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00:08On the shores of the Sea of Galilee, a team of archaeologists
00:13investigates the ruins of an ancient town.
00:22Among the 2,000-year-old treasures,
00:29they brush the dust from a mysterious inscription.
00:33I don't think it is rare. I think it is unique.
00:36I don't know any other inscription that is even close.
00:40This is the first one, and the only one.
00:43It's an ancient text that sheds light on the truth
00:46behind the life and death of Jesus Christ.
01:07The stories in the Bible are famous across the world.
01:10They tell of great battles between good and evil,
01:16earth-shaking catastrophes, and epic heroes.
01:22Now, new archaeological discoveries,
01:25buried in the Middle East for thousands of years,
01:28shed light on the real events that inspired these legends.
01:34For millions, Jesus is both the Son of God
01:37and an actual historical figure.
01:40According to the Gospels,
01:43he was a spiritual leader who performed miracles
01:45before being put on trial for blasphemy, executed, and buried.
01:50Christians believe he rose again to save humanity.
01:55But what historical evidence exists about the real people,
02:00places, and events that shaped Jesus' existence?
02:05Today, international teams of archaeologists
02:08are digging the ancient lands where he lived
02:11for new clues about the story of Jesus
02:14and the final tumultuous days of his life.
02:19They battle challenging conditions.
02:22We couldn't start working because the big trees were still on fire.
02:26And investigate hidden locations.
02:29This is one of the most surprising finds of the Church.
02:35of the Holy Sepulchre.
02:36To unlock the secrets of the man whose life and death
02:40gave rise to a whole new religion.
02:44Christianity.
02:48In the holy ancient city of Jerusalem
02:52lies for many the most sacred Christian basilica in the world.
02:58Yiska Harani, an expert in Christian history,
03:02has studied the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for decades.
03:07This is fascinating and exciting.
03:09The longest surviving and operating place of worship
03:14in the city of Jerusalem.
03:18The Church is said to be built on what the Bible calls
03:21the Hill of Golgotha,
03:23the place where Jesus was crucified and buried nearby.
03:28The New Testament says that after his death on the cross,
03:31Jesus' followers took his body to a nearby rock-cut tomb,
03:37where he was laid to rest before rising again three days later.
03:42Over the centuries,
03:44the Church has been damaged and rebuilt many times,
03:48burying potential evidence of the original landscape
03:51and Jesus' tomb deep underneath.
03:56But stepping inside, Yiska finds the Church still follows the contours
04:02of the biblical landscape.
04:04So we are ascending perhaps the holiest mountain in Jerusalem.
04:13At the top of the stairs is a sacred shrine.
04:16It is here that you see an altar raised above the place
04:23where the cross was stuck into the ground.
04:27Glass cases reveal the bedrock of Golgotha below.
04:32You go down to the roots of this church.
04:37Stratigraphically, the roots are the topography of Jerusalem
04:40in Jesus' times.
04:43Finally, in the center of the church,
04:46Yiska reaches the edicule.
04:49This is the most prominent structure to signify
04:53here is the tomb of Jesus.
05:01So we have entered the chapel of the angel.
05:06According to the New Testament,
05:08an angel was there when the tomb opened.
05:13Here, where you see this altar,
05:16that's a remnant of the rolling stone
05:19that was closing the chamber of the burial.
05:25A narrow entranceway leads into the chamber
05:28of the Most Holy Sepulchre,
05:30the closest visitors can get
05:32to what is believed to be Jesus' burial place.
05:37It is here that you see the marble stone
05:40protecting the place where the body was laid.
05:44For many Christians,
05:46this is the most sacred site in the world.
05:50But archaeologists want to know
05:52if this is the real burial place of Jesus.
05:55It's a quest for truth
05:57that began over 1,600 years ago.
06:03Around 325 CE,
06:06Rome's first Christian emperor, Constantine,
06:09sent his mother to Jerusalem
06:11to find physical traces of the life and death of Jesus.
06:17It was believed his tomb lay buried
06:20under a pagan temple honoring Venus,
06:23which she ordered to be demolished.
