What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus
Believers call him the Son of God. Skeptics dismiss him as legend. Now, researchers digging in the Holy Land are sifting fact from fiction.
For an archaeologist turned journalist like me, ever mindful that entire cultures rose and fell and left few traces of their time on Earth, searching an ancient landscape for shards of a single life feels like a fool’s errand, like chasing a ghost. And when that ghost is none other than Jesus Christ, believed by more than two billion of the world’s people to be the very Son of God, well, the assignment tempts one to seek divine guidance.
Which is why, in my repeated visits to Jerusalem, I keep coming back to the Monastery of the Flagellation, where Father Alliata always welcomes me and my questions with bemused patience. As a professor of Christian archaeology and director of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum’s museum, he’s part of a 700-year-old Franciscan mission to look after and protect ancient religious sites in the Holy Land—and, since the 19th century, to excavate them according to scientific principles.
As a man of faith, Father Alliata seems at peace with what archaeology can—and cannot—reveal about Christianity’s central figure. “It will be something rare, strange, to have archaeological proof for [a specific person] 2,000 years ago,” he concedes, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over his vestments. “But you can’t say Jesus doesn’t have a trace in history.”
By far the most important—and possibly most debated—of those traces are the texts of the New Testament, especially the first four books: the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But how do those ancient texts, written in the second half of the first century, and the traditions they inspired, relate to the work of an archaeologist?
“Tradition gives more life to archaeology, and archaeology gives more life to tradition,” Father Alliata replies. “Sometimes they go together well, sometimes not,” he pauses, offering a small smile, “which is more interesting.”
And so with Father Alliata’s blessing, I set out to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, retracing his story as told by the Gospel writers and interpreted by generations of scholars. Along the way I hope to discover how Christian texts and traditions stack up against the discoveries of archaeologists who began sifting the sands of the Holy Land in earnest some 150 years ago.
But before I begin my pilgrimage, I need to probe an explosive question that lurks in the shadows of historical Jesus studies: Might it be possible that Jesus Christ never even existed, that the whole stained glass story is pure invention? It’s an assertion that’s championed by some outspoken skeptics—but not, I discovered, by scholars, particularly archaeologists, whose work tends to bring flights of fancy down to literal earth.
“I don’t know any mainstream scholar who doubts the historicity of Jesus,” said Eric Meyers, an archaeologist and emeritus professor in Judaic studies at Duke University. “The details have been debated for centuries, but no one who is serious doubts that he’s a historical figure.”
I heard much the same from Byron McCane, an archaeologist and history professor at Florida Atlantic University. “I can think of no other example who fits into their time and place so well but people say doesn’t exist,” he said.
Even John Dominic Crossan, a former priest and co-chair of the Jesus Seminar, a controversial scholarly forum, believes the radical skeptics go too far. Granted, stories of Christ’s miraculous deeds—healing the sick with his words, feeding a multitude with a few morsels of bread and fish, even restoring life to a corpse four days dead—are hard for modern minds to embrace. But that’s no reason to conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious fable.
“Now, you can say he walks on water and nobody can do that, so therefore he doesn’t exist. Well, that’s something else,” Crossan told me when we spoke by phone. “The general fact that he did certain things in Galilee, that he did certain things in Jerusalem, that he got himself executed—all of that, I think, fits perfectly into a certain scenario.”
Scholars who study Jesus divide into two opposing camps separated by a very bright line: those who believe the wonder-working Jesus of the Gospels is the real Jesus, and those who think the real Jesus—the man who inspired the myth—hides below the surface of the Gospels and must be revealed by historical research and literary analysis. Both camps claim archaeology as their ally, leading to some fractious debates and strange bedfellows.
Whoever Jesus Christ was or is—God, man, or the greatest literary hoax in history—the diversity and devotion of his modern disciples are on colorful parade when I arrive in Bethlehem, the ancient city traditionally identified as his birthplace. The tour buses that cross the checkpoint from Jerusalem to the West Bank carry a virtual United Nations of pilgrims. One by one the buses park and discharge their passengers, who emerge blinking in the dazzling sun: Indian women in splashy saris, Spaniards in backpacks emblazoned with the logo of their local parish, Ethiopians in snow-white robes with indigo crucifixes tattooed on their foreheads.
I catch up to a group of Nigerian pilgrims in Manger Square and follow them through the low entrance of the Church of the Nativity. The soaring aisles of the basilica are shrouded in tarps and scaffolding. A conservation team is busy cleaning centuries of candle soot from the 12th-century gilded mosaics that flank the upper walls, above elaborately carved cedar beams erected in the sixth century. We carefully circle a section of floor cut open to reveal the earliest incarnation of the church, built in the 330s on orders of Rome’s first Christian emperor, Constantine.
