Discovery Beneath Site of Christ’s Burial Shows Once Again the Bible Is True

New archeological evidence adds to the historical truth, as well as the spiritual truth, of the Bible.

Excavations beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City have uncovered evidence of an ancient garden that included olive trees and grapevines, according to All Israel News.

The findings align with Gospel of John’s description of the place where Jesus was buried.  “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.” (John 19:41)

The excavation was led by Professor Francesca Romana Stasolla of Sapienza University in Rome, who said that the church’s governing religious communities allowed excavations amid renovations to the church, according to the Christian Post.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre includes the site of where Jesus was crucified as well as where he was buried before he rose from the dead.

“The archaeobotanical findings have been especially interesting for us, considering what is mentioned in the Gospel of John, which is thought to have been written or collected by someone familiar with Jerusalem at the time. The Gospel mentions a green area between Calvary and the tomb, and we identified these cultivated fields,” according to the Christian Daily.

“We know that the area was already part of the city at the time of Emperor Hadrian when the Romans built Aelia Capitolina,” she said, referring to the Roman city built on the ruins of Jerusalem in the first half of the 2nd century CE, according to the Times of Israel.

“However, at the time of Jesus, the area was not part of the city yet,” she said.

Stasolla said excavations move slowly and carefully, with much more to be done.

“While we have not been able to see the entire church excavated in one glance, new technologies are allowing us to reconstruct the bigger picture in our labs,” Stasolla said.

“If we were talking about a puzzle, we could say we are only excavating one piece at a time, but eventually, we will have a complete multimedia reconstruction of the full picture,” she said.

She said the site was once a quarry, and noted that Iron Age relics were found.

“We need to imagine that as the quarry was progressively abandoned, tombs were carved at different levels,” Stasolla said.

“The area, therefore, featured several burials from that period. Constantine selected the one that had been venerated as the tomb where Jesus was buried, and he excavated around it in the area that corresponds to the current rotunda, isolating it from the other burials,” she said.

She said the excavations reinforce what many believe through faith.

“The real treasure we are revealing is the history of the people who made this site what it is by expressing their faith here,” she said.

“Whether someone believes or not in the historicity of the Holy Sepulchre, the fact that generations of people did is objective. The history of this place is the history of Jerusalem, and at least from a certain moment, it is the history of the worship of Jesus Christ,” she said.

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