06:28As workers excavated the ground,
06:30they unearthed a cave with an intact tomb.
06:35Emperor Constantine built a majestic church above the tomb
06:39to honor the place where he believed Jesus came back to life.
06:47Today, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
06:50still stands on the site of Constantine's original church,
06:54and is run by several Christian communities,
06:58including the Greek Orthodox,
07:00the Roman Catholic,
07:01and the Armenian Apostolic Churches.
07:06But today's experts are intrigued by how Constantine's mother
07:10could have been so sure about the location of Jesus' tomb.
07:16Yiska notes a puzzling contradiction.
07:22According to the Bible,
07:24Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem's city walls.
07:28Jews would not bury their dead inside the city walls.
07:33That's why cemeteries throughout the Jewish world
07:36are always outside the walls.
07:40Yet the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
07:42under which Jesus was said to be crucified and buried,
07:46sits firmly within the ancient city walls.
07:52Yiska will need to investigate further
07:54to make sense of this mystery.
07:59Most historians believe a person called Jesus really lived
08:03and was crucified by the Romans.
08:06with around three to four independent sources
08:09from within a century of his death.
08:12So how close can we get
08:14to the real historical figure of Jesus?
08:20The investigation moves to the shores of the Sea of Galilee,
08:2580 miles north of Jerusalem,
08:28at a site called El Arash.
08:31A team of archaeologists is beginning an ambitious excavation
08:35that could reveal clues about Jesus' life.
08:41Archaeologist Mordecai Moti Aviam
08:43is in charge of the dig.
08:45Open your eyes and take all pottery that you see.
08:49It's very important.
08:50I enjoy every dig.
08:51I enjoy excavating everywhere.
08:54But digging here, this site became very interesting for me.
09:01A good job you're doing here.
09:02Good luck.
09:05Moti and the team believe this area could be hiding the remains
09:09of one of the most famous miracle sites in the New Testament,
09:14an ancient fishing settlement called Bethsaida.
09:21Bethsaida, the meaning is the house of the fishermen.
09:25It was a place that played a central role in Jesus' life.
09:30It was the home place of three of Jesus' disciples,
09:34and Jesus himself, according to the New Testament,
09:37visited the site and made miracles at the site,
09:41and it was well known.
09:44Almost no other place features in the Gospels,
09:47the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
09:50as much as Bethsaida.
09:54But for many centuries, its location has been lost.
09:58Moti and the team want to find out
10:01if this could be the famous biblical village.
10:06First, the team begins scouring the ground
10:09for any signs of ancient metal to date the site.
10:13Coin!
10:16Coin!
10:17Ring the bell! Ring the bell!
10:22Tiny, small coin from the Byzantine period,
10:26mainly 5th century.
10:28The small coin is over 1,500 years old,
10:31but the team needs evidence from at least 2,000 years ago
10:35if they are to link this site to biblical Bethsaida,
10:38where Jesus is said to have performed two of his most famous miracles.
10:44The Bible says thousands of people came to Bethsaida to listen to Jesus.
10:51And as the evening drew near, they grew hungry.
10:57The only food the disciples could find were two fish and five loaves of bread.
11:03So they wanted to send the crowd away.
11:08But after Jesus blessed the food,
11:11it was enough to feed everyone, with 12 baskets left over.
11:18And that same night, as the disciples hit a storm on Lake Galilee,
11:22Jesus walked on water to come to their rescue.
11:29So far, the site has revealed a puzzling mix of artifacts from many different eras.
11:36Motti decides to take over duties with the metal detector.
11:41Oh, something is beeping here.
11:45And he makes a tantalizing find.
11:49Uh-huh.
11:51Here is something that we like very much.
11:53Ring the bell!
11:58This is a lead weight for a fishing net.
12:03I think it's also a decorated one.
12:06People on the lake were mostly fishermen.
12:09And that goes very well with the description in the New Testament.
12:13That's nice.
12:19The decorated lead weight indicates that fishing took place from this site.
12:25But is this the real biblical Bethsaida?
12:33In search of more evidence for the village where the Bible says Jesus fed the 5,000,
12:39Motti widens his search at El Arraj to the surrounding area.
