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Jesus Was a Refugee

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 14:00:32 +0000

“Jesus Was a Refugee” was originally published on The Jesus Blog. It is republished here with permission.—Ed.

The unstoppable force of refugees fleeing to Europe has in various places hit the immovable object of an attitude that there is no room at the inn. Spaces are filled. Migrants should be kept out, in order to preserve jobs, health and welfare services. In an environment of austerity, where economic cuts have hit people hard, this cold-heartedness in part derives from a deep sense of insecurity.

At this time it is worth remembering that Jesus of Nazareth is in the Bible presented exactly as one that would be rejected by such European countries: a refugee child.

Woodcut from Die Bibel in Bildern (1860) by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ (adoptive) father, Joseph, and mother, Mary, live in Bethlehem, a town in Judaea near Jerusalem. It is assumed to be their home village. Certain magoi (“wise men”/astrologers) come from “the East” to Herod, the Roman client king of Judaea, looking to honor a new ruler they have determined by a “star,” and Jesus is identified as the one. All this is bad news to Herod, and Herod acts in a pre-emptive strike against the people of Bethlehem and its environs. He kills all boys under two years of age in an atrocity that is traditionally known as “the massacre of the innocents” (Matthew 2.16–18).

But Joseph has been warned beforehand in a dream of Herod’s intentions to kill little Jesus, and the family flees to Egypt. It is not until Herod is dead that Joseph and Mary dare return, and then they avoid Judaea: Joseph “was afraid to go there” (Matthew 2.22) because Herod’s son is in charge. Instead they find a new place of refuge, in Nazareth of Galilee, far from Bethlehem.

Jesus’ earliest years were then, according to the Gospel of Matthew, spent as a refugee in a foreign land, and then as a displaced person in a village a long way from his family’s original home.

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Scholars of the historical Jesus can be suspicious of this account, as also with the other nativity account in the Gospel of Luke 1–2. It is clearly constructed with allusions to Jesus as a kind of Moses figure: just as Moses was under threat from an evil Pharaoh who killed children (Exodus 1–2), so was Jesus. But while resonances with the scriptural precedent are intended, there is no real need for the author to invent the idea of Jesus being a refugee child somewhere in Egypt to have him being Moses-like. There is a quote, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11.1), in Matthew 2.15, but the “son” concerned is historical Israel, not Moses and not the Messiah, and it sits uncomfortably with the story. The author of Matthew did not need to build a myth out of such a text.

King Herod the Great began construction at Herodium in 28–27 B.C.E. Photo: Duby Tal.

It seems not then unlikely to me that Jesus’ family, with a lineage traced to the great king David (Matthew 1; Luke 3.23–38; Romans 1.3; 15.12), opted to flee from Bethlehem, long-standing residence of the kingly line and their original home. In many traditional societies, such locations of clans are maintained, even with social disruptions. Archaeology has shown how Herod built a palace complex at Herodium, including his future mausoleum, nicely overlooking the town of Bethlehem. It was as if Herod was breathing down Bethlehem’s neck.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus portrays Herod as paranoid about any possible threat to his rule. He killed his own sons and had few qualms about killing anyone else’s. As Augustus quipped, “I would rather be Herod’s pig than his son” (Macrobius, Saturnalia 2:4; since pigs are not butchered by Jews).

We know also that Jews fled from troubles in Judaea of many kinds in the third–first centuries B.C.E., and that Egypt was one of the places they went to as refugees. Josephus comments on the problematic revolutionaries (and their children) that fled there after the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 C.E.; Jewish War 7: 407–419), but they were following a well-worn path.

Many epitaphs and inscriptions, as well as historical sources, testify to a thriving Jewish expatriate community in Egypt made up of earlier refugees that could be joined by others. However, just like today, new refugees were not welcome. A letter of the emperor Claudius, written in 41 C.E., states that Jews in Alexandria lived in “a city not their own” in which they were “not to bring in or invite Jews who sail down to Alexandria from Syria[-Palaestina]” (P. London 1912; CPJ I:151).

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A remembrance of Jesus’ family in Egypt is preserved in Matariya, in the suburbs of Cairo at Heliopolis, a spot understood to be a stopping place on the holy family’s flight, and it is probably the most important site in the world for anyone wishing to contemplate Joseph, Mary and Jesus as refugees.

For new refugees, as anywhere, life would have been very hard. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria tells us of the consequences of poverty, which could result in enslavement (Special Laws 2.82). Presumably, Jewish charity and voluntary giving through the synagogue would have helped a struggling refugee family, but they would also have been reliant on the kindness of strangers.

The legacy of being a refugee and a newcomer to a place far from home is something that I think informed Jesus’ teaching. When he set off on his mission, he took up the life of a displaced person with “nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8.20; Luke 9.58). He asked those who acted for him to go out without a bag or a change of clothing, essentially to walk along the road like destitute refugees who had suddenly fled, relying on the generosity and hospitality of ordinary people whose villages they entered (Mark 6.8–11; Matthew 10.9–11; Luke 9.3). It was the villagers’ welcome or not to such poor wanderers that showed what side they were on: “And if any place will not receive you and refuse to hear you, shake off the dust on your feet when you leave, for a testimony to them” (Mark 6.11).

***

“Jesus Was a Refugee” by Joan E. Taylor was first republished in Bible History Daily on May 12, 2016.

Joan E. Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London. Her research interests include the New Testament and other early Christian texts; the historical figures of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene and other New Testament persons; Second Temple Judaism; and women and gender within early Judaism and Christianity. Dr. Taylor has received various awards and fellowships, including the Irene Levi-Sala Award in Israel’s archaeology for her book Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003).

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On What Day Did Jesus Rise?

BAS Staff — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 12:00:09 +0000

On what day did Jesus rise? After three days or on the third day? In his Biblical Views column “It’s About Time—Easter Time” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Ben Witherington III examines this question. Read his Biblical Views column in full below.—Ed.

“It’s About Time—Easter Time”

by Ben Witherington III

One of the problems in reading ancient texts like the Bible in the 21st century is the danger of anachronism—by which I mean bringing unhelpful modern ideas and expectations to our readings. This problem becomes all the more acute when dealing with ancient texts on which much historical import hinges.

On what day did Jesus rise? After three days or on the third day? Pictured is Henry Osawa Tanner’s moody rendition of the scene, “The Three Marys,” painted in 1910, and on display at the Fisk University Galleries in Nashville. Photo: Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee.

For example, we are a people obsessed with time—and with exactness when it comes to time—down to the nanosecond. In this regard, we are very different from the ancients, who did not go around wearing little sundials on their wrists and did not talk about seconds and minutes. They did not obsess about precision when it comes to time.

Take a few examples from the Gospels that may help us read the stories about Jesus’ last week of life with more insight.

Some texts tell us that Jesus predicted he would rise “after three days.” Others say he would rise “on the third day.” In Matthew 12:40 Jesus mentions, “three days and three nights,” but this is just part of a general analogy with the story of what happened with Jonah and the whale, and as such the time reference shouldn’t be pressed. Jesus is just saying, “It will be like the experience of Jonah.”

On the other hand, in Mark 8:31 Jesus says, “The Son of Man will rise again after three days.” He mentions the same event in John 2:19 as “in three days,” and on various occasions the Gospel writers tell us Jesus used the phrase “on the third day” (see, e.g., Matthew 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Luke 24:46). On the face of it, this might seem to involve a flat contradiction. While both predictions could be wrong, is it really possible both could be right?

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The problem with this sort of modern reasoning is that it assumes the Gospel writers intended always to write with precision on this matter. In fact the phrase “after three days” in the New Testament can simply mean “after a while” or “after a few days” without any clear specificity beyond suggesting several days, in this case parts of three days, would be involved.

In fact, the Hebrew Bible provides us with some clues about these sorts of differences. Second Chronicles 10:5, 12 clearly says, “Come to me again after three days … So … all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day because the king had said ‘Come to me again the third day.’” Apparently “after three days” means the very same thing as “on the third day” in this text.

