by Egon Lass

Created on: May 02, 2009   Last Updated: May 05, 2009

The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence By Shimon Gibson

If you walk along what is presently called the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, Israel, you will find several patches of well-worn stone-slabs. These were excavated and raised up to the present street level from a much deeper elevation, where they had been resting for two-thousand years, so that people could walk over the stones on which Jesus walked on his way to Golgotha. It may very well be that Jesus walked on these stones, but he would not have been carrying his cross; he would simply have been wandering through the streets of Jerusalem long before his trial and crucifixion.

All of this is implied by Shimon Gibson's book, The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence. In the 1970s Gibson was on the staff of the Israeli archaeologist Magen Broshi, excavating a 280-meter stretch outside of the Ottoman city wall between the Citadel next to Jaffa Gate and the southwestern angle of the Old City. He knew that just inside of the wall was the Praetorium, which was Herod's palace where Jesus was put on trial (partially excavated in the Armenian Garden). As happens sometimes, they excavated several related features and did not immediately recognize what they had found. Only years later, when Gibson again turned his attention toward this project, did he see the significance. They had found a courtyard between two fortification walls, and on its northern side a platform of bedrock with steps leading up to it, and south of these a monumental gateway into the city, probably the Gate of the Essenes, as described by the contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus Flavius. The platform is described in John 19:13. "When Pilate therefore heard these words he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the pavement (lithostrotos), but in Hebrew, gabbatha." According to the New Testament, when Pilate had interrogated Jesus, he led him out to the crowd and proclaimed: "Ecce Homo: Behold the Man!" This had to be at the top of the steps that lead into the monumental gateway, with the crowd standing directly to the west, where there is space enough to accommodate hundreds.

All of these things make eminent sense, and if they are true, then all of the holy sites along the present Via Dolorosa, beginning with the Antonia Fortress and ending at Golgotha, were wrongly attributed in the fourth century. Instead of moving from east to west, the Via Dolorosa should progress from south to north. Gibson gives a balanced assessment on every relevant point, discussing Jesus' progress toward Jerusalem, his raising of Lazarus, his acts in the temple, his miracles at Bethesda and Siloam, his trial, his crucifixion, his burial, and his resurrection. At the end of the book there is an excursus, another very balanced assessment of the famous Talpiot tomb, which has recently been proposed as the family tomb of Jesus, and an appraisal of the "James" ossuary, which had the inscription "Ya'aqov (James) Bar Yosef (Joseph) brother of Yeshua (Jesus)" on it.

This book has had a very quiet entry into the world. Let us hope that it will have a long life and steady sales, because in its level-headed way it may revolutionize the topography of the last days of Jesus.

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