"2000 years ago the Romans crucified a young Jew from Galilee named Jesus, but who exactly was Jesus?" "Remarkable discoveries in science and history... are today shedding new light on his birth, his life, his death." "And the world of 2000 years ago into which he was born." "New evidence is filling in the missing years in Jesus' life, and telling us about the turbulent times in which he grew up." "A historian called Josephus is just 1 of 80... first and second century sources confirming that Jesus existed." "Josephus described Jesus as a wise man who worked surprising deeds, he also mentioned that Jesus was sentenced to death by crucifixion." "It was Pontius Pilate who sentenced Jesus to the cross and... archeology has miraculously revealed where he governed from." "Just 60 miles northwest of..." "Jerusalem lay one of the most powerful roman enclaves in the world." "In the Time of Jesus they called it Caeseria and... it was the headquarters of the roman occupation of Judea." "Proof of their awesome presence remains." "2000 years ago this aquaduct brought fresh water from the north, evidence of the street plan and the remains of buildings has allowed... archeologists to recreate what Caeseria looked like." "The city was originally built by King Herod and completed in 10 BC, it then became the headquarters of the Roman Governors, including Pilate." "In the heart of the city was the temple to the Emperor Augustus." "The only other major structure to have survived is the theater, now restored and used for performances." "But from the air it is still possible to see the foundations of... a lost harbor that is now covered by the sea." "From his strategic point Pilate ruled first century Judea, now part of Israel, with an iron rod." "Pilate executed dozens of Jewish rebels, he wouldn't have thought twice about... getting rid of a young troublemaker from Galilee." "The crucifixion of Jesus is well-documented by... several historical sources - crucifixion was very common." "At this biblical museum in Jerusalem, they have erected a series of what historians think where... typical roman crosses." "The Romans were inventive people, they adapted olive trees to crucify their victims and... they killed hundreds of thousands of people." "According to Joe Zias, an archeologist at the Hebrew University, the idea that crosses were built from scratch is a myth." "Now this thing would have been in the place of crucifixion permanently, the individual would have carried the cross bar." "Now this device here, which is called a setekual... this could or could not be there depending upon how longyou wanted... that person on the cross, by putting this up on the cross the individual... can sit on the cross, okay, he is tied to the cross or nailed to the cross," "but what happens is he is sitting up here and... what this does is simply it prolongs the agony." "The Jewish Historian Josephus confirms that..." "Jesus was a real man who lived and died, but he tells us little else." "The full story of Jesus' life comes from the gospels, his mysterious birth, his remarkable mission, and the events that lead to his death;" "but the gospels were written by early Christians at least 40 years after..." "Jesus died." "So it is often argued that they are the work of... converts based only on oral records and... therefore can't be trusted as reliable historical documents." "But today, breakthroughs in science and archeology are... making it easier to establish what actually happened." "The biggest break came in 1947 with the discovery of... ancient Jewish scrolls in caves overlooking the Dead Sea." "Written in the years leading up to the time of Jesus, the Dead Sea scrolls reveal the tense world that Jesus lived in." "James Charlesworth from Princeton Theological Seminary has... spent a lifetime deciphering them." "It is a vibrant world in which so many arguments are going on, we are finding evidence of purity laws, stone vessels, we are finding arrowheads, spears there are some people living here... that believe that they were really in a war and that is where Jesus fits in," "it is a life that makes sense because we are understanding the context." "The daily market in Bethlehem, a town 5 miles south of Jerusalem." "Today it has a population of 30,000 Palestinians." "The story that Jesus was born here is mentioned in the Gospels of... both Matthew and Luke, but they don't always agree on some of the details." "Luke gives us the famous story that when Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, exhausted by their long journey from Nazareth, there was no room at the inn." "But in Matthew's gospel the journey isn't even mentioned - maybe there... was no journey and they were already living in Bethlehem." "Whatever the facts surrounding the journey, by the 2nd century it was widely believed that..." "Jesus was indeed born here in Bethlehem." "This church, the Church of the Nativity, was built over the spot to mark it forever, so what evidence is there that this really was