Is this just carelessness, or is it in fact an example of typical imprecision when it comes to speaking about time? I would suggest that the phrase “after three days” is a more general or imprecise way of speaking, whereas “on the third day” is somewhat more specific (though it still doesn’t tell us when on the third day). These texts were not written to meet our modern exacting standards when it comes to time.

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One of the keys to interpreting the time references in the New Testament is being aware that most of the time, the time references are not precise, and we must allow the ancient author to be general when he wants to be general and more specific when he wants to be more specific. Especially when you have both sorts of references to the time span between Jesus’ death and resurrection in one book by one author, and indeed sometimes even within close proximity to each other, one should take the hint that these texts were not written according to our modern exacting expectations when it comes to time references.

Isn’t it about time we let these authors use language, including time language, in the way that was customary in their own era? I would suggest it’s high time we showed these ancient authors the respect they deserve and read them with an awareness of the conventions they followed when writing ancient history or ancient biography and not impose our later genre conventions on them.¹

“Biblical Views: It’s About Time—Easter Time” by Ben Witherington III originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2016. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on April 18, 2016.

Ben Witherington III is the Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University, Scotland.

Notes

1. For help with understanding how to read the Bible in light of its original contexts, see Ben Witherington III, Reading and Understanding the Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014).

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Biblical Views: It’s About Time—Easter Time

From Death to Resurrection: The Early Evidence

Resurrecting Easter: Hunting for the Original Resurrection Image

The Rose of Jericho—Symbol of the Resurrection

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Herod’s Death, Jesus’ Birth and a Lunar Eclipse

BAS Staff — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:00:41 +0000

Giotto, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1306.

Both Luke and Matthew mention Jesus’ birth as occurring during Herod’s reign (Luke 1:5; Matthew 2:1). Josephus relates Herod’s death to a lunar eclipse. This is generally regarded as a reference to a lunar eclipse in 4 B.C. Therefore it is often said that Jesus was born in 4 B.C.

But physics professor John A. Cramer, in a letter to BAR, has pointed out that there was another lunar eclipse visible in Judea—in fact, two—in 1 B.C., which would place Herod’s death—and Jesus’ birth—at the turn of the era. Below, read letters published in the Q&C section of BAR debating the dates of Herod’s death, Jesus’ birth and to which lunar eclipse Josephus was referring.

When Was Jesus Born?

Q&C, BAR, July/August 2013

Let me add a footnote to Suzanne Singer’s report on the final journey of Herod the Great (Strata, BAR, March/April 2013): She gives the standard date of his death as 4 B.C. [Jesus’ birth is often dated to 4 B.C. based on the fact that both Luke and Matthew associate Jesus’ birth with Herod’s reign—Ed.] Readers may be interested to learn there is reason to reconsider the date of Herod’s death.

This date is based on Josephus’s remark in Antiquities 17.6.4 that there was a lunar eclipse shortly before Herod died. This is traditionally ascribed to the eclipse of March 13, 4 B.C.

Unfortunately, this eclipse was visible only very late that night in Judea and was additionally a minor and only partial eclipse.

There were no lunar eclipses visible in Judea thereafter until two occurred in the year 1 B.C. Of these two, the one on December 29, just two days before the change of eras, gets my vote since it was the one most likely to be seen and remembered. That then dates the death of Herod the Great into the first year of the current era, four years after the usual date.

Perhaps the much-maligned monk who calculated the change of era was not quite so far off as has been supposed.

John A. Cramer
Professor of Physics
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta, Georgia

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When Was Jesus Born? When Did Herod Die?

Q&C, BAR, January/February 2014

Professor John A. Cramer argues that Herod the Great most likely died shortly after the lunar eclipse of December 29, 1 B.C., rather than that of March 13, 4 B.C., which, as Cramer points out, is the eclipse traditionally associated with Josephus’s description in Jewish Antiquities 17.6.4 (Queries & Comments, “When Was Jesus Born?” BAR, July/August 2013) and which is used as a basis to reckon Jesus’ birth shortly before 4 B.C. Professor Cramer’s argument was made in the 19th century by scholars such as Édouard Caspari and Florian Riess.

There are three principal reasons why the 4 B.C. date has prevailed over 1 B.C. These reasons were articulated by Emil Schürer in A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, also published in the 19th century. First, Josephus informs us that Herod died shortly before a Passover (Antiquities 17.9.3, The Jewish War 2.1.3), making a lunar eclipse in March (the time of the 4 B.C. eclipse) much more likely than one in December.

Second, Josephus writes that Herod reigned for 37 years from the time of his appointment in 40 B.C. and 34 years from his conquest of Jerusalem in 37 B.C. (Antiquities 17.8.1, War 1.33.8). Using so-called inclusive counting, this, too, places Herod’s death in 4 B.C.

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Third, we know that the reign over Samaria and Judea of Herod’s son and successor Archelaus began in 4 B.C., based on the fact that he was deposed by Caesar in A.U.C. (Anno Urbis Conditae [in the year the city was founded]) 759, or A.D. 6, in the tenth year of his reign (Dio Cassius, Roman History 55.27.6; Josephus, Antiquities 17.13.2). Counting backward his reign began in 4 B.C. In addition, from Herod the Great’s son and successor Herod Antipas, who ruled over Galilee until 39 B.C., who ordered the execution of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14–29) and who had a supporting role in Jesus’ trial (Luke 23:7–12), we have coins that make reference to the 43rd year of his rule, placing its beginning in 4 B.C. at the latest (see Morten Hørning Jensen, “Antipas—The Herod Jesus Knew,” BAR, September/October 2012).

Thus, Schürer concluded that “Herod died at Jericho in B.C. 4, unwept by those of his own house, and hated by all the people.”

Jeroen H.C. Tempelman
New York, New York

John A. Cramer responds:

Trying to date the death of Herod the Great is attended by considerable uncertainty, and I do not mean to claim I know the right answer. Mr. Tempelman does a good job of pointing out arguments in favor of a 4 B.C. date following the arguments advanced long ago by Emil Schürer. The difficulty is that we have a fair amount of information, but it is equivocal.

The key information comes, of course, from Josephus who brackets the death by “a fast” and the Passover. He says that on the night of the fast there was a lunar eclipse—the only eclipse mentioned in the entire corpus of his work. Correlation of Josephus with the Talmud and Mishnah indicate the fast was probably Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur occurs on the tenth day of the seventh month (mid-September to mid-October) and Passover on the 15th day of the first month (March or April) of the religious calendar. Josephus does not indicate when within that time interval the death occurred.

Only four lunar eclipses occurred in the likely time frame: September 15, 5 B.C., March 12–13, 4 B.C., January 10, 1 B.C. and December 29, 1 B.C. The first eclipse fits Yom Kippur, almost too early, but possible. It was a total eclipse that became noticeable several hours after sundown, but it is widely regarded as too early to fit other information on the date. The favorite 4 B.C. eclipse seems too far from Yom Kippur and much too close to Passover. This was a partial eclipse that commenced after midnight. It hardly seems a candidate for being remembered and noted by Josephus. The 1 B.C. dates require either that the fast was not Yom Kippur or that the calendar was rejiggered for some reason. The January 10 eclipse was total but commenced shortly before midnight on a winter night. Lastly, in the December 29 eclipse the moon rose at 53 percent eclipse and its most visible aspect was over by 6 p.m. It is the most likely of the four to have been noted and commented on.

None of the four candidates fits perfectly to all the requirements. I like the earliest and the latest of them as the most likely. The most often preferred candidate, the 4 B.C. eclipse, is, in my view, far and away the least likely one.

If Jesus was born in Bethlehem, why is he called a Nazorean and a Galilean throughout the New Testament? Learn more >>

A Different Fast

Q&C, BAR, May/June 2014

John Cramer responds to Mr. Tempelman’s letter to the editor (“Queries and Comments,” BAR, January/February 2014) that Herod’s death occurred between a “fast” and Passover. Mr. Cramer acknowledges that the fast of Yom Kippur fits the eclipse but doesn’t fit the time frame of occurring near Passover. There is, however, another fast that occurs exactly one month before Passover: the Fast of Esther! The day before Purim is a fast day commemorating Queen Esther’s command for all Jews to fast before she approached the king. Purim fell on March 12–13, 4 B.C. So there was an eclipse and a fast on March 12–13, 4 B.C., one month before Passover, which would fit Josephus’s statement bracketing Herod’s death by a fast and Passover.

