Archaeology Proves the Gospels Are Telling the Truth w/ Dr. Craig Evans

Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody to the Dig In Podcast. I'm your host, Pastor Johnny Ova, and I have the privilege of having a truly incredible guest with me today, Dr. Craig Evans, one of the foremost scholars on the historical Jesus and New Testament archaeology, which, if people know me, is a little interest of mine that I'm always talking about and always looking up. Dr. Evans, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Craig Evans: You're very welcome.

Johnny Ova: Let's jump right into the conversation. For someone who thinks archaeology is just digging up old pots, how would you describe what biblical archaeology actually reveals about the world Jesus walked in?

Dr. Craig Evans: What archaeology does is give us a context. We dig up all kinds of things that are mundane: the kind of food people ate, how they lived, what their houses looked like, the roads they walked on, the clothing and shoes they wore. Archaeology got kind of mixed up with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones, and that's just smash and grab. That's a treasure hunt: "Hey, we found a valuable artifact, let's steal it." That actually reflects archaeology a long time ago, if you could even call it archaeology. It was basically looting. But archaeology now is digging down an inch at a time. It's uncovering what's been left behind, either in an act of destruction, a natural disaster, or just neglect.

Dr. Craig Evans: People build on top, build on top, build on top, so the further down we go, the older it is. What we unearth are broken pieces of pottery, sometimes lost coins, pieces of metal, jewelry, things like that, and inscriptions. And if the climate is right, like the dry sands of Egypt, we find ancient writings, lots of them, or in the Dead Sea region, the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. What it mostly does is provide us with a context. Then you read a Gospel story, or a story in Acts, or we could be talking about the Old Testament, and you realize, "Oh, that's what was going on. I see. I understand it better." That's the main thing archaeology does. A lot of people think archaeology proves this and that. Sometimes it does. But what archaeology mostly does is help us understand the world of the Bible better. And then we can interpret scripture more accurately. That's the big benefit, and that's why I'm so enthusiastic about archaeology.

Johnny Ova: Very cool. How did you get started in this? Is it something you always wanted to do?

Dr. Craig Evans: No. Like a lot of people, early on, even when I was a PhD student getting really serious in biblical studies, I thought archaeology is so specialized only certain kinds of people can do it. Most of us just end up studying the Bible, and we should pay attention to what the archaeologists are doing. As I got deeper into my academic life, I was already an assistant professor, then an associate professor, and I thought, how can I up my game? I paid attention to it. I started subscribing to Biblical Archaeology Review. I still subscribe to it. And I thought, I need to go to Israel and see it myself. That was 35 years ago.

Dr. Craig Evans: I've gone back to Israel, sometimes you can't because of a recent war or whatever, maybe 30 times, and I've volunteered on digs. I'm not an archaeologist, but I know what archaeology is. I've been at dig sites in Cyprus too, by the way. I wanted to be in a different setting and see how it was similar to or different from archaeology in Israel. I've learned a lot. I keep up with the literature. I've contributed to the literature. I've written studies on Jesus and archaeology. And it is work. You need to go there. We're digging up the past one inch at a time, and you have to work with people who are well trained. I've worked with Shimon Gibson in Israel, for example. I know several archaeologists in Israel.

Dr. Craig Evans: And I didn't expect this, but along the way it told me the Gospels are trustworthy. Because guess what? Israeli archaeologists who might not even believe in God, who might be agnostic or whatever, if they're concerned with the first century, always use Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Book of Acts as their primary sources. Also Josephus, the Jewish historian. Why do they do that? It isn't some kind of canonical privileging. It isn't out of theology. It's because they find them to be accurate sources. That told me a lot. Why do they find them accurate? Because, they will say, they reflect the way things actually were.

Dr. Craig Evans: I've come to understand that if you get 50 or 100 people to volunteer and dig with you in Israel for two weeks or four weeks, you want to know where to dig, and you want to understand what you've dug up. If you just dig a great big hole in the ground and move 50 tons of earth and debris and have nothing to show for it, you're out of business. You'll never get another dig permit. So they want to know where to dig. They want a payoff, where people say, "Wow, that was fantastic. Look what we found. We now understand things better." So you use your best sources. And right on down the line, these Israeli archaeologists, and of course archaeologists from Europe and North America and around the world, all use Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and Josephus. Why? Because they're reliable sources. They don't use the Gospel of Thomas. They don't use Gnostic gospels. They don't use these quacky things some North American biblical scholars are infatuated with, because those things don't help. They don't reflect the reality of the past. That's what I've learned along the way, and it has really helped me understand the Gospels better and appreciate them more for being very accurate.