Jesus' birthplace?" "Extensive excavations have revealed a 1 st century network of caves or grottoes, directly under the Church of the Nativity." "Right under the main altar there is a grotto that is lavishly decorated and... is specially revered." "This is the grotto under the church, the tradition is that Jesus was born here, at the place marked by the star, and if you reach inside you can feel the rock underneath." "But the most commonly held believe is the Jesus was born in a stable, however this Christmas card image may be inaccurate... as near by ancient ruins suggest." "This is Yata a small Palestinian town just 30 miles from Bethlehem, in the center is an old abandoned village." "Archeologist Joe Zias has established that the houses here... have much in common with their ancient ancestors." "They maintain the styles of houses going back to 1 st century AD, and what is remarkable is that many of these houses... have stones going back to the first century and what we see down here... is a typical courtyard, typical of the 1 st century, with rooms radiating out," "courtyard shared by one family or sometimes by several families, again these things functionally make a lot of sense and... that's the reason that these styles haven't changed for... hundreds if not thousands of years" "The slow pace of change in the Middle East also... sheds light on the look of ancient Bethlehem itself." "This is Bethlehem as it looked 200 years ago, because it was painted before the town was modernized." "Archeologists believe it is a useful pointer to the towns size and... layout in the 1 st century." "Together with the archeological data from Yata it is possible to... recreate what Bethlehem would have looked like at the time of Jesus." "Villages were built on hilltops to give a sense of security." "Rooftops were used as living spaces during the mild weather." "Most villages only had a few hundred people, but a town like Bethlehem would have been home to about a thousand." "The houses in Yata also reveal that caves and... mangers were very much a part of 1 st century domestic life." "We have a room here, which was used during the winter for the animals, this first of all did 2 things, it kept the house very, very warm and again in terms of safety it was very good for the animals" "Although under 1 roof, people lived apart from the animals, this manger is located on the 1 st level of the house" "Upstairs is this facility here, which was used for people, during the winter it would have been very comfortable here, the animals giving heat below." "So, would babies born 2000 years ago have shared house space with the animals?" "Remarkably, the evidence can still be found in Palestine, only 15 miles from Bethlehem." "In a secluded valley is this settlement;" "here a small and isolated community of Palestinians and... their animals eke out a living." "The hills around are dotted with caves," "but the caves aren't just used as stables, their goats and sheep feed from the manger at one end of the cave, at the other end are the living quarters, the kitchen and the sleeping area." "It is quite normal for animals and people to share the same living space." "The mystery is why Mary had to lay Jesus in a stone manger down with the animals." "There is a clue in Luke's gospel when he writes that there was no room at the inn, the original Greek word for 'inn', 'Catalooma' can also mean upper room, so Jesus may simply have been placed in a manger because... there was no space in the upper room." "And would Mary and Joseph really have been surrounded by strangers?" "Claire Pfann thinks not." "Hello How is it going?" "Very good, very nice." "Good, ya, that is very beautiful." "She helps run a workshop reviving ancient craft skills, she is also an expert on the way of life of 1 st century women." "Bringing a baby into the world in the 1 st century was the... single most dangerous thing that a woman ever faced in her whole life." "Although we often picture them riding on the donkey in the pouring rain on..." "December 24th in the darkest night of winter;" "and Mary is in labour huddled over and they arrive in Bethlehem and..." "Joseph goes from motel to hotel to hospice knocking on every door and... being turned away." "In fact if we really read the text of Luke chapter 2 we would see that... that isn't what the story tells us;" "instead it says that they went to Bethlehem, which was his ancestral home and that means that... they probably had relatives there - aunts, cousins and perhaps mothers and mothers in law - to bring this baby... into the world." "It is said that the birth of Jesus was heralded by... a bright star that shone over Bethlehem, it would guide 3 wise men traveling from the east to the spot... where the baby they believed was their savior had been born." "The story has often been dismissed as a fairytale, but now that view is being challenged." "Scientists today can take us back to the skies of 2000 years ago, and they have discovered something very unusual." "It