Suzanne Nadaf
Brooklyn, New York

John A. Cramer responds:

This suggestion seems plausible and, if I recall correctly, someone has already raised it. The consensus, if such exists, seems, however, to be that the fast really should be the fast of Yom Kippur, but resolving that issue requires expertise to which I make no claim. Too many possibilities and too little hard information probably leave the precise date forever open.

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When Did Herod Die? And When Was Jesus Born?

Q&C, BAR, September/October 2014

Regarding the date of the death of Herod the Great, the question of which lunar eclipse and which Jewish fast the historian Josephus was referring to must be considered in light of other data that Josephus reported. Professor John Cramer’s suggestion that an eclipse in 1 B.C.E. would place Herod’s death in that year, rather than the generally accepted 4 B.C.E., cannot be reconciled with other historical facts recorded by Josephus.

As is well known, Herod’s son Archelaus succeeded him as the ruler of Judea, as reported by Josephus (Antiquities 8:459). Josephus also recorded that Archelaus reigned over Judea and Samaria for ten years, and that in his tenth year, due to complaints against him from both Jews and Samaritans, he was deposed by Caesar Augustus and banished to Vienna (Antiquities 8:531). Quirinius, the legate or governor of Syria, was assigned by the emperor to travel to Jerusalem and liquidate the estate of Archelaus, as well as to conduct a registration of persons and property in Archelaus’s former realm. This occurred immediately after Archelaus was deposed and was specifically dated by Josephus to the 37th year after Caesar’s victory over Mark Anthony at Actium (Antiquities 9:23). The Battle of Actium is a well-known event in Roman history that took place in the Ionian Sea off the shore of Greece on September 2 of the year 31 B.C.E. Counting 37 years forward from 31 B.C.E. yields a date of 6 C.E. for the tenth year of Archelaus, at which time he was deposed and Quirinus came to Judea. And counting back ten years from that event yields a date of 4 B.C.E. for the year in which Herod died. (The beginning and ending years are both included in this count, since regnal years for both Augustus and the Herodians were so figured.)

These reports, and the chronology derived from them, provide compelling evidence for the generally accepted date of Herod’s death in the spring of 4 B.C.E., shortly after the lunar eclipse of March 13, regardless of the fact that eclipses also occurred in other years.

Jeffrey R. Chadwick
Jerusalem Center Professor of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies
Brigham Young University
Provo, Utah

Read Lawrence Mykytiuk’s BAR article “Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible” >>

There’s More Evidence from Josephus

Q&C, BAR, January/February 2015

In the letter to the editor in BAR, September/October 2014, Jeffrey Chadwick gives the argument for the death of Herod in 4 B.C. [used for determining the date of Jesus’ birth]. For over a century, this has been part of the standard reasoning for the 4 B.C. of Jesus’ birth. However, it does not come to grips with all of the data from Josephus. Elsewhere I have written about this. [An excerpt by Professor Steinmann can be read below.—Ed.]

One cannot simply and positively assert that a few short statements by Josephus about the lengths of reigns of his sons can be used to prove that Herod died in 4 B.C. Instead, one needs critically to sift through all of the evidence embedded in Josephus’s discussion as well as evidence external to Josephus to make a case for the year of Herod’s death.

Andrew Steinmann
Distinguished Professor of Theology and Hebrew
University Marshal
Concordia University Chicago
Chicago, Illinois

Read an excerpt from Andrew E. Steinmann’s book From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011), pp. 235–238 [footnotes removed]; see also his article “When Did Herod the Great Reign?” Novum Testamentum 51 (2009), pp. 1–29.

Originally Herod had named his son Antipater to be his heir and had groomed Antipater to take over upon his death. However, a little over two years before Herod’s death Antipater had his uncle, Herod’s younger brother Pheroras murdered. Pheroras had been tetrarch of Galilee under Herod. Antipater’s plot was discovered, and Archelaus was named Herod’s successor in place of Antipater. Seven months passed before Antipater, who was in Rome, was informed that he had been charged with murder. Late in the next year he would be placed on trial before Varus, governor of Syria. Eventually Herod received permission from Rome to execute Antipater. During his last year Herod wrote a will disinheriting Archelaus and granting the kingdom to Antipas. In a later will, however, he once again left the kingdom to Archelaus. Following his death his kingdom would eventually be split into three parts among Archelaus, Antipas, and Philip.

Josephus is careful to note that during his last year Herod was forbidden by Augustus from naming his sons as his successors. However, in several passages Josephus also notes that Herod bestowed royalty and its honors on his sons. At Antipater’s trial Josephus quotes Herod as testifying that he had yielded up royal authority to Antipater. He also quotes Antipater claiming that he was already a king because Herod had made him a king.

When Archelaus replaced Antipater as Herod’s heir apparent some two years before Herod’s death, Antipater may have been given the same prerogatives as Archelaus had previously enjoyed. After Herod’s death Archelaus went to Rome to have his authority confirmed by Augustus. His enemies charged him with seemingly contradictory indictments: that Archelaus had already exercised royal authority for some time and that Herod did not appoint Archelaus as his heir until he was demented and dying. These are not as contradictory as they seem, however. Herod initially named Archelaus his heir, and at this point Archelaus may have assumed royal authority under his father. Then Herod revoked his will, naming Antipas his heir. Ultimately, when he was ill and dying, Herod once again named Archelaus his heir. Thus, Archelaus may not have legally been king until after Herod’s death in early 1 B.C., but may have chosen to reckon his reign from a little over two years earlier in late 4 B.C. when he first replaced Antipater as Herod’s heir.

Since Antipas would eventually rule Galilee, it is entirely possible that under Herod he already had been given jurisdiction over Galilee in the wake of Pheroras’ death. This may explain why Herod briefly named Antipas as his heir in the year before his death. Since Antipas may have assumed the jurisdiction over Galilee upon Pheroras’ death sometime in 4 B.C., like Archelaus, he also may have reckoned his reign from that time, even though he was not officially named tetrarch of Galilee by the Romans until after Herod’s death.

Philip also appears to have exercised a measure of royal authority before Herod’s death in 1 B.C. Philip refounded the cities of Julias and Caesarea Philippi (Paneas). Julias was apparently named after Augustus’ daughter, who was arrested for adultery and treason in 2 B.C. Apparently Julias was refounded before that date. As for Caesarea Philippi, the date of its refounding was used to date an era, and the first year of the era was 3 B.C. Apparently Philip chose to antedate his reign to 4 B.C., which apparently was the time when Herod first entrusted him with supervision of Gaulanitis.

Additional support for Philip having been officially appointed tetrarch after the death of his father in 1 B.C. may be found in numismatics. A number of coins issued by Philip during his reign are known. The earliest bear the date “year 5,” which would correspond to A.D. 1. This fits well with Philip serving as administrator under his father from 4–1 B.C. He counted those as the first four years of his reign, but since he was not officially recognized by Rome as an independent client ruler, he had no authority to issue coins during those years. However, he was in position to issue coinage soon after being named tetrarch sometime in 1 B.C., and the first coins appear the next year, A.D. 1, antedating his reign to 4 B.C. While the numismatic evidence is not conclusive proof of Herod’s death in 1 B.C., it is highly suggestive.

Given the explicit statements of Josephus about the authority and honor Herod had granted his sons during the last years of his life, we can understand why all three of his successors decided to antedate their reigns to the time when they were granted a measure of royal authority while their father was still alive. Although they were not officially recognized by Rome as ethnarch or tetrarchs until after Herod’s death, they nevertheless appear to have reckoned their reigns from about 4 B.C.

This article was first published in Bible History Daily on January 7, 2015.

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Herod the Great—The King’s Final Journey

Antipas—The Herod Jesus Knew

Herod’s Horrid Death

How Early Christians Viewed the Birth of Jesus

How December 25 Became Christmas

The Magi and the Star

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Ancient Jerusalem: The Village, the Town, the City

Hershel Shanks — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 12:00:22 +0000

It’s made such an enormous impact on Western civilization that it’s hard to fathom how small its population really was—small compared even to the centers of contemporaneous empires to the east and to the west. Of course, I’m talking about Jerusalem.