Johnny Ova: Amazing. I can't imagine what that first trip was like, going to a dig site like that. What a privilege.

Dr. Craig Evans: I'll tell you what was a big surprise. I grew up in California, and as a kid in grade school I was told California has a Mediterranean climate. I wasn't sure what that meant. Then years later I fly to Israel, we're landing at Ben Gurion Airport, and I'm looking out the window of the airplane thinking, "I think we made a wrong turn somewhere. We're landing where I grew up in California." Then I understood why they said a Mediterranean climate. It looked exactly the same. It was really amazing.

Johnny Ova: Wow. All right, here's a question that gets asked a lot. It's a popular assumption that the Gospel writers invented details, writing decades removed from the events with no real knowledge of the first century. How does archaeology challenge that assumption?

Dr. Craig Evans: Easily. We have the Gospel of Thomas, written decades and decades after everything. I date it to the second century, as most scholars now do, the middle of the second century or even later. Does the Gospel of Thomas exhibit verisimilitude? No. As one interpreter said, if we only had the Gospel of Thomas, would we even know Jesus was Jewish? Good question. Archaeology makes it crystal clear that something like Thomas, which really is late, doesn't know what it's talking about. But you have this correlation with Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, which would not exist if they were written in the second century, a couple of generations later, by authors who weren't using eyewitness testimony and didn't know what they were talking about. You would not have that verisimilitude.

Dr. Craig Evans: That's very important right away. But there are other things about the Gospels that tell us these guys are telling the truth. Paul the apostle is an early source. Everyone agrees Paul's letters were written in the 50s and early 60s, so they're not decades and decades later. Paul in his letters talks about Peter. He usually calls him Cephas, rock, the same as Petros, Peter. He knows John. He knows James, the Lord's brother. So he knows eyewitnesses, people who were part of Jesus's ministry. And yet Paul finds it necessary to elaborate on and augment Jesus's teaching. He actually says so in the Corinthian letters: "Now look, this is from me, not from the Lord."

Dr. Craig Evans: This tells me, contrary to some of the German form critics 100 years ago, that the early church was not simply making things up and putting in the mouth of Jesus whatever it needed for guidance. Otherwise, why does Paul have to do this? It's not there. Paul extrapolates and explains and says, "Look, I'm guided by the Spirit of God. I'm not getting this straight from Jesus. This is my opinion, but I have the Spirit. I know what I'm talking about." That wouldn't be happening, because the Gospels would have Jesus talking about spiritual gifts, or the place of women in leadership, or purity and food sacrificed to idols, or Gentiles in the church, all the things that were controversial in the early church. We would have those sayings on the lips of Jesus if they were just making stuff up 50 years later. But they don't.

Dr. Craig Evans: So even though the Gospels begin to circulate around the time of Paul's last letters, they're truthful. They're not reflecting what Paul finds it necessary to talk about. Now, that's an interesting thing. Have you thought about that? That shows restraint. The Gospel writers are saying, "I know Jesus didn't say anything about gifts. I know Jesus didn't say anything about Gentiles eating with Jewish believers or about meat sacrificed to idols. But we're only going to pass on what Jesus taught, and we're going to learn from that and extrapolate from it what the church needs to know in this later time." That tells me the Gospel writers had integrity. They confined themselves to what Jesus actually said, and they did not yield to the temptation to put words in his mouth to make him more up to date and more relevant.

Johnny Ova: Very interesting, because you're right. If they were adding to what he said to push an agenda, they could have made him say pretty much whatever they wanted.