12:45A recent disaster has transformed the site beyond recognition.
12:51Just two days before we started excavating this system,
12:54there was a huge wildfire here,
12:58which burned down our container with all our equipment,
13:00and also burned down this area of the site of El Arraj.
13:07For at least the past century,
13:10the area had been overgrown with thick vegetation and often flooded,
13:15making it impossible to determine the ancient village's age and its boundaries.
13:21Now, the wildfire has given Motti a unique opportunity.
13:26I think that no one else before us,
13:29at least in the last hundred years,
13:32ever looked at it in ecological eyes.
13:35Amidst the scorched landscape,
13:38he quickly finds evidence that the village extended beyond the main dig site.
13:46Opa!
13:47Here is a nice find.
13:50This is the top of the lower part of a grinding stone.
13:56Part of life in a village.
13:58It's lucky to see it on surface.
14:00Further along are clues which help him date it.
14:04What we have here under the ash is a section of a wall from a house.
14:10As a matter of fact, all the area here, all the stones you see,
14:15are debris of houses from the Roman period.
14:21Thanks to the wildfire, Motti's been able to discover finds that prove this area was inhabited in Roman times.
14:30It's an encouraging step.
14:32And there's more back at the dig site.
14:34We found here a piece of mosaic floor.
14:39What's interesting is the fact that it is placed in a very thick layer of cement.
14:46This is not from a simple floor.
14:49We dug here a little probe,
14:51and in the probe you can see three big stones in a line.
14:56This could be the hint for a public bathhouse.
15:02The mosaic floor tiles and thick walls suggest the existence of a Roman bathhouse in this once tiny fishing village.
15:11It matches the description of Bethsaida by an ancient Roman historian called Josephus Flavius.
15:19He writes that around the time of Jesus, the village was transformed from a Jewish settlement to a small Roman
15:26city.
15:28It is a hint for us to understand that there is a change in this village.
15:34It's not easy to get a proof in archaeology,
15:37but it is a strong suggestion that these finds support very much the identification of El Arraj as biblical Bethsaida.
15:51Incredibly, it seems the team has identified the real Bethsaida, where the Bible says Jesus performed several miracles.
15:59But what about the next phase of his life, in which he would gain more followers, but also attention from
16:06the authorities?
16:07Where were these next miracles said to have taken place?
16:15Back in Jerusalem, around half a mile from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is Temple Mount.
16:23At the time of Jesus, the temple atop this hill was the epicenter of Jewish worship, attracting pilgrims from all
16:31over the ancient world.
16:36Professor Uzi Liebner digs on the final approach to the temple, a site named Ophel Hill.
16:44We can probably presume tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people arriving here.
16:55So far, excavations have revealed a maze of stairs, alleyways, and even ancient shops designed to serve myriad pilgrims.
17:06But some of the most intriguing infrastructure the team has discovered lies buried beneath the ancient city's floor.
17:14It's about three meters high, with these impressive capstones, roofing them on top.
17:23The mystery tunnel leads to a chamber.
17:27Uzi believes he knows its purpose.
17:29Right here we have a water reservoir, a vaulted water reservoir.
17:35It's just one small part of a rabbit warren of subterranean public water reservoirs and drainage channels.
17:44We don't know exactly where all the water came from, but we know it was a large quantity of water
17:49based on the size of this drainage.
17:52Uzi believes the evidence points to one specific use for all this water.
17:58We think this was all meant to serve dozens and dozens of public ritual baths.
18:07Visitors were expected to bathe and purify themselves before making a pilgrimage.
18:15Uzi's team has discovered around a hundred baths at the Ophel.
18:20A ritual bathing pool is strongly associated with one of the miracles Jesus is said to have performed.
18:26What light can Uzi's investigations shed on its whereabouts?
18:35Just a quarter of a mile away from the Ophel Hill excavation is a site said to be one of
18:42Jerusalem's most important ritual baths, the Siloam pool.
18:48The Bible says, as Jesus walked through Jerusalem, he saw a blind beggar.
18:53He made mud from the dust and rubbed it on the man's eyes.