Another series of steps takes us down into a lamp-lit grotto and a small marble-clad niche. Here, a silver star marks the very spot where, according to tradition, Jesus Christ was born. The pilgrims ease to their knees to kiss the star and press their palms to the cool, polished stone. Soon a church official entreats them to hurry along and give others a chance to touch the holy rock—and, by faith, the Holy Child.
The Church of the Nativity is the oldest Christian church still in daily use, but not all scholars are convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem. Only two of the four Gospels mention his birth, and they provide diverging accounts: the traditional manger and shepherds in Luke; the wise men, massacre of children, and flight to Egypt in Matthew. Some suspect that the Gospel writers located Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem to tie the Galilean peasant to the Judaean city prophesied in the Old Testament as the birthplace of the Messiah.
Archaeology is largely silent on the matter. After all, what are the odds of unearthing any evidence of a peasant couple’s fleeting visit two millennia ago? Excavations at and around the Church of the Nativity have so far turned up no artifacts dating to the time of Christ, nor any sign that early Christians considered the site sacred. The first clear evidence of veneration comes from the third century, when the theologian Origen of Alexandria visited Palestine and noted, “In Bethlehem there is shown the cave where [Jesus] was born.” Early in the fourth century, the emperor Constantine sent an imperial delegation to the Holy Land to identify places associated with the life of Christ and hallow them with churches and shrines. Having located what they believed was the site of the Nativity grotto, the delegates erected an elaborate church, the forerunner of the present-day basilica.
Many of the scholars I spoke to are neutral on the question of Christ’s birthplace, the physical evidence being too elusive to make a call. To their minds, the old adage that I learned in Archaeology 101—“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”—applies here.
If the trail of the real Jesus has gone cold in Bethlehem, it grows much warmer 65 miles north in Galilee, the rolling hill country of northern Israel. As the names “Jesus of Nazareth” and “Jesus the Nazarene” suggest, Jesus was raised in Nazareth, a small, agricultural village in southern Galilee. Scholars who understand him in strictly human terms—as a religious reformer, or a social revolutionary, or an apocalyptic prophet, or even a Jewish jihadist—plumb the political, economic, and social currents of first-century Galilee to discover the forces that gave rise to the man and his mission.
By far the mightiest force at the time shaping life in Galilee was the Roman Empire, which had subjugated Palestine some 60 years before Jesus’ birth. Almost all Jews chafed under Rome’s ironfisted rule, with its oppressive taxes and idolatrous religion, and many scholars believe this social unrest set the stage for the Jewish agitator who burst onto the scene denouncing the rich and powerful and pronouncing blessings on the poor and marginalized
Others imagine the onslaught of Greco-Roman culture molding Jesus into a less Jewish, more cosmopolitan champion of social justice. In 1991 John Dominic Crossan published a bombshell of a book, The Historical Jesus,in which he put forward the theory that the real Jesus was a wandering sage whose countercultural lifestyle and subversive sayings bore striking parallels to the Cynics. These peripatetic philosophers of ancient Greece, while not cynical in the modern sense of the word, thumbed their unwashed noses at social conventions such as cleanliness and the pursuit of wealth and status.
Crossan’s unorthodox thesis was inspired partly by archaeological discoveries showing that Galilee—long thought to have been a rural backwater and an isolated Jewish enclave—was in fact becoming more urbanized and romanized during Jesus’ day than scholars once imagined, and partly by the fact that Jesus’ boyhood home was just three miles from Sepphoris, the Roman provincial capital. Although the city isn’t mentioned in the Gospels, an ambitious building campaign fueled by Galilee’s ruler, Herod Antipas, would have attracted skilled workers from all the surrounding villages. Many scholars think it’s reasonable to imagine Jesus, a young craftsman living nearby, working at Sepphoris—and, like a college freshman, testing the boundaries of his religious upbringing.
On a brilliant spring day after rains have left the Galilean hills awash with wildflowers, I hike around the ruins of Sepphoris with Eric and Carol Meyers, the Duke University archaeologists I consulted at the start of my odyssey. The husband-and-wife team spent 33 years excavating the sprawling site, which became the nexus of a heated academic debate about the Jewishness of Galilee and, by extension, of Jesus himself. Eric Meyers, lanky and white-haired, pauses in front of a pile of columns. “It was pretty acrimonious,” he says, recalling the decades-long dispute over the influence of a hellenizing city on a young Jewish peasant. He stops at the top of a hill and waves his hands across a sprawl of neatly excavated walls. “We had to dig through a bivouac from the 1948 war, including a live Syrian shell, to get to these houses,” he explains. “And underneath we found the mikvaot!”
