Denarius of Tiberius (Roman emperor AD 14-37). The coin was the daily wage of a labourer.
The Judean desert. This area, where there is virtually no vegetation except in spring, was the location of the temptations of Jesus (Matthew 4:1-11).
The Good Samaritan, by Vincent van Gogh (Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands)
Painting of the Last Supper in the Temptation Monastery.
The lake of Galilee, the centre of Jesus’ early ministry, is about 13 miles (21 km) from north to south, 8 miles (13 km) across at is widest point. On the far (eastern) side are the Golan Heights
A model of the ‘Jesus boat’, a first century fishing boat excavated from the shore of the Sea of Galilee in 1986. It enables us to know in detail how a boat of Jesus’ time was constructed and what materials were used. The boat’s remains are housed in Kibbutz Ginosar, on the western side of the Lake.
Early morning fishing on the Lake
The synagogue at Gamla in the Golan Heights. A typical first century synagogue was rectangular, with a separate room at one corner where scrolls were kept.
Magdala synagogue (north of Capernaum): carved stone block made some time before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and depicting here the menorah, the 7-branched candelabrum which lit Solomon’s temple. Motifs on the sides of the stone appear to symbolize aspects of the Jerusalem temple.
Tyrian half-shekel coin, dated AD 36-37. Because its purity could be relied on, this is the coinage in which Jews had to pay their annual tax to the temple (Matthew 17:24).
Gethsemane. In an olive grove such as this Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest.
Crucifixion was a slow and painful way to die. In 1968 the remains of a man who had been crucified were discovered in Jerusalem. The photo shows that a nail driven through the victim’s heel bone held his feet to the cross.
Stones displaced by the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 (see Luke 19:44).
The Garden Tomb, popularized as Golgotha by General Gordon of Khartoum in1883. The real place of Jesus’ burial is far more likely to have been where the Holy Sepulchre church now stands, but this tomb shows clearly how a body would be laid on the stone floor, with the head on the slightly raised ‘pillow’ at the far end.
Garden tomb interior
A first century rock-hewn tomb inside the Holy Sepulchre Church.
A tomb with rolling stone, near Mt Carmel.
The distinctive domes of the Holy Sepulchre church. The emperor Constantine built the first church here in the early 4th century. It was destroyed by the Moslem caliph Hakim in 1009. After rebuilding during the following 150 years the church has remained substantially as it was then.
Inside the Holy Sepulchre church, this elaborate monument over what is believed to be the place of Jesus’ burial dates only from the early 19th century, when it replaced an earlier structure destroyed by fire.
Holy Sepulchre church, mosaic of Christos Pantocrator (‘Almighty’) in the dome.
While the main church is mostly Roman Catholic, Christians of some other traditions have their altars and shrines. A community of Ethiopian monks lives here on the church’s roof and worships in a small chapel en route from here to the inside of the church.
The old Roman road from Jerusalem to Mozah, one of several proposed sites of the biblical Emmaus (Luke 24:13).
An ossuary (a receptacle for the bones of the dead) discovered in Jerusalem in 1990 and thought to be that of the high priest Caiaphas, though some have questioned this identification. Among wealthy Jews of that time, a corpse would be buried in a family tomb, and after the flesh had decomposed the bones would be placed in a finely carved limestone chest such as this one. The name ‘Yehosef bar Qayafa’ (‘Joseph son of Caiaphas’) is inscribed on one side.