18:58He instructed him to wash in the pool of Siloam.
19:02And for the first time, the beggar could see.
19:09Archaeologists first began exploring this site two decades ago.
19:14And on discovering a wide set of steps and the first signs of a particularly well-crafted big pool,
19:21declared that this was the ancient miracle site of Siloam.
19:27Now, archaeologists are taking a second look.
19:31Itamar Berko runs the dig.
19:35Right now we are at the bottom of what is considered as the pool of Siloam.
19:38It was such an enormous find.
19:42Now excavated to its full size of 225 feet wide and around 16 feet deep,
19:49this giant freshwater pool is dotted with evidence from the time of Jesus.
19:55But Itamar is no longer convinced this is the original miracle site.
20:00We, the archaeologists, think otherwise.
20:03It has too many stairs for ritual baths, and it's too big to be a ritual bath.
20:09Another reason is the debris his team pulls from the pool floor.
20:26Itamar believes rainwater and debris were diverted here by this 40-foot-high wall running the length of the pool.
20:33If the true pool of Siloam was meant for religious purification, such impure water casts serious doubt that this is
20:43the right place.
20:45The pool of Siloam is only pure water, much more pure than the water here.
20:52So where might the actual pool of Siloam be?
20:57The Bible states that it was fed by a pure freshwater source called the Gihon Spring, which still flows today.
21:07It's a clue that leads Itamar to explore an underground waterway around 300 yards away.
21:13This tunnel was built 700 years before Jesus Christ.
21:18Its purpose was to deliver the water to a location inside of the city walls of Jerusalem.
21:24It was carved by a chisel and a hammer for more than 533 meters.
21:31This channel, called Hezekiah's Tunnel, extends over a third of a mile beneath Jerusalem to the Gihon Spring,
21:40and ends here in a small, shallow pool.
21:44This pool is fed by spring water, which is pure water.
21:52According to long-held local tradition, this was the Siloam Pool.
21:58But 20 years ago, it was eclipsed by the exciting discovery of the monumental basin Itamar currently excavates.
22:07So was this the right place all along?
22:11Historical texts from the first century offer clues,
22:14noting that the Pool of Siloam was located next to a much bigger pool called the Pool of Solomon.
22:22We suggest that the Solomon's Pool was now where we are excavating,
22:27and the Pool of Siloam is right in the outlet of Hezekiah's Tunnel,
22:32which was the site where Jesus killed a blind man.
22:39It seems Itamar's team might have confirmed the location of one of the most sacred miracle sites in all of
22:46Jerusalem.
22:48But if this is the true Pool of Siloam, what was the purpose of the much larger Solomon's Pool?
22:55Right here, it was used, I think, for a reservoir pool, as a pool to drink water one years before
23:03Jesus himself.
23:08This huge pool probably supplied vital fresh water to the city's residents
23:13and the vast numbers of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem.
23:17From there, they climbed a wide-stepped street known as the Pilgrim Road.
23:24Merchants lined the way, selling offerings to be taken on their journey.
23:29And branching streets led to markets and lodging houses.
23:35At the top of the stairs rose three mighty gates,
23:40the entrances to the sacred complex,
23:42which was the epicenter of Jewish worship during the time of Jesus.
23:50The Bible tells us that it was here in Jerusalem that the authorities began to take notice of Jesus.
23:58But why did he come here?
24:00And can more clues be unearthed that might help crack the mystery of his final burial site?
24:10In Jerusalem, outside the ancient city walls, lies a secluded, hidden garden.
24:19Jerusalem is so crowded, so busy.
24:23And here we are, a stone throw away from the old city.
24:28And you walk in this paradise.
24:32Here, historian Yiska Harani continues to explore the mystery
24:37of how the body of Jesus could be buried in a site that lies inside the city walls.
24:44It is known that Jewish tradition has it,
24:48that no one will be dead and buried inside the city.
24:54That's why cemeteries throughout the Jewish world are always outside the walls.
24:59That contradiction led scholars in the 19th century to propose this place,
25:05known as the Garden Tomb, as Jesus' burial place instead.