At least 30 mikvahs, or Jewish ritual baths, dot the residential quarter of Sepphoris—the largest domestic concentration ever found by archaeologists. Along with ceremonial stone vessels and a striking absence of pig bones (pork being shunned by kosher-keeping Jews), they offer clear evidence that even this imperial Roman city remained a very Jewish place during Jesus’ formative years.
This and other insights gleaned from excavations across Galilee have led to a significant shift in scholarly opinion, says Craig Evans, professor of Christian origins in the School of Christian Thought at Houston Baptist University. “Thanks to archaeology, there’s been a big change in thinking—from Jesus the cosmopolitan Hellenist to Jesus the observant Jew.”
When Jesus was about 30 years old, he waded into the Jordan River with the Jewish firebrand John the Baptist and, according to New Testament accounts, underwent a life-changing experience. Rising from the water, he saw the Spirit of God descend on him “like a dove” and heard the voice of God proclaim, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The divine encounter launched Jesus on a preaching and healing mission that began in Galilee and ended, three years later, with his execution in Jerusalem.
One of his first stops was Capernaum, a fishing town on the northwest shore of a large freshwater lake called, confusingly, the Sea of Galilee. Here Jesus met the fishermen who became his first followers—Peter and Andrew casting nets, James and John mending theirs—and established his first base of operation.
Commonly referred to on the Christian tour route as the “town of Jesus,” the pilgrimage site of Capernaum today is owned by the Franciscans and surrounded by a high metal fence. A sign at the gate makes clear what’s not allowed inside: dogs, guns, cigarettes, and short skirts. Directly beyond the gate is an incongruously modern church mounted on eight pillars that resembles a spaceship hovering above a pile of ruins. This is St. Peter’s Memorial, consecrated in 1990 over one of the biggest discoveries made during the 20th century by archaeologists investigating the historical Jesus.
From its odd perch the church offers a stunning view of the lake, but all eyes are drawn to the center of the building, where visitors peer over a railing and through a glass floor into the ruins of an octagonal church built some 1,500 years ago. When Franciscan archaeologists excavated beneath the structure in 1968, they discovered that it had been built on the remains of a first-century house. There was evidence that this private home had been transformed into a public meeting place in a short span of time.
By the second half of the first century—just a few decades after the Crucifixion of Jesus—the home’s rough stone walls had been plastered over and household kitchen items replaced with oil lamps, characteristic of a community gathering place. Over the following centuries, entreaties to Christ were etched into the walls, and by the time Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the dwelling had been expanded into an elaborately decorated house of worship. Since then the structure has commonly been known as Peter’s House, and while it’s impossible to determine whether the disciple actually inhabited the home, many scholars say it’s possible.
The Gospels note that Jesus cured Peter’s mother-in-law, ill with fever, at her home in Capernaum. Word of the miracle spread quickly, and by evening a suffering crowd had gathered at her door. Jesus healed the sick and delivered people possessed by demons.
Accounts of large crowds coming to Jesus for healing are consistent with what archaeology reveals about first-century Palestine, where diseases such as leprosy and tuberculosis were rife. According to a study of burials in Roman Palestine by archaeologist Byron McCane, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the surveyed graves held the remains of children and adolescents. Survive the perilous years of childhood, and your chances of living to old age greatly increased, McCane says. “During Jesus’ time, getting past 15 was apparently the trick.”
From Capernaum I head south along the Sea of Galilee to a kibbutz (a communal farm) that in 1986 was the scene of great excitement—and an emergency excavation. A severe drought had drastically lowered the lake’s water level, and as two brothers from the community hunted for ancient coins in the mud of the exposed lake bed, they spotted the faint outline of a boat. Archaeologists who examined the vessel found artifacts dating to the Roman era inside and next to the hull. Carbon 14 testing later confirmed the boat’s age: It was from roughly the lifetime of Jesus.
Efforts to keep the discovery under wraps soon failed, and news of the “Jesus boat” sent a stampede of relic hunters scouring the lakeshore, threatening the fragile artifact. Just then the rains returned, and the lake level began to rise.
The round-the-clock “rescue excavation” that ensued was an archaeological feat for the record books. A project that normally would take months to plan and execute was completed, start to finish, in just 11 days. Once exposed to air, the boat’s waterlogged timbers would quickly disintegrate. So archaeologists supported the remains with a fiberglass frame and polyurethane foam and floated it to safety.
Today the treasured boat has pride of place in a museum on the kibbutz, near the spot where it was discovered. Measuring seven and a half feet wide and 27 feet long, it could have accommodated 13 men—although there’s no evidence that Jesus and his Twelve Apostles used this very vessel. To be candid, it’s not much to look at: a skeleton of planks repeatedly patched and repaired until it was finally stripped and scuttled.
