When Scientists Dug A Tunnel In Jerusalem, They Discovered A Ritual Object From The Days Of Jesus

A man walks alone in a grove of olives with his head bowed. He is deeply troubled – perhaps even scared. If you could get close enough to him, you would hear the words of prayer that tumble from his mouth. The man is Jesus, and it’s the evening of the Last Supper. The place where he walks is called Gethsemane. And now a monumental discovery may have shed light on the site where Jesus passed his last night on Earth.

The same story at its core

This is the story according to the Gospels. Each of them has a tale that differs a little in the details, but at base it is the same. Straight after the Last Supper, Jesus went off to pray. Both Mark and Matthew say the place that he went to was called Gethsemane. There, Jesus goes through a night of mental torture.

Ancient olive press

The Garden of Gethsemane was a grove of olive trees. In fact, the name is derived from the local words for an olive press: gat semãnê in Aramaic and gat shemanim in Hebrew. Yet there is very little detail in the Bible, and it gives no mention of Gethsemane’s purpose.

The closest disciples

In the story of the night of the Last Supper, Jesus goes deep into the garden with his closest disciples: Peter, James and John. And the Son of God is obviously upset about what is in store for him. He tells the disciples, “The sorrow in my heart is so great that it almost crushes me.”

Keeping their eyes open

Jesus orders the three disciples to watch out as he prays alone. Though it doesn’t all go to plan. It won’t be possible for Jesus to escape his fate when he is found in the garden. The disciples just can’t keep their eyes open, and they each fall asleep. The holy figure is left alone to agonize over the next day’s suffering.

Cup of suffering

In despair, Jesus asks God to remove his “cup of suffering.” Understandably, he fears what awaits him at Golgotha. But Jesus has to bow the knee to God’s will. He finally says, “Yet not what I want but what you want.” And many artists have depicted the messiah’s lonely hours in the garden.

Grasping the depths of suffering

Jesus’ companions do not really grasp the depth of his suffering. After all, they can’t see the future. Time and again, the group cannot stop themselves from falling asleep. In Peter’s case, he can’t even keep his eyes open for an hour. So, the founder of the Catholic church proves a poor watchman.

Led away to Gethsemane

Eventually, Judas turns up with a gaggle of priests and elders. Alongside them are the armed men who will arrest Jesus and take him away. He calls out to his friends, “The hour has come! Look the Son of Man is now being betrayed into the hands of sinners.” And then Jesus is led off away from Gethsemane.

Profound suffering

It’s natural that the setting for Jesus’ profound suffering and eventual arrest should have interested people who came afterwards. The place that people believed was Gethsemane became a magnet for Christian pilgrims by the end of the 200s. They would pray there – something that several writers of the early medieval years noted.

Kidron Valley

Gethsemane lies across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem. This is a divide that lies to the east of the city between old Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives – a nearby ridge. Jesus would have crossed the valley to get to the garden – perhaps wanting to get away from the city’s confines.

Chock full of olive groves

In Jesus’ time, Gethsemane may have been little more than a field filled with olive trees. Mind you, the Christian writer St. Jerome certainly thought it was a lush place. He interpreted the name as “valley of abundance” – imagining an area chockfull of olive groves and maybe vineyards, too.

The Western Slope

No one knows exactly where Gethsemane was. Despite that, the Orthodox churches of Greece, Russia and Armenia all agree with the Catholic church on a location that sits on the Mount of Olives’ western slope. A site known as the Grotto of the Agony sits near a bridge across the valley, while further south Franciscan monks built a church.

Going back 2,000 years

That site is an interesting possibility, since it has a garden that still has some very old olive trees. There’s some argument over their age, though. And even if they do date back more than 2,000 years, are these the same trees that Jesus walked among? Well, the location certainly fits the description at least.

Church of All Nations

And the Catholics agree, since they built the Church of Gethsemane in that place: the garden is in its grounds. The building – also referred to as the Church of All Nations or Church of the Agony – is a lure for many pilgrims. This makes the edifice one of the leading churches in Christianity.

The period of the Second Temple

The church is not ancient, mind you. Yet when the builders dug its foundations, they discovered previous establishments from both Crusader and Byzantine times. What they didn’t find, though, was anything at all from the period of the Second Temple – the time when Jesus is supposed to have lived.

Linking the church and the Kidron Valley

The Gethsemane Church has seen some extra funding, as the Custody of the Holy Land has looked to develop the area for tourism. For reference, this Franciscan establishment cares for the Holy Places. In late 2020 it was constructing a visitor center and a linking tunnel between the church and the Kidron Valley.

Establishing the Terra Sancta Museum

In Israel, Franciscan monks don’t just pray and worship God. They also work as archeologists doing leading-edge work. The monks set up the Terra Sancta Museum in 1902 in the old city of Jerusalem, and it’s become a haven for archeological finds from places that have suffered in wars since then.

Millions of pilgrims

Head monk Father Francesco Patton described the garden in a press release from December 2020. He said, “Gethsemane is one of the most important sanctuaries in the Holy Land, because in this place the tradition remembers the confident prayer of Jesus and his betrayal and because every year millions of pilgrims visit and pray in this place.”

Tragedy at the tunnel construct

Though something happened during construction that surprised everyone involved. It came while the builders were working on the tunnel between the church and the valley. For no particular reason, the tunnel caved in! This wouldn’t ordinarily have been too big of a deal, but the tunnel’s collapse revealed some interesting finds that piqued the interest of archeologists.

The Israel Antiquities Authority

The Israel Antiquities Authority and students from the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum teamed up to investigate the cave and see what they could rescue. Leading the effort, the two head archeologists for the dig were Amit Re’em and David Yeger. And what they turned up changed views on the history of the area.