has not been seen before because people where..." "looking for astronomical events like comets or exploding stars." "Amazingly a new theory indicates that the star of..." "Bethlehem may have been an astrological phenomenon instead." "Now, many people for decades and hundreds of years indeed have said... that this is not possible - no Jew was interested in astrology... until the middle ages;" "low and behold among the Dead Sea Scrolls... we find 2 horoscopes with astrological signs, with astrological ideas, so astrology is certainly there in the time of Jesus." "Astrologers would have been hired to foretell the birth and death of kings, to do this they tracked the movement of the largest planet," "Jupiter, known as the king of planets." "Michael Molnar an astronomer argues that the key place to look, not just for Jupiter, but for other signs of special stellar activity was in the sign of Aries." "During the reign of King Herod astrologers believed that..." "Aries the Ram symbolized his kingdom, that is Judea, Sumeria, the lands that he controlled." "The stargazers also knew that there was a prophecy that the Messiah was... about to come and conquer the world and rid the world of tyranny." "So they were watching very carefully Aries the ram for the advent of the Messiah" "In certain rare alignments Jupiter could actually appear as... an extraordinary star instead of a planet." "Charts for Aries in 1 AD the traditional year that..." "Jesus was born reveal nothing unusual, but Jesus wasn't born in 1 AD." "Our modern calendar was worked out in the 6th century by... a scholastic monk called Dennis the Little who simply added the reigns of the kings together, but historians have since discovered that he miss calculated by half a dozen years," "so Jesus was actually born 6 years earlier than the history books tell us." "And guess what, when Michael Molnar looked at his charts for the year 6 BC he discovered that... on April 17 th Jupiter was in Aries." "It would have been a sign that a big royal event was looming." "But there were even more regal portents on that day." "Saturn came into Aries, so did the sun, then the moon eclipsed and revealed Jupiter, yet another favorable sign." "The ancients also found meaning in the Dawn, which they saw as a symbol of birth." "On that day Jupiter emerged as a morning star, this was the most powerful time to bring about the birth of a king, these collectively indicated the birth of a super king if you will, the Messiah." "This set of alignments may have escaped modern astronomers, but it would have most certainly impressed 1 st century astrologers." "Especially if those astrologers were wise men traveling from the east." "East of Judea lay Babylon, the birthplace of astrology and Persia, where it also flourished." "The wise men who, according to Matthew's gospel carried gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh from the east may well... have been astrologers keen to greet the new king," "with the help of local guides." "Perhaps some of them did set off across the desert to Judea." "There are even clues to the route they may have taken... if you examine the origin of there gifts." "Today gold, frankincense and Myrrh can all be found in a Jerusalem bazaar." "This is Myrrh, a type of scented oil used in antiquity for anointing kings." "And this is frankincense a bitter tasting gum collected from Arabian trees, when burnt it gives off an exotic smell." "It was used to purify temples, it is still used in most churches." "But frankincense and Myrrh weren't freely available in the 1 st century, they would have been extremely hard to find." "Frankincense and Myrrh were not actually grown in the east but... in the very south of Arabia, so it would have been a detour for anyone traveling from the east to Judea," "but historical research shows that they could have been bought on route." "Hidden in the southern canyons of modern Jordan are the remains of... the capital of the old kingdom of the Navatians... the ancient trading city of Petra, the Navatian civilization was flourishing 2000 years ago and... it the one place we know frankincense and Myrrh were traded," "by the time Jesus was born Petra had become... the major caravan city in the ancient world, all trade from Arabia had to pass through Petra, this gave the Navatians a pretty total monopoly on frankincense and Myrrh." "It makes Petra not only the most likely route from... the east but also a great place for the wise men to do their shopping." "If the birth of Jesus was heralded, even if only by 3 astrologers, there is no evidence in the gospels that Jesus grew up knowing he was special." "Today babies born in Bethlehem usually... start live in these modern maternity hospitals," "but the circumstances of Jesus' birth were humble and contentious." "His mother Mary was said to be unmarried at the time of his conception a fact that... would have attracted as much scorn 2000 years ago as... it still does in 21 st century Palestine." "Even today traditional