25:11This seemed to be a very logical and a very beautiful and a very aesthetical solution
25:18to the quest after Jesus' tomb.
25:22But what evidence is there to support this idea?
25:27Deeper into the garden, Yiska spots an opening in the rock face.
25:32So we are in an ancient tomb.
25:36You can see the stone, the original stone, into which the place was carved.
25:42And three niches were placed for three bodies.
25:48The surroundings also match the environment as described in the Bible.
25:54It is fitting to the word that appears in the Gospel of John.
25:58There was a garden where the body of Jesus was placed in a tomb.
26:04And here you are. You have a beautiful garden.
26:09Archaeological evidence shows there's been a garden here in the past.
26:14Outside, there's more evidence to match the account of Jesus' burial place.
26:20Gospels all recall a rolling stone.
26:24And that helped to see here a potential place for the burial of Jesus.
26:31So if you look here, you will see that there's a trench
26:35and there is the leftovers of a rolling stone
26:40that could have been rolled to lock the door.
26:46The style of the tomb and its location
26:49seem to fit the description in biblical texts.
26:54But Yiska is not convinced.
26:56This is way too far from the walls of the city in Jesus' times.
27:02And it is clearly the case that Romans crucified people
27:07right next to the walls of a city
27:09because they wanted people, especially pilgrims.
27:12They would see people crucified outside the walls.
27:15They would learn not to mess with the rulers.
27:19If this garden tomb isn't the true tomb of Jesus,
27:24Yiska must continue her investigation elsewhere.
27:28Could finding out more about the last days of Jesus,
27:31including the people he shared his final journey with,
27:34the disciples, shed light on this mystery?
27:4080 miles north of Jerusalem, at El Araj.
27:46Having finally identified Bethsaida,
27:50Motti and his team now want to investigate a biblical mystery
27:54for which the town is famous.
27:58Bethsaida was said to be home to three disciples, Philip, Andrew and Peter.
28:03No archeological evidence has been found to prove any of the apostles really existed.
28:09So could this be the place to look for clues?
28:15Over the past few seasons, the team has unearthed remains of what appears to be an ancient Byzantine church,
28:23but dated to around 500 years after the time of Jesus.
28:28Why it's here is a mystery.
28:31The discovery of the church was very surprising, very surprising.
28:35No one mentions a church here since the 8th century.
28:40Motti and the team want to understand why a church was built on this particular spot.
28:46Recently, while excavating the floor inside the ruins, the team uncovered something extraordinary.
28:53Today, Motti's showing colleague, Professor Jacob Ashkenazi.
28:58Very impressive. More than impressive.
29:03Almost complete. No damage.
29:05It's an ancient mosaic inscription.
29:09No damage, not even one stone.
29:11No, no, no, no.
29:13Maybe some scratches, but all the letters are there.
29:19Jacob translates the ancient Greek text.
29:23The first word is egeneto, it means was done.
29:28Psiphos, okay, the mosaic.
29:30All the work of the mosaic was done.
29:34Spude, in the generosity or by the generosity of Konstantinu, Konstantin, the name of the donor.
29:45It appears to be an inscription which celebrates the man who funded part of the church's construction.
29:52In the name of his family.
29:54I believe that this Konstantin was a pilgrim who came here and was fascinated by the place and was very
30:01excited, of course, and decided to donate and to commemorate his children.
30:06But then, in the next line, an intriguing dedication jumps out.
30:14It means the chief of the apostles.
30:21The chief of the apostles.
30:23The chief of the apostles is Saint Peter, of course.
30:27The first disciple of Jesus, whom he met together with his brother, Andrew, on the lake.
30:34Could this inscription really refer to Peter of the disciples, one of Jesus' closest companions?
30:43At El Arraj, archaeologists try to decipher whether a 1,500-year-old inscription names one of the disciples from
30:52the Bible.
30:53The keeper of the keys, this is very interesting.
30:57There is only one keeper of the keys.
30:59There is only one keeper of the keys, which is, of course, Peter.
31:06According to the Gospels, Peter was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, whom Jesus granted a miraculous catch of
31:14fish.
31:18Peter then became one of the twelve disciples.