Dr. Craig Evans: That's right. And this flies in the face of what the form critics would say. They would often say the early church came up with sayings that answered questions and met the needs of the time. Well, that's funny. How come they didn't come up with this, that and the other thing? Those were real questions. Paul had to treat them. The early church convenes in Acts 11, the first Jerusalem council as I'd call it, and again in Acts 15 to debate these thorny, divisive questions, and Jesus doesn't speak to them. That tells me they're only passing on what Jesus taught. We have to go beyond that, do some learning and thinking, and base our decisions on principles that grow out of Jesus's teaching. But we're not going to put words in his mouth. We're not going to have Jesus say things he didn't say, even though that would be quite convenient.

Johnny Ova: Speaking of Jesus's public ministry and the synagogue, some skeptics have argued that synagogues didn't even exist in Galilee during Jesus's time. What does the evidence show?

Dr. Craig Evans: I know the guy we're talking about. My wife and I knew him and his wife. He's dead now. He was many years older than I. We traveled in Europe together at Society for New Testament Studies meetings in the 90s, and I didn't have the heart to bring it up and say to him, "Why in the world?" You'll see this in scholarship. You'll have a mountain of evidence that supports something, and over here, nothing against it. Which option do you choose? Well, this one, of course. It's perverse. There was another fellow, also deceased now, whom I knew in British Columbia, Canada, who wanted to argue that the Gospels are wrong to have Jesus encounter Pharisees in Galilee. He'd say the Pharisees are only in Jerusalem. Wait a minute. I know this guy, let's see, what's his name? Saul of Tarsus. He's a Pharisee. He lives in Tarsus. He's not even in Israel, and he's the son of a Pharisee.

Dr. Craig Evans: So we can't have Pharisees in Galilee, but they can be up north in Syria? Jesus in one of his sayings says, "Woe to you Pharisees, you travel to the ends of the earth to make one disciple." But wait, they're not in Galilee? It's perverse. I'm not a psychologist, so don't ask me to explain it. Back to synagogues. The first man, a nice fellow, was arguing in the 1990s, in probably four or five different studies, and one scholar after another refuted him, that there were no synagogues prior to the year 70. Synagogues, he said, began to be built after the destruction of the temple as compensation for its loss. This is wrong on every level.

Dr. Craig Evans: He had to say, of course, that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts are all anachronistic. And Josephus too, by the way. Isn't that amazing? Josephus was born in the year 37. When the war ends and he's in Roman custody, he's 33 years old. So we're to believe that after 33 years of life, as a very religious person from a high priestly family who knows the ruling priests, he never experienced a synagogue, because supposedly they don't exist yet. Then after the war, while he's in Rome, this architectural innovation comes along: "Let's build synagogues, because we don't have a temple anymore." And Josephus, how would he even know this is happening? When he writes the Jewish War in 74, just four years later, he's got synagogues in Israel that supposedly didn't exist in the time he's describing. And in the Jewish Antiquities too. The whole theory collapses.

Dr. Craig Evans: And the archaeologists obviously know better. In the 1990s we knew of at least three, if not four or five, synagogues that were pre-70 according to archaeologists. We have the Theodotus inscription, which I think we'll talk about, additional evidence of a synagogue in Jerusalem itself while the temple was still standing. We have a synagogue inscription with a date on it in North Africa. The date is December 54, when Nero was emperor. And I almost forgot, we have a man named Philo, who passed away, we think, around AD 50. He doesn't know anything about a war, or about architectural innovations, and he complains of a synagogue that's been vandalized and defiled by youthful idiots. All of that evidence, my mountain over here, gets shoved out of the picture, and we get an assertion with no support whatsoever: "The Gospels are anachronistic. They're talking about buildings that didn't exist." Oh, for Pete's sake. I've told popular audiences, folks, to come up with a really bad hypothesis, you need a PhD. And these examples are proof of that.

Dr. Craig Evans: I don't mean any disrespect for this chap, and I haven't mentioned him by name. Some of your viewers who know biblical scholarship well will know exactly who I'm talking about. Nice chap. He's done good work in other areas. Why in the world he got this bee in his bonnet and went off saying there were no synagogues, I don't know. And as a footnote, an archaeologist named Rick Bonnie published a book five or six years ago arguing that the idea that synagogues began to be built after the temple was destroyed is in fact false. The destruction of the temple in 70 had the opposite effect. No synagogues were built that we know of for almost a hundred years. It wasn't until the late second century that synagogues began to be built again, at least in Israel. And the mikvot, the ritual immersion pools, were neglected after that. They were filled in with earth or used for storage.

