses … and the Soul

First Person: Art as Bible Interpretation

Lovers’ Tale

The Split of Early Christianity and Judaism

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The Golan synagogue dates to the Second Temple Period—before the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. Like other ancient synagogues in Israel, it has benches lining its walls and a mikveh not far from its entrance. Photo: Hanay’s image is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

In “Synagogues—Before and After the Roman Destruction of the Temple” from the May/June 2015 issue of BAR, Professor Rachel Hachlili of the University of Haifa examines ancient synagogues in Israel and throughout the ancient Near East.

Rachel Hachlili explains that there is some debate as to whether or not synagogues existed before the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. On the one hand, we have textual evidence—such as the New Testament—that identifies certain structures as synagogues where Torah reading, teaching and prayer took place. For example Mark 1:21 says that Jesus and his disciples traveled to Capernaum, and “when the Sabbath came, he [Jesus] entered the synagogue and taught.”

Additionally, we have uncovered buildings from the Second Temple period (before the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.) that look similar to post-destruction synagogues. Later synagogues were sometimes built on top of these earlier structures, thereby suggesting a continuity of use.

However, all of the Second Temple-period synagogues lack the main architectural characteristic of later synagogues: the Torah Shrine. Usually situated on the wall of the synagogue facing Jerusalem, the Torah Shrine was the receptacle for the ark containing the Torah Scrolls. It became the focus of the later synagogues: “The Torah Shrine determined the arrangement of the interior of the post-destruction synagogue. This synagogue plan usually consisted of a hall divided by columns into a central space with side aisles and sometimes with a front (or side) courtyard. It all focused on the Torah Shrine.”

Should the earlier structures without the Torah Shrine still be called synagogues? If not, what is the meaning of “synagogue” in the Bible?

In her BAR article, Rachel Hachlili analyzes the main differences between the post-destruction synagogues and their possible earlier precursors:

The Second Temple-period buildings were used for Torah reading and as a study center. They had a didactic aim and also served as a meeting place for the community. The synagogues of Late Antiquity, by contrast, emphasized prayer and ceremonies; their functions were liturgical and ritualistic. The focal point of the early buildings was the center of the hall, while that of the later synagogue was the Torah Shrine built on the Jerusalem-oriented wall. In the early structures, benches were constructed along all four walls; they faced the center for the hall. In the later synagogues, the benches faced the Torah Shrine. Architectural decoration in the pre-destruction buildings was simple. The later synagogues were richly ornamented both outside and inside and included mosaic floors and wall paintings.

While there were differences between the pre-destruction and post-destruction synagogues, they still shared many similarities—both architectural and functional. Regardless of whether these earlier structures deserve the term “synagogue” by the current definition, the meaning of “synagogue” in the Bible almost certainly refers to these Second Temple-period buildings.

For further details about ancient synagogues in Israel and in the diaspora, read the article “Synagogues—Before and After the Roman Destruction of the Temple” by Rachel Hachlili in the May/June 2015 issue of BAR.

BAS Library Members: Read the full article “Synagogues—Before and After the Roman Destruction of the Temple” by Rachel Hachlili in the May/June 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

Interested in mosaics and synagogue imagery? Learn more in “Jewish Worship, Pagan Symbols: Zodiac mosaics in ancient synagogues” by Walter Zanger and the Scholar’s Study “Explore the Huqoq Mosaics.”

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Jesus and Synagogues

Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art

Review: Ancient Synagogues Revealed 1981–2022

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

First Person: The Sun God in the Synagogue

Scholar’s Update: New Mosaics from the Huqoq Synagogue

Samson in the Synagogue

Turkey’s Unexcavated Synagogues

New Synagogue Excavations In Israel and Beyond

Godfearers in the City of Love

Golan Gem

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While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it, he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
—Matthew 26:26–28

When was the first communion?

The event described in Matthew 26:26–28 (also in Mark 14:22–25 and Luke 22:14–23) is known as the Last Supper. It was Jesus’ last meal with his disciples before his crucifixion. In that meal, which was a Passover meal, Jesus gave bread and wine—representing his body and blood—to his disciples. These were symbols of his new covenant. Further, he charged his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19), meaning Jesus’ followers were to partake of bread and wine and remember him. Jesus’ Last Supper in the Bible is the foundation for the Christian tradition of taking communion—known as the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion and the Eucharist.

Jesus’ Last Supper in the Bible. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci portrays Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples before his crucifixion.