“They had to nurse this boat along until they couldn’t nurse it any longer,” says Crossan, who likens the vessel to “some of those cars you see in Havana.” But its value to historians is incalculable, he says. Seeing “how hard they had to work to keep that boat afloat tells me a lot about the economics of the Sea of Galilee and the fishing at the time of Jesus.”
Another dramatic discovery occurred just over a mile south of the Jesus boat, at the site of ancient Magdala, the hometown of Mary Magdalene, a devoted follower of Jesus. Franciscan archaeologists began excavating part of the town during the 1970s, but the northern half lay under a defunct lakeside resort called Hawaii Beach.
Enter Father Juan Solana, a papal appointee charged with overseeing a pilgrimage guesthouse in Jerusalem. In 2004 Solana “felt the leading of Christ” to build a pilgrims’ retreat in Galilee, so he set about raising millions of dollars and buying up parcels of waterfront land, including the failed resort. As construction was about to begin in 2009, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority showed up to survey the site, as required by law. After a few weeks of probing the rocky soil, they were startled to discover the buried ruins of a synagogue from the time of Jesus—the first such structure unearthed in Galilee.
The find was especially significant because it put to rest an argument made by skeptics that no synagogues existed in Galilee until decades after Jesus’ death. If those skeptics were right, their claim would shred the Gospels’ portrait of Jesus as a faithful synagogue-goer who often proclaimed his message and performed miracles in these Jewish meeting places.
As archaeologists excavated the ruins, they uncovered walls lined with benches—indicating that this was a synagogue—and a mosaic floor. At the center of the room they were astounded to find a stone about the size of a footlocker that showed the most sacred elements of the Temple in Jerusalem carved in relief. The discovery of the Magdala Stone, as the artifact has come to be called, struck a death blow to the once fashionable notion that Galileans were impious hillbillies detached from Israel’s religious center.
As archaeologists continued to dig, they discovered an entire town buried less than a foot below the surface. The ruins were so well preserved that some began calling Magdala the “Israeli Pompeii.”
Archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni walks me through the site, pointing out the remains of storerooms, ritual baths, and an industrial area where fish may have been processed and sold. “I can just imagine women buying fish in the market right there,” she says, nodding toward the foundations of stone stalls. And who knows? Maybe those women included the town’s famous native daughter, Mary of Magdala.
Father Solana comes over to greet us, and I ask him what he tells visitors who want to know whether Jesus ever walked these streets. “We can’t expect to answer that,” he admits, “but we see the number of times that the Gospels mention Jesus in a Galilee synagogue.” Considering the fact that the synagogue was active during his ministry and just a brief sail from Capernaum, Solana concludes, “we have no reason to deny or doubt that Jesus was here.”
At each stop on my journey through Galilee, Jesus’ faint footprints seemed to grow a bit more distinct, a shade more discernible. But it’s not until I return to Jerusalem that they finally come into vivid focus. In the New Testament, the ancient city is the setting for many of his miracles and most dramatic moments: his triumphal entry, his cleansing of the Temple, his healing miracles at the Pools of Bethesda and Siloam—both of which have been uncovered by archaeologists—his clashes with the religious authorities, his last Passover meal, his agonized prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, his trial and execution, his burial and Resurrection.
Unlike the disparate stories of Jesus’ birth, the four Gospels reach much closer agreement in their account of his death. Following his arrival in Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus is brought before the high priest Caiaphas and charged with blasphemy and threats against the Temple. Condemned to death by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, he’s crucified on a hill outside the city walls and buried in a rock-cut tomb nearby.
The traditional location of that tomb, in what is now the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is considered the holiest site in Christianity. It’s also the place that sparked my quest for the real Jesus. In 2016 I made several trips to the church to document the historic restoration of the Edicule, the shrine that houses the reputed tomb of Jesus. Now, during Easter week, I return to see it in all its soot-scrubbed, reinforced glory.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with holiday pilgrims waiting to enter the tiny shrine, I recall the nights spent inside the empty church with the conservation team, coming upon darkened nooks etched with centuries of graffiti and burials of crusader kings. I marvel at the many archaeological discoveries made in Jerusalem and elsewhere over the years that lend credibility to the Scriptures and traditions surrounding the death of Jesus, including an ornate ossuary that may contain the bones of Caiaphas, an inscription attesting to the rule of Pontius Pilate, and a heel bone driven through with an iron crucifixion nail, found in the Jerusalem burial of a Jewish man named Yehohanan.