Dr. Craig Evans: I thought that was really interesting. So yes, there was an impact on Jewish thinking and religious practice when the temple was destroyed, but not in the direction a lot of us originally thought, "With the temple destroyed, let's build lots of synagogues." Actually, for about two generations, it was as if Jewish faith was put on hold. It was injured. It went into stasis, almost comatose, and began to revive 100 years later. Then synagogues were built, lots of them, big, beautiful synagogues in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, many in the Golan Heights and in Galilee and elsewhere. So this kind of thinking is strange, and it flies in the face of archaeology. How many synagogues do we have? At least 10, probably 12, that should be dated prior to 70. And remember, the whole land of Israel has not been excavated, so who knows how many more early synagogues will be uncovered in the years ahead.

Johnny Ova: That goes right into my next question. I wanted to ask about the synagogue discovered at Magdala, right in the region of Jesus's ministry. Can you walk us through that discovery?

Dr. Craig Evans: Of course. I was there when it was discovered, in 2009. We were doing a tour with students, we stopped somewhere, and somebody said, "Hey, they think they've found a synagogue at Magdala." I said, "You've got to be kidding me," because there wasn't much to see at Magdala. There had been attempts to find pre-70 Magdala, but nobody had. The Notre Dame Center near the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem owned the land at Magdala, and they were going to clear it and build a retreat center, which, fast forward to today, they have. It's a beautiful facility. By law, you have to clear the brush, look at the land and do a survey, because they don't want bulldozers smashing things from antiquity. If you're a builder in Israel, you have a lot of challenges. Widening roads, any kind of construction, not just in Jerusalem but anywhere, you could run into things from antiquity, and that's all protected.

Dr. Craig Evans: So they clear the brush and the ground, and guess what they see? Three pillars sticking up from the ground. Not very much, a foot, a foot and a half, two feet. Three of them, in a pattern where if there were a fourth in the corner, you'd have a rectangle, almost a square. And man, that just screams synagogue. In your typical pre-70 synagogue, and even later, you have these interior pillars, at least four, if not six, and maybe eight in a big synagogue, with bench seating around them. That's the pattern. The excavation got underway in 2009, and by 2010 it was crystal clear a synagogue had been found. Not a very large one. Crowded in, it might seat 80 people.

Dr. Craig Evans: There was a little teaching room next to it. And the real big surprise was a decorated stone found right in the center of the room, decorated with symbols that reflect the temple, and pointed south toward the temple. This discovery, along with others like the mikvot, has had a huge impact. At the beginning of our program we talked about what archaeology does: it creates a context. What archaeology in Galilee has done is flip the script. The old idea was that Galileans were theological liberals, cosmopolitan, Hellenized, radicals, progressives if you will. It turns out they're the conservatives. They take the faith seriously. And when they go down to Jerusalem for the festivals, Passover or whatever, they're critical of the priesthood, who are a little too liberal, a little too cozy with Roman and secular authority, living in palaces like kings and treating everybody else like dirt. So wait a minute: Jesus and his following are the conservatives. They take scripture seriously. They're chastising the ruling priests for not fulfilling the law of Moses, for not taking care of the widows and orphans. That has had a huge impact on how we understand Jewish society in the days of Jesus.

Dr. Craig Evans: Then, as you know, a couple of years later a second, larger synagogue was found at Magdala. The first, smaller one was probably a little more elite, with a selected membership. The other, which they're still excavating, was probably more public. And the stone quay at the water's edge of the Sea of Galilee has been found. It's not at the water's edge now. The water has receded a bit. And we've been talking about Magdala. Guess what? We know somebody named Mary Magdalene, the most prominent female disciple of Jesus, and this is her town. I don't know if Jesus spoke in the first, smaller synagogue. He likely did speak in the second one.