Palestinians believe that all babies like this one must be... conceived in wedlock if their mothers want to avoid severe reprisals." "Nadera Shalhous-Kevorkian is an expert of the status of women in Palestine" "A young woman that is pregnant and she is not married;" "that means that the family failed to protect her -that means that the man the male honor has been, actually somebody has hurt his honor and... it is very shameful for, it brings lots of shame" "A woman pregnant before marriage could find herself thrown down a well" "The last case of a 17-year-old;" "the father knowing that she lost her virginity... and they took her to 2 doctors and... both gynecologists told him that she lost her virginity so... he ended up taking her at night cutting her head, throwing her head, totally separating the head from the body" "In Mary's day honor killings were backed by the law, which prescribed death by stoning." "She would have been killed, she would have been, it might have caused a scandal, the social reaction would have been extremely problematic and... she would have been accused of bringing shame and dishonor to the family" "Perhaps the fact that Mary lived to tell the tale was thanks to Joseph." "The gospels say he kept the news of Mary's pregnancy secret and... he married her before she gave birth." "And yet when the gospels of Matthew and Luke were written 40 years after..." "Jesus' death they claimed that Jesus was born of a virgin and conceived by god." "We do know that there is no scientific evidence to support a virgin birth and... skeptics claim that the story was made up simply to promote the divinity of..." "Jesus with hindsight but even to suggest at the time that..." "Mary's conception occurred out of wedlock would have been madness for... it would have left the fledgling new religion of..." "Christianity wide open to ridicule." "Doctor Mark Goodacre, a biblical scholar from Birmingham University in England has... found evidence in John's gospel and in Jewish and roman authors from... the 1 st and 2nd centuries of wide spread anti-Christian slander" "Jesus' opponents in John's gospel were basically saying you are born... not of ordinary human parents but of fornication." "Celsius says that it is all to do with Mary having had... an illicit union with a roman soldier," "Tatalion says this is your son of a harlot." "In other words virginal conception is not the kind of thing you make up lightly, it is not the kind of thing that you want to sort of trumpet from the rooftops." "That friend and foe actually agree is strong evidence that... the gospel writers didn't make up Jesus' conception out of wedlock but... how that conception happened the historian cannot say." "We didn't have, you know, cameras there, we didn't have the tape recordings, we didn't have interviews with the parents, so the historian can only go so far but I suppose it is the moment... if you like where faith begins to play a role in history." "One thing is certain though, it wasn't long before Joseph and Mary took their new baby 100 miles... away to a new town and a new life and archeology can tell us much about... the place where he grew up." "To the north of Bethlehem lies Nazareth in Galilee." "All of the gospels agree that Nazareth was the place where Jesus grew up." "Modern Nazareth is now a thriving town of 60,000 people." "It is hard to get a sense of what it was like during the time of Jesus - it has... few ancient remains so unlike Bethlehem it has never quite managed... to attract as many pilgrims or tourists." "In the first project of its kind in Israel, a group of archeologists and local people have got together... to do something about it they found a piece of abandoned land in the town and... began to meticulously recreate a Galilean village as it would have been when..." "Jesus was alive." "The village is being reconstructed by studying the remains of... 1 st century villages found across Galilee." "The smallest details have been identified, the plastered walls, the size of the windows." "The team has also begun working with local people to... turn the village into a living museum." "Ancient implements and customs described in religious texts provide clues to... the farming life at the time of Jesus." "By all accounts it was an ordinary rural family life, it is a little known fact but according to the gospels Jesus had 2 sisters... whos names are not recorded and 4 brothers named James, Jude, Joseph and Simeon." "Whether the siblings were Mary's children or Joseph's from a previous marriage... we will never know." "But historians now believe it is possible to tell what kinds of games Jesus and... his friends or siblings would have played." "Looking through ancient Jewish and Roman sources," "Joshua Schwartz has found that they played with... wooden toys, with dolls, with pets and with balls." "When I grew up you would throw the ball... and I would throw the ball back to you and... you are supposed to catch it and throw the ball back to me, however in