Early Christians celebrated the Lord’s Supper as a full meal, but by the third century, it had ceased to be a banquet and had become a ritualized small meal instead. Steven Shisley examines how the Lord’s Supper transitioned from a full meal to a ritual in his Biblical Views column “From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved” published in the March/April 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Shisley explains that in the first and second centuries C.E., Christians usually gathered in individual homes for a communal evening meal to commemorate the Lord’s Supper. Although these meals generally fostered community, they sometimes led to disagreement, discord and debauchery. Shisley elaborates:

Early Christians participated in meals characterized by inclusivity, care for one another and unity (Acts 2:43–47; cf. Acts 6:1–7). But as Paul’s letters indicate, these idealistic practices at the Lord’s Supper sometimes became abused because Christians either practiced Jewish purity laws at the table (e.g., considering what types of foods were appropriate to consume), or they transformed the meal into a gathering modeled after Greco-Roman banquets by drinking too much wine (Galatians 2:11–14; cf. Romans 14–15; 1 Corinthians 11:17–34).

When was the first communion? The tradition of communion originated with the Last Supper in the Bible, when Jesus gave bread and wine to his disciples as symbols of the “new covenant.” This painting of the Last Supper appears in the cathedral of Sancti Spíritus, Cuba. Photo: “Cathedral of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba” by Anagoria is licensed under CC-by-3.0.

Such misuses of the Lord’s Supper factored into communion becoming more controlled and structured in the Christian Church; communion became less of a meal and more of a ritual. In his column, Shisley explores several additional reasons for this shift, one of which relates to the time of day that Christians gathered to assemble. During the third century, Christians began assembling in the morning:

“[T]he apologist Tertullian [c. 155–240 C.E.] recounts how his community in Carthage began to assemble in the mornings to participate in a separate Eucharistic ritual at an altar (De Corona 3). … According to Cyprian, a third-century bishop, Christians in Carthage regularly gathered as one large assembly in the morning at an altar for a Eucharistic sacrifice in buildings devoted to religious activities (Epistle 62.14–17; Epistle 33.4–5).”

The growing size of the Christian community and the desire for all local Christians to meet together, which often necessitated a formal religious structure larger than a house, also likely contributed to the Lord’s Supper becoming a ritualized meal.

To learn more about the Lord’s Supper and its development from a full meal to a ritual, read Steven Shisley’s Biblical Views column “From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved” in the March/April 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

BAS Library Members: Read the full column “From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved” by Steven Shisley in the March/April 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?

The Hungry Jesus

Did Jesus’ Last Supper Take Place Above the Tomb of David?

A Feast for the Senses … and the Soul

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 10, 2017.

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The early church at Laodicea. Photo: Dr. Celal Şimşek/Laodikeia excavation.

The situation changed in 313 A.D. when the emperor Constantine made Christianity a licit religion of the Roman Empire. With this acceptance came the construction of large public buildings, or churches, to serve the worship needs of Christians. Remains of these churches are now turning up in Biblical archaeology findings around the world, helping to answer the questions: How old is Christianity in places like Turkey and Egypt? And when did Christianity begin to spread beyond Israel throughout the Roman Empire?

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In early February 2011 the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced some Biblical archaeology findings, including a large Byzantine Church at Horvat Midras southwest of Jerusalem. The structure, which was used as a church in the fifth–seventh centuries, was among many recent archaeology discoveries at the site and was located inside an earlier Jewish compound. The highlight of the basilica is the mosaic carpeting. The colorful geometric patterns and images of fish, peacocks, lions and foxes are rare in both the level of craftsmanship and the state of preservation.

But then disaster struck. Someone attacked these mosaics with a hammer. In the wake of the vandalism, the IAA covered the Biblical archaeology findings, stating that they hoped the mosaics could be mostly preserved, although it will now require significantly more time and money.

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But how old is Christianity’s presence in Turkey? Given the importance of Asia Minor to the apostle Paul and other early followers of Jesus, it should come as no surprise that a church from the fourth century was among the recent archaeology discoveries there. Turkey announced at the end of January 2011 that a large, well-preserved church had been found at Laodicea using ground-penetrating radar. According to the excavation director the church was built during the reign of Constantine (306–337 A.D.) and destroyed by an earthquake in the early seventh century.

Laodicea is mentioned several times in the New Testament, in both Paul’s letter to the Colossians and the Book of Revelation. Paul’s letter suggests that Laodicea had a very early Christian community. A bishop’s seat was located at Laodicea very early on, and it remains a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church today, although the city is uninhabited and the bishop’s seat has been vacant since 1968. In 363–364 A.D., clergy from all over Asia Minor convened at the regional Council of Laodicea. It is possible that the recently discovered church is the very same building where Asia Minor’s clergy met to hold the influential Council of Laodicea.

For more about these and other recent church discoveries, read “Crossing the Holy Land” by Dorothy D. Resig in the September/October 2011 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

The Archaeological Quest for the Earliest Christians

Roman Emperor Nerva’s Reform of the Jewish Tax

Laodicea Columns Reveal the Grandeur of an Early Christian Center

The Origin of Christianity

What Is Coptic and Who Were the Copts in Ancient Egypt?

This Bible History Daily article was originally published in October 2011.

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