Underneath the church

At the same time, the team excavated underneath the church. They found some interesting things under there, too! According to the Times of Israel, there was what remained of a Byzantine church which had been in use between the sixth and eighth centuries. Also, they found a monastery that dated back to the Crusader times.

An important site

No one would debate that the church had been important. It was festooned with fine carvings, after all. Yeger and Re’em had no doubt that it commemorated a significant event mentioned in the Bible. On the floor they found an inscription in Greek that scholars translated for the team. And the words proved to be touching and sincere.

The holy inscription

The inscription read, “For the memory and repose of the lovers of Christ (cross) God who have received the sacrifice of Abraham, accept the offering of your servants and give them remission of sins. (cross) Amen.” Yet it isn’t the most striking thing about the church.

Casting light on a certain time period

That turned out to be the years in which the church had functioned. Yeger told The Times of Israel in December 2020, “It is interesting to see that the [Byzantine-era] church was being used – and may even have been founded – at the time when Jerusalem was under Muslim rule. [This shows] that Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem continued during this period as well.”

A potential group of churches

Re’em told the news outlet that there was no mention of the church in the existing documents. Though it was his belief that there must have been a compound that contained a group of churches. And each one of them would have signified one aspect of the trials that Jesus underwent at this particular location.

Saladin's orders

Meanwhile, the monastery may have been a visitor center or hospice, and it probably existed until 1187. In that year the powerful sultan Saladin – the Muslim victor over the Crusaders – may have ordered it to be knocked down. There is some evidence in historical documents that the sultan ordered stones from churches in the Mount of Olives area to be deployed in fortifying the walls of the city.

Actually much older

Though what excited the archeologists even more than the church and the monastery was something much older. They turned up a ritual bath – or mikveh. This would have been used by Jews for purification. Back before the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the first century, the purifying ritual using a mikveh was extremely important.

All the way back to the year 70

So, when the archeologists found the mikveh at Gethsemane, they probably suspected that it was old. Looking at the rocks around the bath and comparing its typology to others, they were able to confirm that indeed it was. According to The Times of Israel, they dated the bath to the Second Temple era. This ran from the sixth century B.C. until the Temple was razed in A.D. 70.

Something never before seen

Re’em was particularly enthusiastic about the find, too. It was something that had never been seen before at Gethsemane. He told The Times of Israel, “For the first time, we have archeological evidence that something was here in the Second Temple period, in the days of Jesus.” But why the excitement?

Olive press structure

Well, first a word of caution. Nothing that was found at Gethsemane is proof that the gospels are right. But the very name – Gethsemane – doesn’t really fit a field of olive trees. After all, it means “olive press,” and that implies some sort of structure. And the mikveh opens the door to the possibility that the structure was there.

Still seeking evidence

As Re’em explained, you wouldn’t expect to find a mikveh out in the fields. Yet workers might have used one if they had needed to be ritually pure while pressing olives. This leads Re’em to think that the bath does imply that there had been an olive press on the site. Evidence of the press has yet to be found, though.

The meaning behind the discovery

According to The Times of Israel, Re’em said, “It is not from the mikveh that we are so excited, rather the interpretation, the meaning, of it. Because despite there being several excavations in the place since 1919 and beyond, and that there were several findings – from the Byzantine and Crusader eras, and others – there has not been one piece of evidence from the time of Jesus. Nothing!”

Ritual purity

And finding evidence which suggests that there might have been an operation needing ritual purity makes Re’em ask whether he’d stumbled on the true location of Gethsemane. He said, “... As an archeologist, there arises the question: is there evidence of the New Testament story, or maybe it happened elsewhere?”

Ritual baths are quite common

Apparently, ritual baths from the Second Temple era are not uncommon. They have turned up in dozens of spots across Israel, according to the newspaper. In fact, there may have actually been hundreds of discoveries! Yet this find was special. It might go to show that the site picked out by tradition is actually the right one.

The rich could afford them

Most of the ritual baths from that time have been found in specific places. Experts have unearthed some in rich folks’ homes and others near to cemeteries. But the baths have also appeared in an agricultural context, where, Re’em noted, workers in olive oil and wine production used them.

Analyzing the minerals

But is it possible to find out more about this particular mikveh and narrow down its use? Well, to learn more, the team will next be taking some samples of its plaster. They’ll be sent to experts who will scan them to try and find tiny grains of olive pollen and other things that might point to what was washed off in the bath.

Olive oil production

Re’em told The Times of Israel that the pollen grains could give more certainty about the link to producing olive oil. Yet that would take some time, and the experts wouldn’t be giving answers straight away. On top of that, he urged people not to start thinking that the story in the Bible is automatically true if there was an olive press on the site.

Proof remains to be seen

“Let’s not get carried away,” Re’em told the Israeli newspaper. “[Even with this ritual bath], there’s no evidence to the truth of the Gospels.” Be that as it may, the discovery remains an exciting one. And even if it doesn’t prove the Gethsemane story, the find may go to show that the tradition that saw churches built on the site was accurate.

Antiquity of Christian memory

Fr. Patton certainly agreed that the find was important, telling The Times of Israel, “Even the latest excavations conducted on this site have confirmed the antiquity of the Christian memory and tradition linked to the place. And this is very important for us and for the spiritual meaning connected with the archeological findings.”

Future plans release

Re’em shared future plans for the dig in a press release, “The excavation at Gethsemane is a prime example of Jerusalem’s archaeology at its best, in which various traditions and beliefs are combined with archeology and historical evidence. The recently discovered archeological remains will be incorporated in the visitors’ center being built at the site and will be exhibited to tourists and pilgrims, who we hope will soon be returning to visit Jerusalem.”