the old days the idea was to keep the ball in motion," "in other words you don't hold it but simply back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until I drop it and then I lose, right?" "And that is one type of game and children would play this, sometimes even with 2 balls together back... and forth back and forth back and forth and I drop it at some point and I lose." "In time, this ordinary boy from a rural backwater... would become a public figure who... drew huge crowds, so something must have stirred his determination to right the wrongs... he saw in his society." "Luke's gospel tells us of an experience that... might just have started the boy on his fateful journey." "When Jesus was only 12 his parents took him to Jerusalem... to the annual festival of Passover, inside the walls of the old city the atmosphere of... ancient Judea survives but the beating heart of 1 st century Jerusalem," "the Jewish temple, was destroyed long ago." "It was built on a mount where the Dome of The Rock now stands, all that is left of that Temple Mount are the walls where Jews still gather to pray." "We don't know what Jesus thought of Jerusalem, little is left of what was said to be... one of the most beautiful cities in the ancient world." "Hanan Eshel is one of a long line of archeologists... who have been excavating old Jerusalem since early in the 19th century." "Archeologists have found remains of... arches, columns, pillars, stairs, cisterns and more." "The works of Josephus and old 1 st century Jewish texts have... left detailed accounts of the architecture and appearance of the temple, so archeologists are now confident they can accurately recreate... what the young Jesus would have seen." "We can see that in the wall just behind me that... there are some stones that are sticking out." "This is the beginning of an arch that a staircase was built on top of... this arch in order to lead to the southern part of the Temple Mount." "This is Robinson's Arch, named after the archeologist that... first identified it in 1839" "he matched the Archeological remains with Josephus's descriptions... to produce the blueprints of a monumental staircase." "Subsequent generations of archeologists have since produced... blueprints of the whole Temple Mount." "Begun in 20 BC, this was the brainchild of Herod the Great, a tyrant who ruled Judea on behalf of the Romans." "The brand new temple was the headquarters of the Jewish faith, it must have been awesome to a young boy." "Little did Jesus know then that one day he would return here... to challenge everything that both the temple and the Jewish Priests stood for." "Hanan Eshel suspects that Jesus' interest in religion and... politics may well have been sparked off during this visit." "Somebody like Jesus who grew up in a peasant society... will come for the first time to the temple and he will see how rich the temple is, how much work was used here, he will be shocked," "that is something that he assumed would exist... only in Rome know he sees it in Jerusalem." "But his fascination gave Mary and Joseph a shock too, according to Luke's gospel." "An incident occurred that may well have been... his first political experience" " Luke's gospel says that when... they began their journey back to Nazareth Mary and..." "Joseph realized that they'd lost Jesus." "Apparently they found him in the temple discussing religion... with the learned priests." "It is an engaging story but could it really have happened." "These are some of the original steps that lead up to the temple, evidence from Jewish writing suggests the Rabbis used to gather on these steps... to help pilgrims enter the temple." "Hanan Eshel believes that Jesus may well have sat down here... to listen to one of the Rabbis preaching." "There was always conflict between pilgrims who wanted to enter... and priests and the pabbis would have been here... in order to make sure that as much people as possible are allowed to... enter the Temple Mount," "so the story in Luke about Jesus talking with some religious leader... might have happened here" "It is one of the few clues that the gospels give about the education of Jesus" "To know as much as he knows you have only 2 options, god zapped him and told him everything he needed to know... or he spent a lot of time reading and studying and debating, the new testament supports only the second one," "where did this man get such knowledge?" "He is not spending the whole day out there farming or fishing, he is studying and thinking and he is discussing with the great minds." "Safely back in Galilee the education of Jesus... would have continued to include lessons in carpentry so... he could follow in the footsteps of his father." "Nazareth is never mentioned in ancient histories of the Jews giving... the impression that Jesus grew up in a small and... isolated place far removed from the political turmoil... that was ravaging the country." "But just 4 miles away on a hill was another center of Jewish opulence," "Sepphoris