Today many of us live in cities of millions. Very few of us live in towns of only thousands, but hardly any of us live in a village as small as King David’s capital.

Hillel Geva

In 2016, a study of Jerusalem’s population in various periods has been published by one of Israel’s leading Jerusalem archaeologists, Hillel Geva of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Israel Exploration Society. Geva bases his estimates on “archaeological findings, rather than vague textual sources.” The result is what he calls a “minimalist view.”¹ But whether you accept Geva’s population estimates or those of various other scholars he cites, to the modern observer the ancient city of Jerusalem can only be described as “tiny”—with population estimates at thousands and tens of thousands during many periods of the city’s history. (In comparison, Rome in the century before Jesus lived is estimated to have had a population of 400,000 tax-paying males—so the entire population must have been about a million.)

The first period that Geva considers in his study is from the 18th–11th centuries B.C.E. (Middle Bronze Age II to Iron Age I, in archaeological terms), the period before the arrival of the Israelites. Jerusalem was then confined to the small spur south of the Temple Mount known today as the City of David. As Geva reminds us, even then Jerusalem “was the center of an important territorial entity.” From this period, the area includes a massive fortification system that has recently been excavated. Overall, however, the area comprises only about 11–12 acres. Geva estimates the population of the city during this period at between 500 and 700 “at most.” (Previously other prominent scholars had estimated Jerusalem’s population in this period as 880–1,100, 1,000, 2,500, 3,000; still this is hardly what we would consider a metropolis.)

The shaded area reflects the current walled Old City of Jerusalem. in article Ancient Jerusalem

The next period Geva considers is the period of the United Monarchy, the time of King David and King Solomon and a couple centuries thereafter (1000 B.C.E. down to about the eighth century B.C.E.). In David’s time, the borders of the city did not change from the previous period. However, King Solomon expanded the confines of the city northward to include the Temple Mount. This increased the size of the city to about 40 acres, but the increase in population was not proportionate since much of this expansion was taken up with the Temple and royal buildings. “It is likely that Jerusalem attracted new inhabitants of different social classes,” Geva tells us. “Some of these people came to reside in the city as a consequence of their official and religious capacities, while others came to seek a livelihood in its developing economy.” Geva estimates the population of the city at this time at about 2,000. (Previously, other scholars had estimated the number of people living in the city at this time as 2,000, 2,500 or 4,500–5,000.)

In the mid-eighth century B.C.E., the area usually referred to as the Western Hill was added to the city of Jerusalem. This area is well documented archaeologically. With this addition, more than a hundred acres were added to the city, and the population of the city increased proportionately. According to some scholars, this increase may have been at least in part due to the influx of refugees from the north after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C.E.

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By the end of the First Temple period (the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.), the walled city of Ancient Jerusalem covered 160 acres. By that time, settlement also extended northward outside the city walls, all of which expanded the city further. At its height, the population of Jerusalem at the end of the eighth century B.C.E., according to Geva, was 8,000.

As a result of the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrian monarch Sennacherib in 701 B.C.E., Ancient Jerusalem’s population declined to about 6,000, and so it remained until the Babylonians destroyed the city in 586 B.C.E. and forced much of its population into exile in Babylon.

Other population estimates of Jerusalem during the nearly 200 years before the Babylonian destruction vary widely—partially because they focus on different time periods. Geva’s estimate is carefully grounded in archaeological data.

After the Babylonian destruction, the few inhabitants who remained in the city (or who returned) lived primarily in the old area of the City of David. After the Persians wrested control of Jerusalem from the Babylonians and even after Ancient Jerusalem became the capital of the Persian province of Yehud, Jerusalem continued to be confined to the spur known as the City of David with an estimated population of about a thousand people on 40 acres. (Geva calls it “minute.” Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University puts the number even lower: 400 to 500.)

It was not until the late Hellenistic (Hasmonean) period (150–50 B.C.E.) that Jerusalem flourished again, just as it had at the time before the Babylonian destruction. Geva’s population estimate: 8,000.

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The next period—the Herodian (or Early Roman) period—extending from about 50 B.C.E. to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., includes the time when Jesus is associated with the city. Again, this period is very well documented archaeologically, but estimates of the city’s population at the time of the Roman destruction vary widely. One scholar estimated the number at nearly a quarter million, another at more than a 100,000. Several put the number around 75,000. A number of others estimated between 25,000 and 75,000. Geva, always the population minimalist, estimates the number at 20,000.

In the Byzantine period (fourth–seventh centuries C.E.), Jerusalem was a Christian city.^a Estimates of the city’s population are as high as 100,000 and then go down gradually to 70,000 to 60,000 to 50,000 to 25,000. Geva’s estimate: 15,000.

In 637 C.E. the Muslims besieged Jerusalem; the period of Islamic Jerusalem commenced. The change in the population’s religious commitment was gradual but constant. And since the city of Jerusalem was not as central to Islam as to Christianity, the number of people living there gradually declined. By the 10th–11th centuries C.E., the city was confined to the area of the present Old City. Geva estimates the population at only 7,000.

However you cut it, Jerusalem was a tiny place in ancient times. Yet it played a major role in the march of history.

Sidebar: Jerusalem over the Ages

Jerusalem from the Middle Bronze Age through to the Early Islamic Period.²

Image by Ravit Nenner-Soriano; timeline by Noa Evron

“Ancient Jerusalem: The Village, the Town, the City” by Hershel Shanks originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2016. It was first republished in Bible History Daily on May 9, 2016.

Notes

a. See Hershel Shanks, “After Hadrian’s Banishment: Jews in Christian Jerusalem,” BAR, September/October 2014; Eilat Mazar, “Temple Mount Excavations Unearth the Monastery of the Virgins,” BAR, May/June 2004; Jodi Magness, “Illuminating Byzantine Jerusalem,” BAR, March/April 1998.

1. Hillel Geva, “Jerusalem’s Population in Antiquity: A Minimalist View,” Tel Aviv 41 (2014), pp. 131–160.

2. We thank Hillel Geva and Tel Aviv (Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University) for the images.

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Layers of Ancient Jerusalem

Where the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem Stood

Estimating the Population of Ancient Jerusalem

Exclusive New Photos of Ancient Jerusalem’s Eastern Gate

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What Did Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem Look Like?

Jennifer Drummond — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 12:00:54 +0000

2016 was the golden anniversary of Israeli archaeologist Michael Avi-Yonah’s model of Herod’s Temple. The model, originally commissioned for the Holy Land Hotel in Jerusalem and part of a much larger model of ancient Jerusalem, is now housed in the Israel Museum. Photo: Steven Fine.

The year 2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the now-iconic model of Herod’s Temple created by Israeli historian and archaeologist Michael Avi-Yonah. The model, completed in 1966 after four years of construction, was commissioned by Hans Kroch of the Holy Land Hotel in Jerusalem. After 40 years at the hotel, in 2006 the model was restored and moved to its current home at the Israel Museum.

The model of Herod’s Temple is part of a larger model of ancient Jerusalem. It depicts Jerusalem as it was before the Romans destroyed the city—and Herod’s Temple—in 70 C.E. during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. But just how accurate is the model? In “A Temple’s Golden Anniversary” in the January/February 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Peter J. Schertz and Steven Fine discuss this tantalizing question.

Michael Avi-Yonah used both textual and archaeological sources—including Josephus’s writings, the New Testament, later Rabbinic sources and depictions on artifacts such as Jewish revolt coins, as well as his own extensive knowledge of Herodian, Near Eastern and Roman architectural styles—to create a “highly fanciful and also highly probable” model of Herod’s Temple.