I’m also struck by the many lines of evidence that converge on this ancient church. Just yards from the tomb of Christ are other rock-hewn tombs of the period, affirming that this church, destroyed and rebuilt twice, was indeed constructed over a Jewish burial ground. I recall being alone inside the tomb after its marble cladding was briefly removed, overwhelmed that I was looking at one of the world’s most important monuments—a simple limestone shelf that people have revered for millennia, a sight that hadn’t been seen for possibly a thousand years. I was overwhelmed by all the questions of history I hoped this brief and spectacular moment of exposure would eventually answer.
Today, on my Easter visit, I find myself inside the tomb again, squeezed alongside three kerchiefed Russian women. The marble is back in place, protecting the burial bed from their kisses and all the rosaries and prayer cards rubbed endlessly on its time-polished surface. The youngest woman whispers entreaties for Jesus to heal her son Yevgeni, who has leukemia.
A priest standing outside the entrance loudly reminds us that our time is up, that other pilgrims are waiting. Reluctantly, the women stand up and file out, and I follow. At this moment I realize that to sincere believers, the scholars’ quest for the historical, non-supernatural Jesus is of little consequence. That quest will be endless, full of shifting theories, unanswerable questions, irreconcilable facts. But for true believers, their faith in the life, death, and Resurrection of the Son of God will be evidence enough.
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With its shepherds and wise men, the Christmas story inspires wonder. Although many parts of the story of Jesus’ birth are historically unverifiable, certain pieces can be tied to the events sweeping the world at the time. One is the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which is believed to house the site where Mary gave birth to Jesus. Tradition holds that the silver star in the niche marks the exact location.Biblical stories of Jesus’ birth reveal intriguing clues about his times
In their differing accounts of the first Christmas, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide important historical details about where and when Jesus was born.
SACRED ORIGINS
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 17, 2021 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
History of the Gospels
That Jesus of Nazareth was born and lived in the early Roman Empire is a matter of historical fact. In the early Christian period, Jewish texts that sought to discredit Jesus were not seeking to deny his existence. Other sources that testify to his existence are the Jewish writer and historian Josephus, who was writing in the late first century; and some decades later, the Roman historian Tacitus. The Christians, Tacitus wrote, “worship Christus . . . who suffered the death penalty during the reign of Emperor Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.”
No non-Christian source, however, describes the birth of Jesus. The only texts offering detailed accounts of Jesus’ life are early Christian writings, principally the four Gospels that were regarded as a fixed part of the New Testament by the third century A.D.
For the many centuries following, these were regarded as entirely sacred texts. By the 18th century, however, scholars were beginning to try to place the creation of the Gospels in a historical context. Bible historians now consider that the Gospel of Mark was written first, since both Matthew and Luke heavily borrow material from Mark’s account. Written at the end of the first century A.D., the Gospel of John—whose themes are very different from the other three—is the last to be written.
There is some consensus that the Gospel of Mark was begun during or just after the First Jewish Revolt that began in A.D. 66. This revolt led to the Romans destroying the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, an event referenced in Mark. The Gospel of Mark begins not with the birth of Jesus but with his baptism as an adult.
Once scholars had established that Mark’s Gospel was written first, however, a new and intriguing idea took root: The authors of Matthew and Luke—writing perhaps in the A.D. mid-80s—had noted the absence of a birth story and decided to include one.
Divine accounts
Matthew and Luke both feature Jesus’ birth, but they offer very different accounts. Each Gospel highlights different parts in the story and omits others, placing their emphasis on specific elements. Matthew’s narrative begins with a genealogy, listing the ancestors of the Holy Family and tracing Jesus’ lineage many generations back to King David, while the Gospel of Luke begins with the angel Gabriel foretelling the births of John the Baptist to his father Zechariah and then of Jesus to his mother Mary.
The discrepancies continue into the Nativity scene itself. Matthew seems more focused on events that come after Jesus’ birth, including the visit of the magi, the cruelty of King Herod, the Massacre of the Innocents, and the flight into Egypt. Luke omits these events and instead relates other details: the census ordered by Rome, Joseph and Mary’s travels to Bethlehem, laying the child in a manger, and the adoration of the shepherds.
The text of the four Gospels was shaped by contemporary forces; the motives for including a birth narrative were probably rooted in the needs of Christian communities at that time. Questions could have been swirling among those earliest of Christian communities about the nature of Jesus’ birth and lineage. Despite their differences, Luke’s and Matthew’s stories link Jesus both to his divine parentage and his earthly ties to the House of David, emphasizing Jesus’ role in both God’s plan and in Jewish history.