the capital of Galilee." "It is here that Jesus would have come face to face with the ruling class, it was the northern home of Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and son of Herod the Great." "The historian Josephus described it as the ornament of Galilee." "Today it is a ruin but for the last 20 years teams of... archeologists have been excavating the site." "With the help of Josephus's descriptions, archeological information and wonders of modern technology... we can paint a remarkable picture of Sepphoris at the time of Jesus." "Rising some 400 feet about the plane Sepphoris was... a large city of about 10,000 people." "There was a culminated main street with shops... where farmers from neighboring villages came to trade." "When Herod Antipas inherited the kingdom of Galilee from his father... it is thought that he converted the old arsenal into a fortified palace." "Sepphoris is only about an hour's walk from Nazareth but... more significantly it was built during the time that Jesus was growing up, it is almost impossible to believe that Jesus didn't come here with his father," "either to look, to trade or work." "As carpenters they would have been well placed to find work in Sepphoris." "Eric Meyers leads one of the teams digging in Sepphoris, it has been his passion for over a decade, he believes that the spectacle of the town would have effected Jesus deeply" "Coming and meeting the royal family processing down one of... these streets must have had an enormous impact on a young man such as..." "Jesus would have been when he visited and... you can imagine what this might mean in England or... in any other country where royalty exists." "Eric Meyers has also found these baths used by priests for habitual purification, the priests controlled the access to the temple in Jerusalem and... one day Jesus would take issue with them" "Some of the priestly families who settled here had excessive wealth and..." "I think seeing such well to do established families unlike the people... who were living in the hamlets around and eking out a living... such as his family would have done and... this might have left a bad feeling in Jesus' mind" "In fact Josephus writes that when Jesus was a child... there was an uprising against the palace, the Romans retaliated by burning the city to the ground." "The whole of Galilee was at different times a hotbed of... religious and political discontent." "The cliffs around the Sea of Galilee are dotted with hundreds of caves... they were the hideaways of Jewish rebels against the Romans." "They were suitably inaccessible and were often only reacted... by means of a rope being lowered down from a cliff top." "Rebellion was not new but had not been successful the Jews had been fighting invading armies for centuries, all their hopes were pinned on a savior." "They had a special name for the one they longed for, they called him the anointed one," "in Hebrew - the Messiah in Greek - the Christ" "The Jews are looking more and more for the coming of the great redeemer, maybe it is God, maybe it will be one of his messengers, maybe it will be an angel, maybe it will be the Messiah." "Rebellion, power is in the air, Jesus fits into a time that is really a powder keg." "Frustratingly, the gospels tell us little else about Jesus' life until... he reaches the age of around 30," "and when they do, it is to tell use about the baptism of Jesus... that could have formed the real turning point in his life;" "the gospels say that a man called John... started baptizing crowds in the river Jordan." "John was offering to cleanse people's sins in readiness... for the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah." "The gospels say that one day Jesus too was plunged underwater by John." "Proving the existence of the baptismal site has been difficult, one of the most promising sites was the holy place... where according to ancient tradition the Hebrews crossed into the Promised Land, it is between Mt." "Nebo where Moses died and Jericho." "6th century church books mention pilgrimages to the baptismal site, and archeologists hope to find the remains of churches and monasteries," "but excavation on either side of the Jordan has been a problem, for 50 years the Jordan was a front line on the Arab-lsraeli conflict and... so it was a no-go area for archeologists, but after peace was declared in 1994 the Jordanians cleared the landmines... on their side and started to dig." "After 7 years they found what they where looking for, the tell tale remains of a pilgrimage site dated to between the... 3rd and 6th centuries AD." "At the last count these included 7 churches, a monastery and facilities of pilgrims." "And there was one more surprise." "Rami Khouri is a Jordanian historian and... he has been monitoring the excavations since they began," "he believes that the evidence that clinched it was the discovery of this pool, for pilgrims to reenact the baptism of Jesus" "There are other pools in the monastery that where