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As with any reconstruction of a long destroyed ancient building, especially one as important as Herod’s Temple, many complications surround Michael Avi-Yonah’s model. Josephus describes Herod’s Temple extensively in his Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, but each description differs slightly, and neither allows for easy architectural reconstruction. Other elements of Josephus’s descriptions, such as the height of the Temple gate doors—which Josephus lists at 49 feet high and 24.5 feet wide—could be exaggerated, as Josephus was wont to do. However, doors of this size were known to exist in the ancient world. Two examples can be found in Rome itself: at the Pantheon and at the Senate House in the Roman Forum. Thus, Avi-Yonah’s model of Herod’s Temple stays true to Josephus’s description. This is but one of the decisions Avi-Yonah had to make concerning his representation of Herod’s Temple.

What are some of the other controversies and complications surrounding Herod’s Temple model? For the answer to this question and more, read the full article “A Temple’s Golden Anniversary” by Peter J. Schertz and Steven Fine as it appears in the January/February 2016 issue of BAR.

BAS Library Members: Read the full article “A Temple’s Golden Anniversary” by Peter J. Schertz and Steven Fine in the January/February 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 10, 2016.

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King Herod the Great

Herod’s Mighty Temple Mount

Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem

Reconstructing the Magnificent Temple Herod Built

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Where Is Golgotha, Where Jesus Was Crucified?

BAS Staff — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 12:00:29 +0000

Does the Church of the Redeemer (pictured here) provide evidence that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the authentic site of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified? Where is Golgotha today in Jerusalem?

According to the New Testament, Golgotha was the name of the site where Jesus was crucified. Where is Golgotha located in Jerusalem? In their Archaeological Views column “Golgotha: Is the Holy Sepulchre Church Authentic?” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Marcel Serr and Dieter Vieweger discuss past and current investigations into the site where Jesus was crucified.

Where is Golgotha today? The exact location where Jesus was crucified is disputed. In the fourth century C.E., the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built at the site of Golgotha as identified by Roman emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena. Scholars began to question this identification in the 19th century, however, since the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is inside the city walls of the present-day Old City of Jerusalem. Golgotha would have to have been located outside the city in accordance with Roman and Jewish customs of the time. The Gospels, too, seem to suggest that Jesus was crucified outside of the city (Mark 15:20; Matthew 27:31ff; John 19:17ff). So where is Golgotha located?

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Where is Golgotha? Was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site where Jesus was crucified, located within or outside of the city walls when it was built in the fourth century C.E.? The drawing here depicts the present-day Old City of Jerusalem (shaded in gray) as well as the proposed location of the so-called Second Wall that would have stood during Jesus’ time. Drawing: Leen Ritmeyer.

It’s important to note that the current Old City walls are not the ones from Jesus’ time. As Serr and Vieweger note in their Archaeological Views column, “Efforts to find a so-called Second Wall south of the Holy Sepulchre Church that had served as the northern wall of Jerusalem in Jesus’ time (and would have moved the site of the church outside the city in Jesus’ time) proved elusive—although Josephus, the knowledgeable first-century Jewish historian, does refer to such a wall (The Jewish War 5.146).”

Eminent scholars Conrad Schick and Louis-Hugues Vincent thought they had found the Second Wall in 1893 when a wall was uncovered during the construction of the Church of the Redeemer just south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For almost a century this seemed to solve the problem of authenticity—the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was located at Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified!

But in the 1970s, German archaeologist Ute Wagner-Lux of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem excavated under the Church of the Redeemer and determined that this wall could not have been the Second Wall. Why? “This wall was only five feet thick—far too narrow to be a city wall,” say Serr and Vieweger. So the search began anew.

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All was not lost, though. The excavations at the Church of the Redeemer do reveal clues that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is located outside the elusive Second Wall.

To learn what evidence leads Serr and Vieweger to believe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre could be the authentic location of Golgotha, read their full Archaeological Views column “Golgotha: Is the Holy Sepulchre Church Authentic?” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

BAS Library Members: Read the full Archaeological Views column “Golgotha: Is the Holy Sepulchre Church Authentic?” by Marcel Serr and Dieter Vieweger in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on May 23, 2016.

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The Holy Sepulchre in History, Archaeology, and Tradition

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (in Bologna, Italy)

Does the Holy Sepulchre Church Mark the Burial of Jesus?

Archaeological Views: Golgotha: Is the Holy Sepulchre Church Authentic?

Easter and the Death of Jesus

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The Stones of Herod’s Temple Reveal Temple Mount History

BAS Staff — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 12:00:16 +0000

Ancient construction techniques at Herod’s Temple were more sophisticated than we might think. A stonecutter, right, uses a pickax to cut a channel in a limestone block. Meanwhile another worker, left, pours water over some logs stacked in the channel between two blocks. The water will cause the wood to swell, exerting lateral pressure on the block and splitting the block off of the bedrock to which it is attached at bottom. Because the limestone lay in natural horizontal layers, the blocks would cleave along a relatively neat, horizontal line. Studying the ancient construction methods used to create the Herodian Temple give us clues to Temple Mount history. Photo: Leen Ritmeyer

Building and furnishing the Herodian Temple involved more than stone quarrying and laying, but the stones and foundations of Herod’s Temple can give us clues to Temple Mount history.

What ancient construction techniques can be seen on the site of Herod’s Temple? What does this tell us about Temple Mount history? In the following article, “Quarrying and Transporting Stones for Herod’s Temple Mount,” Leen Ritmeyer, a specialist in Temple Mount history, looks at the quarrying effort and expertise evident in the building of the Herodian Temple.

Horizontally layered local limestone was used to build Herod’s Temple. Stonecutters cut down through blocks of stone; then wood pilings placed in the crevices were saturated with water to such an extent that the pressure broke off the block from the bedrock. Some of this limestone can still be seen uphill from the Herodian Temple in modern Jerusalem. The force of gravity was itself a helpful tool in ancient construction techniques, as well as wooden rollers and oxen. But once on the site of Herod’s Temple, the huge stones had to be set in place; some ashlars of the Herodian Temple weighing 160,000 pounds still stand at a height of 100 feet above the foundations of Herod’s Temple. The physical work of angels? Some have wondered, but ancient construction techniques at Herod’s Temple were more sophisticated than we might imagine. Temple Mount history indicates this was the site of the First Temple, and that the previous platform and additional fill dirt was used to the best advantage.

Ancient construction techniques are evident in the wall of the Herodian Temple. Not all of the stones used in the Herodian Temple weighed 160,000 pounds. Some, weighing merely a few tons, were thrown down from above when the Romans destroyed the city in 70 A.D.

For illustrations by Ritmeyer further explaining ancient construction techniques, see the following article about the Herodian Temple.

Quarrying and Transporting Stones for Herod’s Temple Mount

Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989

by Leen Ritmeyer

Moving the stones: Stages of quarrying and moving ashlars. In the background, at left, the unworked bedrock exhibits the natural horizontal layering of the limestone in the Jerusalem vicinity. Blocks cut, but not yet removed, appear at upper right. The thickness of the limestone layers determined the height of the blocks that were quarried. Photo: Leen Ritmeyer.

Herod’s construction in the Temple Mount area, like the construction of most of Jerusalem’s buildings, used local limestone.

The mountains around Jerusalem are composed of Turonian and Cenomanian limestone that has a characteristic horizontal layering. These horizontal layers vary between about 18 inches and 5 feet thick. In exceptional cases, the layers are even thicker.

To quarry this limestone the stonecutter first straightened the face of the stone. This consisted of chiseling the rock in such a way as to produce a flat vertical surface—the side of the incipient stone—and a flat surface on top. Next, with a pickax he dug narrow channels 4 to 6 inches wide on all sides except the bottom of the incipient stone. In two of these grooves, at right angles, the quarryman would insert dry wooden beams, hammer them tightly into place and pour water over them. This caused the wood to swell, and the consequent pressure caused the stone to separate from the lower rock layer.

Stone quarrying: Remains of an ancient quarrying operation can be seen at a tomb complex near the Siloam Pool. Shallow, incomplete channels cut around incipient blocks appear in the bedrock. Photo: Hershel Shanks.