Delving into both the historical Jesus and the creation of the Gospels, scholars have found instances where history and the biblical texts do not align. Questions arose, leading to more investigation into the story of Jesus’ birth and why certain Gospels emphasized different events that have coalesced into the popular Christmas story.
This story grew in popularity over the centuries as Christianity spread across Europe, especially after Renaissance artists depicted episodes from both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Annunciation, the Nativity, Mary with the infant Jesus, the adoration of both the shepherds and the magi, and the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt: All were popular subjects for Europe’s most famous artists, including Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Strong visual representations further emphasized their place in Jesus’ biography.
These different scenes became even more strongly married together as Nativity plays became a part of Christmas celebrations. St. Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first one in 1223. St. Francis’ biography, written by St. Bonaventure, details how the pope gave permission to the monk to stage the scene (including a hay-lined manger, an ox, and a donkey) and to give a sermon about the baby Jesus. These plays became iconic parts of the Christmas celebration that are still performed today the world over, helping to solidify the prominence of Jesus’ birth in the Christian tradition.
Little town of Bethlehem
The first reference to Jesus’ home is in the oldest Gospel, Mark: “At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan” (Mark 1:9). Nazareth was an obscure northern town, but Mark does not say if Jesus was born there—only that he lived there.
The Gospel of Matthew names Jesus’ birthplace: Bethlehem, a Judaean town about 80 miles south of Nazareth in Galilee. More than just a location, Bethlehem is significant because of an Old Testament prophecy made by the Prophet Micah, which Matthew quotes: “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least . . . for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel’”(Matthew 2:6).
The Gospel of Luke also names Bethlehem as Jesus’ birthplace and details Joseph and Mary’s journey there from start to finish:
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David (Luke 2:4).
Luke also describes why a Nazarene couple, who were expecting a baby, made an 80-mile trek south to Bethlehem:
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register (Luke 2:1-3).
Luke accomplishes two things in these passages. First he emphasizes Joseph and his family’s royal ancestry by linking them to King David, who was born in Bethlehem; when an angel announces Jesus’ birth to the shepherds, Bethlehem is called “the town of David” (Luke 2:11). Some biblical scholars believe Bethlehem only enters the story because of its links to King David rather than being the actual birthplace, which they place in Nazareth.
The census identified by Luke also complicates matters. History shows no census during the reign of King Herod, whom Matthew identifies as ruling Judaea. The Roman governor of Syria, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, did carry out a census in Judaea in A.D. 6, about a decade after Herod’s death. Historians are also skeptical that a census would prompt Joseph to travel to Bethlehem: Such censuses were held to specify the whereabouts of residents in a town for the purposes of taxing them and did not typically require people to travel to an ancestral home.
Holy night
The day and the year when Jesus was born has been subjected to much scrutiny. December 25 was first designated by the church as the Christmas in the fourth century. This date clashes with the biblical sources, most notably with Luke’s description of shepherds “keeping watch over their flocks by night.” The passage suggests that Jesus was born in the springtime when shepherds are watching over newborn lambs.
One theory for the late December birth is that it places the Annunciation in March, nine months earlier. Early Christians believed that late March was when Jesus was crucified. Having both his conception and death in the same month strengthened the sacred connections
There were also practical reasons for adopting December 25 as Christmas: That date was also the Roman festival of Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun), which celebrated the return of longer days after the winter solstice. Another mid-December celebration, the festival Saturnalia, was very popular among the Roman people; its traditions of singing, lighting candles, feasting, and gift-giving were mapped onto the celebration of Christmas.
Determining the year of Jesus’ birth would not come until several centuries later, when Dionysius Exiguus, a sixth-century monk, was determining the date of Easter for the next century. The late Roman world was then marking time in the years that had elapsed since A.D. 284, the beginning of Emperor Diocletian’s reign. Dionysius felt it was inappropriate to use a system that honoured a persecutor of Christians; instead, he started to date the years from the“year of the incarnation [i.e., birth] of our Lord,” or anno Domini.
His dating method began to gain acceptance and would eventually spread across Christendom. Dionysius’ fixing of Christ’s birth is ambiguous, but he implies it took place on December 25 in what is now recognized as 1 B.C. (the calendar notion of B.C. would not take root until many centuries later).
If 1 B.C. was indeed the year Dionysius had in mind, then Jesus’ birth contradicts the Gospel sources. According to Matthew, Jesus was born “in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod” (Matthew 2:1). Most sources attest that Herod the Great died around 4 B.C., while the census ordered by Quirinius took place around A.D. 6, about a decade after Herod’s death.