used clearly... for storage of water or as wells or as cisterns so you have big pools like this... that were clearly used for baptism, mainly the evidence is the long internal staircases... for people to walk into it for a full immersion baptism." "I would say it was probably the biggest turning point in his life," "Jesus must have had a moving experience when... he realized 'okay, I've got a task to do' and obviously he thought... it was a task God wanted him to do" "Mysteriously, instead of going public the gospels say that..." "Jesus withdraws into the desert where he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, in the wilderness it is said that Jesus was tempted by... the devil with abundant food, immortality and all the riches and glory in the world." "Biblical scholars believe that the temptations symbolize Jesus' dilemma, he was wrestling with a big decision, the biggest decision of his life, what kind of Messiah to be, the temptations, food, wealth, glory, hint that..." "Jesus was tempted by the trappings of power" "I think that there was a temptation there... to lead a military or a very powerful political move, but then he realized what he had seen as a young boy, the burning of Sepphoris, he realized that those who live by the sword are going to die by the sword." "Luke says that he would often spend all night in prayer," "Mark says he would get up very early, long, long before dawn... and go out and meditate in prayer and think, so we have a human, lets not forget the humanness of Jesus," "I think he is trying to find out 'what am I to do?" "'" "His decision would have fateful consequences, his words and actions galvanized large crowds... who saw him as their long awaited savior, but they would also put Jesus on a collision course with death." "When Jesus was in his early 30s he was baptized by John." "This simple act seems to have convinced him that he was the long-awaited Messiah, he was now a man with a mission;" "a mission that proved to be hugely popular with ordinary people." "Though they said he consorted with thieves, prostitutes and tax collectors he also claimed to heal the sick and the infirm." "Now archeology and history are giving us a truer than ever picture of how and... where he lived and why he was seen as a threat to the establishment." "Jerusalem, today home to Jews and Palestinians, the religious and political tensions are never far from the surface." "This is the Wailing Wall, it is where Jews come to pray, many come to pray for freedom, the freedom to live in a land they can call their own." "Historians now realize that 2000 years ago that... the Jews here also dreamt of freedom" "In the time of Jesus they are losing the land, they are losing it not only to the might of Rome but... they are losing it by taxation from the Caesars who are demanding more and more, so you have an oppressed people you have a people who are losing hope," "you have people who are turning more and more... to believing that god must soon do something." "The Dead Sea scrolls, written in the second century BC reveal exactly what the Jews believed, that sooner or later God would send a messiah, a savior." "By the time of Jesus," "Jewish hopes had reached fever pitch" "Religion is in the air like at a big football game, you know like in London or in Manchester, the frenzy that is going on, that is Jerusalem, but frenzy is not about football, it is about God," "and God maybe coming soon, maybe this Messiah is here in our midst, how would we know?" "Jesus wasn't the first would-be messiah, over the centuries the Jews had seen several come and go," "but earlier messiahs had led armed uprisings," "Jesus wasn't a military leader and he didn't have any troops, the facts show that after spending 40 days and... nights alone in the wilderness Jesus returned to Galilee with... a very different plan, which in it's own way was much more revolutionary." "Just 20 miles east of Nazareth in the great lake known as... the sea of Galilee Jesus picked his team, the disciples." "Instead of recruiting the obvious candidates, such as hardened revolutionaries Jesus picked an unlikely bunch of characters." "His first recruit and right hand man was a fisherman, his name was Simon Peter." "Thanks to a startling discovery here on the shores of the lake... we can now tell what kind of people fishermen like Peter were." "In 1985 a severe drought caused the lake to drop to unprecedented levels, revealing an ancient and extraordinary find." "Buried next to some 2000 year old pottery, archeologists made one of the great discoveries of modern times," "an ancient fishing boat." "It was a delicate salvage operation, each piece of timber was identified with red tape," "then a special foam kept the boat intact and... allowed archeologists to prise it away from the mud." "Orna Cohen, the leader of the excavation, was astonished that it was so well preserved" "Well that is one of the miracles we've got with this boat, this boat was only preserved because very soon at