Dr. Craig Evans: So now we're up to 10, 11, 12 pre-70 synagogues. And I remember when that decorated stone was identified in 2010, and it's been much published since, somebody said, "It's a one-off. You'll never find another one." It's like God was listening and said, "Yeah?" The very next year at Horvat Kur, a second decorated stone was found. I've looked at it. I know Byron McCane and Jürgen Zangenberg, who have been excavating at Horvat Kur. It's just a little up the hill, a few miles away. It's a fourth or fifth century synagogue, but embedded in the wall as a decoration piece, almost like a plaque, is a decorated stone dated to the first century. An early decorated stone with temple motifs on it, the vase, the oil jar and other symbols, put right into the wall where people come in, sit down and look at it, knowing it's from an earlier era before the Roman destruction in 70. So even though it's a later synagogue, they're remembering what used to be, just as we have mementos in churches. Go into a British church and you'll see a war memorial for World War I, a plaque on the wall. Same idea.

Johnny Ova: How big is the second synagogue? How many people would it have held?

Dr. Craig Evans: It would probably hold 200 people. And why is that an important question? These synagogues were attended mostly by men. Women could get in in some cases, but mostly men. So if you know 100 men are in the synagogue, age 13 on up, that gives you a good idea of the village population. Multiply by five or six. If 100 men are there, you know there are at least 500, 600, 700 people. Two synagogues impacts the math still further. And we should never assume there's only one synagogue. In a village of three, four or five hundred, there might only be one. But if the village has 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people, then Magdala was not a tiny little village. It was on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, and it was affluent. We might find a third synagogue before the work is done.

Dr. Craig Evans: In Nazareth, a synagogue has been dated to the pre-70 period, the turn of the era, but we don't think it's the synagogue talked about in Mark 6, where Jesus preaches and is thrust out. So very likely even Nazareth had two synagogues, not just one. I predict we're going to find, even in my lifetime, another half dozen, maybe another dozen, and we'll keep finding them as the digging goes on. Sometimes buildings are torn down and recycled and become something else, which disguises what they used to be. That's a complication archaeologists have to deal with too.

Johnny Ova: You mentioned the Theodotus inscription from Jerusalem, a major find. What does this inscription reveal, and why is it significant?

Dr. Craig Evans: It's thanking Theodotus, which is why we call it that, because his name is right there at the beginning of the inscription. It's in Greek, several lines, and it thanks him for remodeling the synagogue right there in Jerusalem, including adding a guest room. So this is a substantial contribution to a building project. But here's where it gets really neat. He's called the archisynagogos, a ruler of the synagogue, whose father was a ruler of the synagogue, whose father was a ruler of the synagogue. Three generations. Even if we date this inscription to only a decade or two before the collapse of Jerusalem, the 60s and the year 70, you're talking about a grandfather. A family of synagogue rulers going back three generations, or at least two.

Dr. Craig Evans: As John Kloppenborg pointed out in an excellent scholarly essay on this inscription, written to refute the notion that there were no synagogues, we could be talking about a synagogue that existed before the first century AD. It might have been built in the last decade or two of the first century BC, when Herod the Great was still living and still king of the Jews. And of course the scholar we were talking about, who said there were no synagogues, has to redate this inscription, because it destroys his hypothesis. A synagogue in Jerusalem that's pre-70 really messes up his theory. So he says it's third or fourth century. Well, no Greek epigrapher, and epigraphers are experts on inscriptions, agrees with him. I'm not an epigrapher, but I know enough. I look at it and say, this is Herodian, whether Herod the Great or his sons. It's no later than AD 40 or 50. It's a square-style script that looks exactly like Greek inscriptions from the first century BC and early first century AD.

Dr. Craig Evans: And where was it found? In the ruins of Jerusalem. Which ruins? The destruction of 70. "Oh no," he says, "it's a third or fourth century synagogue." Okay, that would be hundreds of years after the destruction. So where's the synagogue? Shouldn't its ruins be sitting on top of the AD 70 ruins? There's nothing there. This is part of the destruction of the year 70, and what survived, which is wonderful, is this beautiful, quite legible inscription found in the rubble from the year 70. So for crying out loud, we have evidence for synagogues in Jerusalem, in Galilee, in North Africa, physical archaeological evidence and literary evidence that's pre-70. Why is this even a debate? And by the way, it's not a debate in Israel. Like I said, to come up with a goofball hypothesis like that, you need a PhD.