Also making it difficult to determine the exact year of Jesus’ birth is the star of Bethlehem, reported in Matthew to have guided the magi to the newborn Jesus: “We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2). Several astronomical events could have been this glorious star that lit up the night, but astronomers and biblical scholars propose several strong candidates across a wide range of time. A conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter occurred in late 7 B.C. Chinese astronomers observed a brilliant night sky object, either a comet, a nova, or a supernova, around 4 B.C. Another impressive celestial display would have been the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus on August 12, 3 B.C. Speculation as to the star’s identity has even ranged to Halley’s comet, which was visible in the skies in 11 B.C.
Gifts of the Magi
Beautifully adorned and bearing gifts, the three kings are among the Christmas story’s most recognizable characters. Their presence in Christmas carols and Nativity plays are an example of how later Christian traditions became part of the modern celebration. Modern depictions of the Christmas story seem to compress the timeline of the Gospels, making it appear as though the three kings arrive in Bethlehem on the day of Jesus’ birth.
Traditional celebrations of Christmas place the arrival of the magi 12 days after Christmas. Called Epiphany (or Three Kings Day), it is one of Christianity’s oldest holidays. Western Christians typically celebrate Epiphany on January 6, and Orthodox Christian faiths celebrate it on January 19.
(Explore different Christmas traditions around the world through photos.)
The source for the visit of learned men from the East appears in the Gospel of Matthew. The number of wise men is never specified, nor did the text identify them as royalty. Instead, their description is tantalizingly brief: “Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him’” (Matthew 2:1-2).
After meeting Herod in Jerusalem, the magi proceed until the star “stopped over the place where the child was.” On seeing the child, “they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh” (Matthew 2:9-11).
The term “magi” offers a substantial clue as to the identity of these visitors: Magi were the priestly class of the Zoroastrian religion practiced in Persia, which lay, as Matthew writes, east of Jerusalem and was then a part of the Parthian empire. “Magi” is from Old Persian magush, meaning a person of great learning and esoteric powers, and is the root of the English words “magic” and “magician.” The magi, therefore, were likely priests or court astrologers from Persia.
Matthew’s inclusion of the gifts was likely to reflect the more general, Old Testament tradition of lavish foreign gift-giving, such as kings praising the Lord by bringing “gold and incense” (Isaiah 60). The magi’s gifts held symbolic meanings as well. Gold was a gift for royalty and signified Jesus’ status as “king of the Jews.” Frankincense, an aromatic resin used in perfumes, represented the infant’s divinity. Myrrh, also a fragrant resin, came from southern Arabia and was frequently used in embalming, which foreshadowed Jesus’ mortality.
In the centuries after the Gospel of Matthew was written, the three wise men have been interpreted as kings of different lands east of Judaea. That they numbered three was established relatively early in Christian history, but the other details were filled in later. Starting in the eighth century, traditions further elaborated on their identities, giving them names and countries of origin: Melchior from Persia, Gaspar (also Caspar or Jaspar) from India, and Balthazar who hails from Arabia or sometimes Ethiopia.
King Herod
After worshipping the infant Jesus, the magi, according to Matthew, are warned in a dream not to return to Jerusalem, where Herod is awaiting their information on the child. Their evasion enrages the king: “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under” (Matthew 2:16).
The Massacre of the Innocents adds a streak of darkness to the Christmas story. It has stirred up centuries of revulsion among Christians, but no historical record corroborates Matthew’s account of a massacre. The Antiquities of the Jews, written by Judeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, offers a detailed portrait of the chaotic end of Herod’s reign, but no gruesome massacre is mentioned. Such an incident would have appeared in other accounts, especially as Josephus was writing less than a century after Herod’s death.
One aspect of Matthew’s story that is indisputably historic is the way the Herodian dynasty forms the backdrop to the birth, life, and death of Jesus. Born around 73 B.C., Herod began his career as a high-ranking Jewish official at a time when Roman influence over Judaea was growing. Seeing the usefulness of having a loyal Jewish king, Rome made Herod king of Judaea in 40 B.C. He trod a fine line between loyalty to Rome and preserving a degree of Jewish independence. He undertook magnificent building campaigns, including a grand expansion of the Temple in Jerusalem; however, the Roman-style opulence of Herod’s court angered his Jewish subjects and cost him their loyalty.
The end of Herod’s reign was marked by treachery and bloodshed. The king had many members of his own family killed, including his brother-in-law Aristobulus the Younger, his wife Mariamne, and— most brutally of all—her two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus.
(King Herod was a villain of the original Christmas story.)
This reputation for cruelty, attributed to both Herod the Great and his son, may well inform how the story of the Massacre of the Innocents arose. While the Massacre of the Innocents is likely a legend, the brutality of Herod the Great was a political reality that overshadowed Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ birth.