31:21Jesus named him Kephas, meaning the rock, on whom the future would be built.
31:28On the day Jesus was arrested, fear gripped Peter.
31:33To his great shame, he denied knowing Jesus three times.
31:37But after the resurrection, Peter was forgiven,
31:42becoming the leader of the church and keeper of the keys to heaven and earth.
31:50Isn't that a rare inscription?
31:52I don't think it is rare.
31:54No.
31:54I think it is unique.
31:56Unique, okay.
31:57I don't know any other inscription that is even close to the content of this inscription.
32:01So that's what we're saying.
32:02There is no inscription all over Palestine that mentions Saint Peter.
32:07Not even one.
32:09The reference to Saint Peter is an astounding discovery that could explain the reason this church was built.
32:17Motti investigates the rest of its ruins.
32:22Underneath the floor of the church, which was at this level, there are three earlier layers.
32:32One, the very deep one, a wall from the first century CE of a private dwelling.
32:42We dated it according to pottery that we found at the base of the wall.
32:48Above it, the basilica was built.
32:50It seems the church was built on top of a much older house.
32:55But why?
32:56The most important part of the basilica, the apse, in which the altar stands, is right above this wall.
33:04It means that the important part of the church, what is underneath the altar, is the wall.
33:12Coupled with the clues from the mosaic inscription, Motti thinks the people who built this church believed the house beneath
33:20was a sacred place.
33:22That, for me, says that they identified as the house of Peter.
33:28This could be the home of Saint Peter of Bethsaida, one of Jesus' very closest friends, who would accompany him
33:37in his final weeks.
33:40So what led Jesus, Peter, and the other disciples back to Jerusalem for the final time?
33:49In Jerusalem, beside the city's holy Temple Mount, archaeologist Uzi Liebner and his team continue to dig for artifacts along
34:00the ancient Jewish pilgrimage route.
34:04So far, the team has unearthed a treasure trove of bronze and silver coins among the ruins of a grand
34:11building.
34:13It's evidence of a bustling marketplace.
34:17Shops, money changers, places where people can buy their sacrifice.
34:22Commerce is an important part of life around the temple.
34:27And the Bible says it was something Jesus found hard to tolerate,
34:33especially during his final trip to Jerusalem with the disciples in the last week of his life.
34:43When Jesus saw the money changers in the temple, his heart filled with rage.
34:54He overturned tables, accusing them of turning a house of prayer into a den of robbers.
35:04He then drove away animal traders, asking them to stop making his father's house a marketplace.
35:15According to the Bible, Jesus and his twelve disciples were on a pilgrimage to the temple at the time,
35:22for a festival known as Passover.
35:26It commemorates the story of Exodus, the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt,
35:33and is celebrated with a feast.
35:36The Passover meal, said to have been eaten by Jesus and his followers, is known as the Last Supper.
35:45And among the debris in another ritual pool, the team finds sherds of pottery, cooking vessels,
35:52and hundreds of fragments of animal bones.
35:55So we have three boxes of animal bones that were collected.
36:00Clearly, lamb or sheep was the major sacrificial animal in the temple,
36:06especially over Passover, you give the lamb sacrifice.
36:09Taking into consideration our close vicinity to the temple,
36:14this might be from the ritual that was taking place.
36:19On some of the pot fragments, archaeologist Orit Peleg Barkat finds a unique feature
36:25that ties this trash specifically to the cooking of lamb for Passover.
36:30What is interesting about these cooking pots is that many of them are punctured.
36:36Ritually pure cooking vessels were required for the pilgrims' sacrificial meals in the temple,
36:42and had to be put out of use at the end of the pilgrimage.
36:45The fact that this cooking pot was used for preparing the lamb sacrifice meant they became impure,
36:53and you could not use them anymore for your daily cooking.
36:58Ceremonially, they were making a small hole within the sides,
37:04so they could not be used any further.
37:10The bones and pottery document the reality behind the Last Supper.
37:16But it was far more sinister reasons that made the Last Supper famous.
37:22According to the New Testament, it was here, in the final week of his life,
37:27that Jesus predicted his betrayal.