The next stage required squaring-off the stones and preparing them for transportation. The smaller stones were simply placed on wagons, according to Josephus. Some of the corner stones in the Temple Mount, however, weighed 50 tons and sometimes more. Special techniques were developed to transport these stones on large wooden rollers. While shaping the stones, the masons left 12-inch-long projections on opposite sides of each stone. These projections were later removed. In the meantime, however, ropes were placed around these projections, and two short, but strong, cranes outfitted with winches lifted the stones on one side and lowered them onto rollers. Oxen could then pull the stones with ropes placed around the projections. According to Josephus, 1,000 oxen were used in this work.

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Building the wall: Building Herod’s Temple Mount wall involved several steps, as illustrated in this drawing. First the line of the wall was laid out by markers (1). Then the construction site was cleared down to bedrock (2). Next the bedrock itself had to be cut and leveled before the ashlars could be put into place (3). Oxen hauled the ashlars from the quarry on rollers (4) for a mile or so down to the construction site, which was 125 feet lower than the quarries north of the Temple Mount. A crane powered by a treadmill lowered the blocks into place (5), and once the courses had been laid, workers chiseled off the projections (6). In a few cases, a projection was not chiseled off for some reason (see photograph), thus providing archaeologists with excellent evidence of the construction process. Photo: Leen Ritmeyer.

The quarries were probably located near what we know today as the Russian Compound, in the heart of modern Jerusalem. There a 50-foot-long column, still attached to the bedrock, can be seen. In the process of quarrying the column, a natural fissure was observed in the rock, so the workmen simply stopped work and left the damaged column in place. The quarries in this area are 125 feet higher than the Temple Mount, so the journey of over a mile to the Temple Mount was downhill. Using the force of gravity obviously made transportation easier.

Once the stones arrived at the building site, they had to be put in place. At both the southwest and southeast corners of the Temple Mount, stones weighing over 80 tons are still in place at a height of at least 100 feet above the foundations. How did they get there? At our excavation site, some of the more pious local laborers who worked with these stones were so awed by their size that they attributed their placement to angels. It would have been impossible, they said, for mere man to lift them into place. In a sense, they were right; no man could have lifted these stones to such a height, notwithstanding all the sophisticated Roman engineering equipment available at the time.

On this block from the southeast corner of the Temple Mount wall, the projection used for maneuvering the stone was not chiseled off, thus providing archaeologists with excellent evidence of the construction process. Photo: Leen Ritmeyer.

In fact, the stones did not have to be lifted from below. They were actually lowered into place from above. The 16-foot-thick walls of the Temple Mount are basically retaining walls, built to retain the high pressure of the fill that was dumped between the previous platform and the new Temple Mount wall. This was Herod’s way of enlarging the previous platform to twice its original size. Herod’s engineers solved the construction problem by pouring the internal fill simultaneously with the construction of the walls. Thus, the first course of stones was laid in the valley surrounding the previous Temple Mount. Then the area between the new and old walls was filled up to the level of the top of this course. This created a new work-level on top of which, from the inside, a second course of stones could be laid. Again fill would be added on the inside, so that a third course of stones could be laid. And so on, course after course, until the whole of Herod’s extension was raised up to the level of the previous Temple platform.

The buildings on the Temple Mount were built of smaller stones. Stones from these structures were thrown down into the street below when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Most of them were later scavenged for other construction. But a few were found in the excavations. These weighed between two and three tons. Stones of this size would have posed no problem for the skilled builders of Herod’s Temple Mount.

“Quarrying and Transporting Stones for Herod’s Temple Mount,” by Leen Ritmeyer first appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on February 21, 2013.—Ed.

Originally from Holland, Leen Ritmeyer trained as a teacher of physical education in Arnhem before coming to Israel. His work on the Temple Mount excavations, initially as surveyor and then as architect, served as a springboard to a career as an archaeological architect at numerous digs in Israel. Ritmeyer has worked at three other major Jerusalem excavations—the Jewish Quarter, the City of David and the Citadel—producing important reconstruction drawings for all.

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Quarrying and Transporting Stones for Herod’s Temple Mount

How Herod Moved Gigantic Blocks to Construct Temple Mount

Gold-Plated Building Stone Found Near Temple Mount

What the Temple Mount Floor Looked Like

The Stones the Builders Rejected

Sacred Geometry: Unlocking the Secret of the Temple Mount, Part 1

How the Temple Mount Developed

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What Were the Crusades and How Did They Impact Jerusalem?

BAS Staff — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 11:00:24 +0000

For almost 200 years during the Middle Ages, Christian Crusades wrested control of the Palestine region from the Selçuk Turks through a series of military incursions made up of Christian armies largely from Western Europe. The control that the Christian Crusades exerted over the Holy Land was tenuous at best. What were the Crusades? Why were the Crusades important? Today, when we answer this question, it is often the images of Crusades history from Hollywood that we have in mind: glorious and righteous warriors in the form of gallant knights leading the Christian Crusades, anointed by God to save the Holy Land from the infidel.

What were the Crusades’ impact on the architecture of Jerusalem? Crusader kings ruled the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem from the Citadel, just south of David’s Gate (the present-day Jaffa Gate). Although the Crusaders made few alterations to Jerusalem’s walls, they rebuilt the Citadel by reinforcing David’s Tower (far left) and the fortress’s walls. The only remains of Crusades history visible in the photo are the Citadel’s eastern arcade, marked by the yellow arrow. Photo: David Harris.

What were the Crusades, really? In truth, the Christian Crusades were more of a series of invasions that took place in fits and starts by all manner of Europeans—young, old, poor (and poorly trained)—in addition to the occasional land-holding knight. Crusades history has acquired a bit of a romantic glow in our modern times, a glow that is far from the gritty, bloody reality.

The armies of the Christian Crusades were only able to hold Jerusalem for about 90 years—a shorter period than other regions in Crusades history. So even though Crusades history in Jerusalem is relatively brief, the architecture of the city contains lasting evidence of the Christian Crusades.

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What were the Crusades’ impact on the architecture of the Holy City? Why were the Crusades important? Below, Jack Meinhardt outlines the answer to this question in “When Crusader Kings Ruled Jerusalem.” He explains that some of the most famous churches in Jerusalem were built during the Christian Crusades by Crusaders wishing to memorialize sites they believed to have great Christian significance. The Crusades history of Jerusalem is evident in such churches as St. Anne’s, the Church of the Tomb of the Virgin and of course the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was rebuilt during the Christian Crusades on the site where St. Helen is said to have built the original in the 4th century.

Crusades history may not be as obvious in Jerusalem as it is in Acre, the beautiful city to the northwest of Jerusalem, but it is obvious that the Christian Crusades in Jerusalem’s history made their mark not only in architecture, but also in romantic legend.
What were the Crusades’ impact on the architecture of Jerusalem? Read below to find out.

When Crusader Kings Ruled Jerusalem

by Jack Meinhardt

It was one of the most romantic, chaotic, cruel, passionate, bizarre and dramatic episodes in history. In the 12th and 13th centuries A.D., a continual stream of European armies, mustered mostly in present-day France and Germany, marched out to destroy the infidel. Crusaders attacked non-Christians in northern and eastern Europe; they conducted bloody pogroms against Jews and “heretical” Christians in their own territories; they campaigned to push Muslims off the Iberian peninsula and out of North Africa; and, most important of all, they conquered Palestine, ruling the Holy Land from their citadel in Jerusalem.

Medieval Eastern Mediterranean, with the four Crusader states and other polities.

Easily the most successful of these campaigns was the First Crusade (1096–1099). Palestine had been in Muslim hands since the seventh century, when Persians and then Arabs wrested it from the Christian Byzantine Empire. In the mid-11th century, Seljuk Turks from beyond the Caspian Sea invaded the Near East, converted to Islam and subdued the reigning Arab power, the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. They then pressed north and west, seizing most of Byzantine Anatolia. The Seljuk advance meant that Christian influence in the East was considerably diminished. It also meant that pilgrimage routes, long protected by the Byzantines and friendly Arab rulers, were closed down: Christians could no longer walk where Jesus had walked.

The Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed to the West for help. In 1095 Pope Urban II responded; in a speech delivered at Clermont, in central France, he called for a crusade to save the Christian East from Islam. Seljuk Turks, Urban reportedly said, were disemboweling Christians and dumping the bloody viscera on church altars and baptismal fonts. Those who joined this crusade, or “took the cross,” the pope announced, would have their sins absolved, for God himself desired that Christianity recover Jerusalem.