Flight into Egypt
Luke and Matthew conclude their narratives in strikingly different ways. Luke recounts how an angel announced the divine birth to shepherds, who hurry to the manger to worship the baby Jesus. Soon after, the Holy Family swiftly moves to Jerusalem, where Jesus will be presented at the Temple.
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so it was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2: 14-15).
After Herod’s death, an angel of the Lord appears again to Joseph in a dream and tells him that it is safe to take his family back home. Instead of returning to Judaea, Joseph decided to go to Galilee, which Matthew explains:
But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea . . . [Joseph] was afraid to go there . . . he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene (Matthew 2:22-23).
Archelaus, like Herod Antipas, was a son of Herod the Great, and was the governor of Judaea. It is not clear from the historical record or from Matthew’s text why Joseph fears Archelaus. Some scholars believe that the reason itself is not important: The text allows Matthew to return the Holy Family to Nazareth in order to align with the Gospel of Mark.
The flight into Egypt recalls other biblical stories, including Abraham and Sarah’s journey to Egypt (Genesis 12) and the story of Exodus. Herod’s brutal actions mirror that of Pharaoh’s orders to kill the firstborn of Israel. Mary and Joseph’s journey out of Egypt back to Israel parallels Moses’ leading the people out of Egypt to the promised land in Israel.
Until now, the earliest architectural evidence found in and around the tomb complex dated to the Crusader period, making it no older than 1,000 years.
While it is archaeologically impossible to say that the tomb is the burial site of an individual Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth, who according to New Testament accounts was crucified in Jerusalem in 30 or 33, new dating results put the original construction of today’s tomb complex securely in the time of Constantine, Rome’s first Christian emperor.
The tomb was opened for the first time in centuries in October 2016, when the shrine that encloses the tomb, known as the Edicule, underwent a significant restoration by an interdisciplinary team from the National Technical University of Athens.
People line up to visit the renovated Edicule, the shrine that houses what is believed to be the tomb of Christ.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ODED BALILTY, AP FOR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Several samples of mortar from different locations within the Edicule were taken at that time for dating, and the results were recently provided to National Geographic by Chief Scientific Supervisor Antonia Moropoulou, who directed the Edicule restoration project.
Discover how Jesus’ burial site evolved from cave to church in 2,000 years.
When Constantine’s representatives arrived in Jerusalem around 325 to locate the tomb, they were allegedly pointed to a Roman temple built some 200 years earlier. The Roman temple was razed and excavations beneath it revealed a tomb hewn from a limestone cave. The top of the cave was sheared off to expose the interior of the tomb, and the Edicule was built around it.
A feature of the tomb is a long shelf, or “burial bed,” which according to tradition was where the body of Jesus Christ was laid out following crucifixion. Such shelves and niches, hewn from limestone caves, are a common feature in tombs of wealthy 1st-century Jerusalem Jews.
The marble cladding that covers the “burial bed” is believed to have been installed in 1555 at the latest, and most likely was present since the mid-1300s, according to pilgrim accounts.
When the tomb was opened on the night of October 26, 2016, scientists were surprised by what they found beneath the marble cladding: an older, broken marble slab incised with a cross, resting directly atop the original limestone surface of the “burial bed.”
Some researchers speculated that this older slab may have been laid down in the Crusader period, while others offered an earlier date, suggesting that it may have already been in place and broken when the church was destroyed in 1009. No one, however, was ready to claim that this might be the first physical evidence for the earliest Roman shrine on the site.
The new test results, which reveal the lower slab was most likely mortared in place in the mid-fourth century under the orders of Emperor Constantine, come as a welcome surprise to those who study the history of the sacred monument.
“Obviously that date is spot-on for whatever Constantine did,” says archaeologist Martin Biddle, who published a seminal study on the history of the tomb in 1999. “That’s very remarkable.”
See how Jesus Christ has been portrayed over 1,800 years.
During their year-long restoration of the Edicule, the scientists were also able to determine that a significant amount of the burial cave remains enclosed within the walls of the shrine. Mortar samples taken from remains of the southern wall of the cave were dated to 335 and 1570, which provide additional evidence for construction works from the Roman period, as well as a documented 16th-century restoration. Mortar taken from the tomb entrance has been dated to the 11th century and is consistent with the reconstruction of the Edicule following its destruction in 1009.
“It is interesting how [these] mortars not only provide evidence for the earliest shrine on the site, but also confirm the historical construction sequence of the Edicule,” Moropoulou observes.
The mortar samples were independently dated at two separate labs using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), a technique that determines when quartz sediment was most recently exposed to light. The scientific results were published by Moropoulou and her team in 2018 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
This article was originally published on November 28, 2017 and updated to reflect the publication of the journal article on the dating of the mortar.
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