Johnny Ova: I want to get to the death and burial questions, but there's one I want to ask before that, about Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas. For a long time these were just names on a page, and archaeological discoveries have since confirmed these men actually existed. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Craig Evans: Absolutely. You might know the name Bruno Bauer, one of Karl Marx's drinking buddies from the 1840s. He argued that Jesus didn't exist, that the Gospels are total fiction, and he even infamously suggested that Pontius Pilate didn't exist either. Wait a minute, secular writers refer to him too. "Well, they're misled by these Gospel fictions." Then in 1960, a British classicist, A. H. M. Jones, suggested that Pontius Pilate was not a procurator, as Tacitus says writing about AD 110, but, on analogy with the governor of Egypt, probably a prefect. The very next year at Caesarea Maritima, on the coast, where the governor stayed, they found a chipped and damaged stone that had been part of a repair of the theater there. And guess what's written on it in Latin? A dedication of a building that Pontius Pilate either built or remodeled. That's disputed. His name is given as Pontius Pilatus. We see "-tius Pilatus," and then "praefectus Iudaeae." He's the prefect. So now we have concrete evidence, as it were, a stone inscription.

Dr. Craig Evans: Professor Jones was proven correct one year later. Boy, would I like to come up with a theory and have it confirmed by archaeology one year later. That was discovered in 1961. And from the excavations at the Herodium in 1968 and 1969, as some of those artifacts were being cleaned only a few years ago, guess what? A second item. It's a brass ring with "of Pilate," Pilatou, written backwards, mirror image, so that it's a seal. When the ring is stamped into clay or wax, it reads correctly, "of Pilate." It's some kind of official seal ring for documents, and it refers to Pilate. So we have two hard pieces of archaeological evidence for Pilate himself.

Dr. Craig Evans: And for Caiaphas we have his ossuary. I was skeptical of it at first because of spelling variations we don't need to go into, but I'm now convinced and agree with the majority. Joseph bar Caiaphas, as it's inscribed twice, on one end and on the back of this ornate ossuary, is Caiaphas, the high priest who condemned Jesus. So two key figures in Passion Week, one Jewish and one Roman, are now confirmed by archaeology as well as literature.

Johnny Ova: It's fascinating. Like you said, it's almost like God is listening. "We don't have anything for Pilate." "Oh, wait, here we go." Now, death and burial are some of the most contested topics in scholarship. Some scholars, like John Dominic Crossan, have argued that crucified victims weren't buried at all, that their bodies were left for the dogs. What does the evidence actually show?

Dr. Craig Evans: The evidence is contrary to that. It's true that throughout the Roman Empire, crucified victims sometimes were not buried. Roman law actually allows for burial, even of crucified people, if a request is made. If no request is made, they're left hanging on the cross. That was deterrence. It was to scare people: don't get involved in plots, don't try to overthrow the government. That's true. And yes, in Israel during the great revolt, and this is where I think there's a lapse in Dom Crossan's logic. He almost gets teary talking about the thousands of Jews who were crucified and not buried. Well, yes, that was during the revolt and the siege of the city in 69 and 70. General Titus, the son of Vespasian, who became the new emperor, knew what he was doing. He was terrorizing the Jewish people, because he was informed by Josephus himself that the Jewish people take burial very seriously. To be left unburied to rot in the sun is like dying again. Josephus tells stories of people during the war sneaking out, risking death and sometimes dying, just to throw a handful of dirt on a body so it would more or less count as burial.

Dr. Craig Evans: So burial meant a lot. In peacetime, nobody was left unburied. That's outrageous. Josephus himself says that during the insurrection, before the Romans arrived, the rebels killed ruling priests and threw their bodies out of the city unburied. And he says, "We bury everybody, even the crucified." That's flat-out stated in his Jewish War. The evidence is overwhelming. And what does archaeology show? People who were crucified and then buried. We have the skeleton of Yehohanan, with the rusty iron nail still in his right heel. Since then we've found three others, one in Jerusalem and two others, one in Italy and one in Britain, with the same thing in the right heel. Studies have been done in Tel Aviv. I know the scholar who did the medical research. The Romans knew exactly where to put the nail: maximum pain and no chance of the bone shattering. It's hideous to think about. So we have archaeological evidence that crucified people in the Roman world were buried. The idea that if you were crucified you would not be buried is just plain false.