The Fihrist, and the scholarship it represents, is one of the shining positives that emerged from the Crusades. Learn more in Bible History Daily >>

The First Crusade, like most of the later ones, was led by European noble and royal families, who raised funds and armies from their estates. (Even the official, pope-sponsored crusades, however, were joined by ragtag groups of women, children, paupers, priests and elderly penitents.) One army, for example, was led by three brothers with possessions in Lorraine—Eustace, Baldwin and Godfrey; Godfrey and Baldwin would become the first rulers of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Other Crusaders were the king of France’s brother, Hugh of Vermandois, and William the Conqueror’s son, Robert of Normandy. A Norman family that had settled in southern Italy sent Tancred, who was the first to lead Crusader troops into Jerusalem and onto the Temple Mount.

These armies marched overland to Constantinople, where Emperor Alexius I ferried them across the Bosphorus into Asia. They then crossed Anatolia and laid siege to Antioch, which fell in 1098—becoming the first crusader colony in the Near East.

Most of the Crusader forces continued south, facing little resistance as they moved down the Levantine coast. On July 15, 1099, after a two-week siege of Jerusalem, Tancred broke through the city’s northern wall, near Herod’s Gate. The city’s Muslim rulers surrendered without a fight. The next morning, however, Jerusalem became a killing field as the conquerors slaughtered nearly every Muslim in the city and burned down a synagogue in which Jews had sought refuge. “With drawn swords our men ran through the city not sparing anyone, even those begging for mercy,” wrote Fulcher of Chartres, who served as Baldwin’s chaplain. “They desired that this place, so long contaminated by the superstition of the pagan inhabitants, should be cleansed from their contagion.”

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The Crusaders elected Godfrey as their first leader. Upon Godfrey’s death in 1100, they named his brother Baldwin as the first king of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (which, in its brief tenure, would have four more kings named Baldwin). In the following decades, the new Crusader kingdom secured the main coastal cities of the Levant: Caesarea (1101), Haifa and Acre (1104), Beirut and Sidon (1110), and Tyre (1124). King Baldwin I (1100–1118) took territories in the Transjordan and built a series of fortresses from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. King Baldwin III (1152–1163) captured Ashkelon from the Egyptian Fatimid dynasty, which was using the city’s port to conduct raids against the Crusader kingdom. By the mid-12th century, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem controlled the territories of present-day Israel, western Jordan and southern Lebanon. In addition, the Crusaders had set up states in Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli. The entire Levant was now a European colony.

On the holy city of Jerusalem itself, the Crusaders left little mark. At first, their activities were concentrated on the Temple Mount (see “The Holiest Ground in the World”). From indigenous Near Eastern Christians, the Crusaders learned that the Temple Mount was associated with such biblical events as the presentation of Christ in the Temple (Luke 2:22–38) and Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven (Genesis 28:11–17). The Crusaders immediately converted the Muslim Dome of the Rock—which, they were told, rested on the site of the Jewish Temple mentioned in the Gospels—into a Christian church, which they called the Templum Domini. They later covered the massive rock inside the building (see photo of Templum Domini in “The Holiest Ground in the World”) with elaborate marble casing, to serve as an altar; they also filled the building’s niches with sacred carvings, erected an intricate iron grille around the building’s inner octagon, and placed an iron cross on top of the dome.

Crusader kings first took up residence in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the southern end of the Temple Mount; but in 1118 they abandoned the mosque for the newly rebuilt citadel, south of the Tower of David. Al-Aqsa then became the residence of the Templar Knights—an order first created to protect pilgrim routes and later transformed into an elite fighting force.

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Once the Crusaders reached the Holy Land, they built churches—like the Church of St. Anne (shown here), supposedly erected on the site of the house where Anne and Joachim gave birth to the Virgin Mary. An earlier, much smaller structure was built on the site in the Byzantine period (fifth century A.D.) to be used as a convent for nuns. The first Crusader king, Baldwin I, banished his Armenian wife to this convent. One of the daughters of Baldwin II (1118–1131), Yvetta, also lived in the convent for a short time. The site thus enjoyed royal patronage—especially that of Baldwin II’s other daughter, Queen Melisende (1131–1152), who built the Church of St. Anne around 1140. In the 19th century the Ottoman sultan donated the church, which had fallen into disrepair, to the French government, which substantially restored the building. Photo: From Jerusalem Architecture by David Kroyanker.

Outside the Temple Mount, the Crusaders built a covered market, a new city gate (Tanners’ Gate), a hospital (run by the Knights of the Order of St. John, also known as the Hospitallers, who, like the Templars, were first founded to care for pilgrims but later became a military force) and various other buildings.

What the Crusaders really built, however, were churches, a number of which still survive in excellent condition. East of the city, on the Mount of Olives, they built the Church of the Tomb of the Virgin over an earlier Byzantine structure, which, according to tradition, contained the tomb of Mary. In this church the Crusaders placed the tomb of Queen Melisende (1131–1152), the daughter of Baldwin II. Just north of the northeast corner of the Temple Mount, they erected the splendid Romanesque Church of St. Anne. The Crusaders’ most enduring architectural legacy, however, is their rebuilding of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (see photo of Church of the Holy Sepulchre in “The Holiest Ground in the World”), on the foundations of the fourth-century A.D. church built by Constantine, supposedly over Jesus’ tomb.

Crusader rule in Jerusalem lasted a mere 90 years. In 1187 the sultan Saladin, who had unified Egyptian and Syrian territories into the Abbasid caliphate, defeated the army of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin, west of the Sea of Galilee, and took control of Jerusalem. For two brief periods in the 13th century, between 1229 and 1244, Crusaders regained control of Jerusalem—but only by treaty with the Muslim Ayyubids (a new caliphate formed by Saladin’s successors), who refused to allow Christians to visit the sacred Temple Mount.

Crusader period Jerusalem

After Saladin’s conquest, the Latin kings ruled from the coastal cities of Tyre and Acre, not from Jerusalem. Their holdings consisted of a thin strip along the Mediterranean, which expanded during Crusades (altogether there were seven official crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries, along with countless smaller ones) and contracted as the Crusaders returned home. In the late 13th century, a new force arose in Egypt, the Mamluks, a class of fierce slave warriors who wrested power from the Ayyubids. The Mamluk sultan Baybars campaigned up the Levantine coast, regaining Crusader possessions. The last Crusader outpost, the city of Acre, fell in 1291, putting an end to the European presence in Palestine.

Subscribers: Read “When Crusader Kings Ruled Jerusalem” by Jack Meinhardt in Archaeology Odyssey, September/October 2000. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in October 2013.

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Where Did the Temple Menorah Go?

Marek Dospěl — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 11:00:56 +0000

Among the spoils of the Jewish War paraded through the center of Rome in the summer of 71 C.E. was the Temple Menorah, depicted in this deeply carved relief panel from the Arch of Titus in Rome, which was erected for the victorious general (and later emperor) to permanently commemorate his major accomplishment. Photo: Courtesy Steven Fine, The Arch of Titus Project.

After quelling a dangerous revolt in the Roman province of Judea in 71 C.E., Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus returned to Rome to publicly celebrate their victory. Following an ancient martial tradition, they marched victoriously through the city center in a riotous triumphal procession, parading prisoners and spoils of the war.

To commemorate this Roman triumph and to honor the victorious general (and later emperor), Titus, Emperor Domitian built an honorific monument—the Arch of Titus, which stands on the main processional street of ancient Rome (Via Sacra) to this day. The relief panels of the Arch of Titus in Rome chronicle the triumphal episodes following the fall of Jerusalem, capturing prominently the triumphal procession. One of the scenes confirms that the Temple Menorah was carried on litters in the parade that took place in the summer of 71 C.E. But what happened to the seven-branched candelabrum after that? The possibilities are explored in detail in the article “Did the Temple Menorah Come Back to Jerusalem?” in the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, where Fredric Brandfon unravels the Menorah’s intricate story.