37:30By the end of the next day, he was put on trial, executed, and buried in a rock-cut tomb
37:37with a garden nearby.
37:40While it's been claimed since Roman times that his burial site lies beneath the Holy Sepulchre,
37:48the church's location inside the city walls seems to rule it out.
37:53So how can this contradiction be solved?
37:57Where is the tomb of Jesus?
38:05The key to the mysterious location of Jesus' tomb could lie in the complex history of Jerusalem itself.
38:14Just as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been rebuilt and reshaped over two millennia,
38:20so has Jerusalem.
38:22The city walls haven't always looked like they do today.
38:28Has their location changed since the time of Jesus?
38:35Yiska pursues the investigation in a lower level of the church.
38:40It is cramped and it is dark, but this is one of the most surprising finds of the church.
38:50You see that we are in a stone cave, and in it at least four niches.
38:57Two of them, look, two of them are sealed.
39:00But if these stones were taken out, we would see that there's a niche in the size of a human
39:06body,
39:07just as you see here and here.
39:11Incredibly, it seems this was a Jewish cemetery.
39:14One that archaeologists have now dated to the first century A.D.
39:22For Yiska, it is proof the city plan must have changed over the years.
39:28Finding this, finding this burial system here, so close to the Edikul,
39:35proves to us beyond any doubt that this was outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem in Jesus' times.
39:45Archaeologists believe the city walls were altered and expanded a few years after the burial is said to have occurred,
39:53bringing this area of the church inside their boundary.
39:58The contradiction is solved, but is there any evidence that Jesus himself is buried here?
40:07In 2023, after years of negotiation, archaeologists were granted permission to lift the floor
40:14and carry out the most extensive excavations in 200 years.
40:20What they found would have an earth-shattering impact on the hunt for the tomb of Jesus.
40:28Yiska has been granted rare access to this hidden underground area through a secret doorway in the Armenian part of
40:36the church.
40:38This place was hidden from the eyes of everyone, also from the Armenians.
40:44But in the 70s, when they opened a little opening, and this is what you see, an ancient quarry.
40:54Dating to a thousand years before Jesus, the quarry extended beneath the entire area of the current church.
41:04It is in the ancient quarry where excavators made an exciting discovery.
41:10Soil, and within the soil, seeds.
41:14Could this be evidence of an ancient garden as recorded in the Gospel of John?
41:20Here, this is the depression. Look.
41:23Here, it was full of soil.
41:26In such depressions, you got these little gardens, which eventually are mentioned
41:34and become the big story of the tomb in the garden.
41:42In 2025, tests on samples taken from nearly 20 feet below today's ground level
41:49show that the soil contains grape seeds, olive pits, and pollen.
41:56And dating reveals their age.
41:59They are 2,000 years old.
42:03Conclusive evidence that by the time of Jesus, the quarry had become a garden,
42:09planted with olive trees and vines.
42:14The Bible says that beside this garden lay a rock-cut tomb.
42:20Perhaps similar to the carved tombs that today lie beneath the church.
42:29This new scientific discovery, that seems to confirm the presence of an ancient garden,
42:36convinces Yiska that the puzzle is finally solved.
42:39To myself, as a historian, I'm completely convinced that this is perhaps the closest we can get to Jesus' original
42:51tomb.
42:52But without this exceptional place, and without the recent lab researchers,
42:59we wouldn't have been able to prove the case.
43:03The archaeological investigation into the real Jesus Christ has brought the world he knew to life.
43:11Jerusalem in the time of Jesus was not something very sterile.
43:15It was a vibrant city, very alive.
43:19Excavations also shed light on his lasting legacy.
43:23That's a very important discovery in understanding the development of Christianity in the Holy Land.
43:29While the investigation into the life and death of Jesus reveals much about the politics and people of the time.
43:38As a personality, he's of great interest to historians, not only to the faithful.
43:44And the events of his death are also depicting a period of the harshness of the rulers.
43:53The real man is important for everybody, historians, archaeologists, and faithful alike.
44:00For that view moment, this is to be possible.
44:03piece of Exchange
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