Johnny Ova: Joseph of Arimathea placing Jesus in a tomb has also been dismissed as a theological invention. Based on what we know from archaeology and history, how plausible is that account?

Dr. Craig Evans: Very plausible. You wonder why the early Christians, who see the high priesthood and the Sanhedrin as their enemies, would make a hero out of a Sanhedrin member. And we need to stop thinking monolithically. Not all Sanhedrin members hated Jesus and opposed him. Not all priests were ruling priests in a class by themselves. The average priest was a good guy. Jesus heals the leper and says, "Show yourself to the priest." The village priest. He doesn't say go down to Jerusalem and show yourself to Caiaphas. And the village priests were pushed around and victimized by the ruling priests. So this is a very diverse body. You see it in Acts, when Paul stands in front of the Sanhedrin and says, "I'm on trial for the hope of the resurrection," and the Sanhedrin is divided.

Dr. Craig Evans: The Gospels tell us Joseph of Arimathea was among those who did not consent to condemning Jesus to death. He was a sympathizer. He longed for the kingdom of God. So it's entirely plausible, unless we want to be naive and anti-Semitic and assume the whole Sanhedrin was against Jesus. That's just not true. And he did what the law would allow. By Jewish law he can't take the body of Jesus and place it in a family tomb. That's why the Gospel writers say it's a tomb in which no body had been placed. I discussed this with the late Rachel Hachlili, an expert in Israel on Jewish burial traditions, who passed away a few years ago. It's just a hole in the ground until a body is placed in it. A freshly dug grave isn't really a grave or tomb until a human body goes into it. Then it becomes a tomb.

Dr. Craig Evans: So he could do that. It's not a place of shame, and it's not a place of honor. It's neutral. He places him there. I suspect that's why the women go on Sunday morning, find it empty, and think Jesus's body has been taken. That's explicit with Mary Magdalene in John's Gospel: the body's been taken. It could be that Caiaphas said, "Joseph of Arimathea, you went too far. He has to go into the dishonorable tomb we set aside for executed criminals. That's where the other two men went. He needs to go there too." That's all part of the dynamic. It's entirely plausible. It fits with everything we know about the customs.

Dr. Craig Evans: And by the way, Christians honored that grave site for a hundred years, until it was slighted by Emperor Hadrian after the Bar Kokhba War. Christians would go to this grave, and it was not the criminals' grave. That's somewhere else. Then for 200 years, after it had been slighted, there's a platform built on it and statues honoring the Roman gods. Then Queen Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, comes in the early fourth century and asks the locals, "Where's the tomb of Jesus?" They say, "Right over there, beneath this pagan platform." They dig it up, and sure enough. It's been confirmed very recently by the National Geographic restoration of the edicule at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: it's an early first century cluster of tombs. How would those people know that, when it had been covered for 200 years? Continuity of village memory. They said, "Dig there, you'll find it." They dug there and found it. This isn't a myth, because the excavations just a few years ago, to strengthen the edicule, determined that this is an early first century AD complex of tombs. The tradition that Jesus was buried here is probably correct.

Johnny Ova: That's amazing. Dr. Evans, I've learned so much from our conversation. I'm going to put a bunch of your materials in the description on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. One last question. For pastors, church leaders and Christians who want to engage scripture with both faith and intellectual honesty, what would you want them to take away from what archaeology reveals about Jesus and the Gospels?

Dr. Craig Evans: The big takeaway is that archaeology helps us understand Jesus, his world and the Gospels much better. But archaeology also shows that the Gospel writers are telling the truth. They know what they're talking about. They're not making mistakes. They're not making stuff up. They're talking about real people, real places, real events. So when you read the Gospels, you need to know you're not reading mythology or nonsense. You're reading Gospels based on eyewitness reports that were carefully remembered, carefully passed on, and very accurate. Otherwise archaeology would show otherwise, and it hasn't. Over and over again, archaeology shows that the gospels are reliable sources.

Johnny Ova: Awesome. Dr. Craig Evans, thank you so much for your time today. We truly appreciate you.

Dr. Craig Evans: You're very welcome.