The first-century C.E. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus informs us that after the triumph—depicted so famously on the Arch of Titus in Rome—most of the Temple treasures were deposited in the newly built Roman Temple of Peace.¹ Josephus rather vaguely mentions “those golden vessels and instruments that were taken out of the Jewish temple.” Was the Temple Menorah among these artifacts?

The Roman Temple of Peace was apparently a magnificent building that Emperor Vespasian built “in so glorious a manner, as was beyond all human expectation and opinion” and had “adorned with pictures and statues.”² It is then no wonder that the Roman polymath Pliny considered this Roman Temple of Peace among the most beautiful buildings in the city.

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Yet we can only speculate that the Temple Menorah was among the Temple spoils and “all such rarities” (as Josephus puts it) collected from every part of the Roman Empire and displayed for public viewing in the Roman Temple of Peace.

The only time the Temple Menorah reappears in our records (after it had been portrayed on the Arch of Titus in Rome in c. 81 C.E.) is when a second-century rabbi Simeon ben Yohai travels to Rome, where he reportedly sees the Menorah. Where precisely? Presumably in the Roman Temple of Peace. This temple then burned down around 192 C.E. It was later rebuilt, but we never again hear of the Temple Menorah.

Only ruins remain of the Roman Temple of Peace that once housed the spoils of the Jerusalem Temple, according to Flavius Josephus’s The Jewish War. Was the Temple Menorah among these treasures? It must have been, although no historical source mentions it explicitly. But would the Temple Menorah have survived the fire that destroyed this pagan temple around 192 C.E.? If so, what followed?

If the Temple Menorah survived the destruction of the Roman Temple of Peace, what happened to it after the sack of Rome by Visigoths in 410 and by Vandals in 455? Is it even possible that the Menorah survived all the calamities and chaos of the fifth and sixth centuries? A tradition recorded by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (c. 500–560) has it that the Temple treasures eventually ended up back in Jerusalem.³ Procopius relates that Emperor Justinian returned the spoils of the Temple to Jerusalem because they were cursed—any city that once housed them was eventually destroyed. Could the Temple Menorah have still been part of the Temple treasures at that point in history and thus found its way back to the holy city?

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Through an in-depth examination of historical accounts, obscure Jewish writings and traditions, Fredric Brandfon tells the fascinating story of the Temple Menorah in his article “Did the Temple Menorah Come Back to Jerusalem?” in the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

BAS Library Members: Read the full article “Did the Temple Menorah Come Back to Jerusalem?” as it appears in the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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A version of this post first appeared in Bible History Daily in 2017

Notes

1. Josephus, The Jewish War 7.158–162.

2. Ibidem.

3. Procopius, The Wars of Justinian, trans. by Henry B. Dewing, introduction and notes by Anthony Kaldellis (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 2014), 4.9.6–9.

The Magdala Stone: The Jerusalem Temple Embodied

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 11:00:38 +0000

Discovered in the center of a first-century C.E. synagogue at the Galilean site of Magdala, the Magdala Stone bears one of the earliest images of the seven-branched menorah. Photo: Yael Yulowich, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

Imagine a first-century Jew living in the land near their Temple in Jerusalem, yet they are too far away to make frequent visits. What did the Temple represent in their daily life? Did they locate God’s presence in the Jerusalem Temple alone or also in their midst when they gathered in the synagogue? For a people living in the diaspora, unable to visit the Temple frequently, what kept the memory and centrality of the Temple fresh in their minds? An intriguing stone uncovered at the site of Magdala on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee in September 2009 might offer a clue. Carved with symbols from the Temple, the quartzite stone was discovered in the middle of an ancient synagogue.

The so-called Magdala Stone is a stone block carved with symbols of the Temple in Jerusalem, with the core of the Temple represented (the Hall, Sanctuary and the Holy of Holies). The stone measure 1.8 by 2 feet with a height of 1 foot. Found almost in the center of the synagogue, the Magdala Stone is believed to be a piece of ceremonial furniture on which the Torah and other sacred scrolls were placed. But is it simply a bimah (a traditional holder for the scrolls), or does it have some deeper significance?

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Various theories are being explored. Dr. Rina Talgam of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a forerunner in research on the Magdala Stone, believes that the Magdala Stone may indicate an early Jewish Movement in which the synagogue was perceived to be a “minor temple.” Gathering together with Scripture could be conceived as a form of spiritual worship in lieu of a ritual sacrifice offered in the Temple. It begs the question: Was there an evolving concept of worship in the diaspora? Was there an understanding of God’s presence in the midst of those who revered Scripture? Can this be considered a form of prayer within a first-century synagogue? Or would this be a Christian interpretation imposed upon a Jewish object? Talgam’s research and reflections on the Magdala Stone are awaiting publication.

The front of the Magdala Stone displays an obviously Jewish symbol, the menorah (see image below). It is currently the oldest carved image of the Second Temple’s seven-branched menorah found in a public place. Its tripod base indicates the likelihood that the artist saw the actual menorah in the Temple.

The seven-branched menorah on the Magdala Stone. Photo: Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

The menorah on the Magdala Stone appears to rest on top of a decorated square—symbolic of the altar of sacrifice. It is flanked by two jars, perhaps representing the water and oil used in the Temple. If a rabbi stood in front of the stone, facing the menorah, he would set his gaze south toward Jerusalem, as though entering the Temple itself.

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Along the sides of the stone, the onlooker sees several pillared archways and another set of archways within, giving it a three-dimensional feel (see image below). Talgam speculates that these archways represent the gates of the Azara, or the wall around the Sanctuary and the wall of the Sanctuary itself. A small object at the start of these archways has the shape of an oil lamp from the Herodian period. One can imagine walking through the Temple’s passageways illuminated by oil lamps.

Pillared archways on the side of the Magdala Stone. Photo: Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

Scholars still debate the meaning of several objects on the top of the Magdala Stone (see image below). For example, opinions differ about the interpretation of two clusters of three hearts—six hearts in total. Are they pretty space fillers? Are they ivy leaves? Are they bread loaves? Motti Aviam, Professor of Archaeology at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, interprets these as bread loaves that were offered on the shewbread table. Splitting each heart in half conjures up an image paralleling the way bread was offered on the shewbread table: two sets of six bread loaves. The symbols representing the shewbread tables look like upside-down cups. Finding this symbol on ancient coins gives credence to this interpretation.

The top of the Magdala Stone. Photo: Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

Another fascinating symbol dominates the center of the top of the Magdala Stone: a six-petaled rosette. It is flanked by columns with palmette capitals, echoing ancient Jewish historian Josephus’s description of the area directly before the Holy of Holies. The rosette itself symbolizes the actual veil before the Holy of Holies. Josephus describes this veil as being decorated with flowers—perhaps with this very rosette.

Curiously, the rosette is a common Jewish motif found on ossuaries, sarcophagi and monumental tomb façades from the late Second Temple period to the second century C.E. Considering this connection, one wonders if it signifies a passing through the “veil” of this life into the presence of God, just as passing through the veil into the Holy of Holies is an entry into God’s glory localized in the Temple.

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This brings us to the final symbol representing the deepest part of the Temple on the Magdala Stone: the Holy of Holies. Two wheels appear suspended in the air with triangular shapes underneath, representing fire (see image below). Early Jewish writings use this imagery to represent the heavenly realm. The wheels are interpreted as the bottom of the chariot, symbolizing God’s throne. The fiery chariot described in Ezekiel 1 and 10 gives credence to the symbol representing God’s presence dwelling both in the Temple and in the heavens.

The back side of a replica of the Magdala Stone at the synagogue. Photo: Magdala Project.

The richness and completeness of the symbols forces the question: Did the Jewish people in Magdala believe God’s presence was among them in a particular way as they gathered around Scripture? If so, Magdala offers more than mere first-century archaeology. The site allows us also to ponder the crossroad of Jewish and Christian history and faith.

Magdala is open daily to the public from 8:00 to 18:00. For more information, visit www.magdala.org.

Jennifer Ristine coordinates the Visitors Center and the Magdalena Institute at the site of Magdala in Israel. Previously an educator, she has been helping in the development of Magdala’s site since September 2014.

This story was first published in Bible History Daily in January, 2019

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