the time... it sank it filled up with silt clay like from a river... near by this locked it in very limited oxygen condition and... slowed down all the bacterial activity," "that's why it has been preserved so well." "While the boat was slowly drying out in a chemical solution radio carbon tests... were carried out to determine to age of the wood," "it was dated between 40 BC and 40 AD." "These dates covered the years when Jesus lived." "The boat was made of assorted second hand timber and iron nails, nicknamed 'the Jesus boat', the relic is now proudly displayed in a museum in Galilee, but could it really have belonged to one of the disciples?" "lts size certainly seems to match the kind of boat Peter is thought to have used," "John's gospel mentions that Peter's boat could carry at least 7 disciples, this boat is 26 feet long, big enough to carry that number." "This is a replica of that 1 st century boat." "It looks like the kind of boat a humble fisherman could afford but... in ancient Galilee wood was rare and a boat like this was a luxury." "Orna Cohen believes Peter wasn't a man of humble means." "I can only assume knowing the conditions of that period was considered quite... an investment whoever owned such a boat was very relatively a well-to-do person, considered rich." "Jesus also enlisted Peter's brother Andrew and 2 more fishermen, James and John." "But Jesus' bizarre recruitment drive didn't stop there, he also approached Matthew, a Jewish man employed to collect taxes from the Jews." "And then there was Judas, the group's treasurer and... the disciple who was to play a key role in the final week of Jesus' life." "Jesus underlined his unusual approach by breaking with the tactics... used by previous would-be messiahs." "Earlier revolutionaries hid in caves or lived on the run... instead the gospels say Jesus and... the disciples lived openly in a fishing town called Capernaum." "Just 5 miles from where the 1 st century boat was found on the northern shores... of the Sea of Galilee, archeologists have identified the remains of ancient Capernaum, it has become a shire for Pilgrims, a chance for them to recall many of the gospel stories set in Capernaum." "Archeologists also believe they may have identified... the house of one of the disciples." "The tradition in the Middle East has always been to preserve holy sites... linked to Jesus by building churches on top of them." "When they started digging here 100 years ago... they unearthed a series of old churches build around a first century house, in keeping with this tradition a modern church has recently been build... over the ruins of the house," "but the new church has proved highly controversial - it obscures the ruins and... critics have likened its design to a flying saucer." "But its supporters argue that at least this time the ruins have been kept intact, they can just be glimpsed through a glass floor," "the church has also been suspended on pillars allowing visitors... another partial sight of the ruins." "Mordechai Aviam is one of the leading archeologists in Galilee;" "he and many of his colleagues are convinced they know... which disciple that house belonged to, on one of the plastered walls of the house they found graffiti, some as early as the 3rd century AD" "Some of the graffiti, although they are not complete ones, carry the name of Simon or the Hebrew name 'Shimon' and... this is Saint Peter's Hebrew name and so we can assume... that people who came here knew that this is the house of Saint Peter," "in a rural area, in a village like this one families are living for hundreds of years... in the same house so when pilgrims came here probably... in the end of the 2nd or beginning of the 3rd century and... asked natives 'do you know where guy named..." "Shimon, Simon, Saint Peter lived?" "' they say 'oh yes of course this building, you see this building?" "His grand, grand, grand children are living there'" "It is hard for us now to visualize Peter's house, or indeed Capernaum," "but archeologists believe they now have enough information to... recreate what the town was like." "The size of the excavated area suggests that Capernaum was a town... of 15,000 people." "No evidence has yet come to light of where Jesus lived, but what archeologists can tell from the foundations is that Peter's house would... have been one of several overlooking a common courtyard, so perhaps Jesus and Peter were neighbors." "Around the courtyard people would have continued with... their daily tasks such as baking bread, or carpentry." "Houses were simple, they were large because those are families that lived together, the elders and their sons and daughters and their wives and husbands and... their children all lived in one large building as it is nowadays in villages," "in Arab villages or in other villages in other places in the world." "Women were thought inferior to men at the time, yet the gospels say that Jesus included Mary Magdalene and... at least 5 other women among his close followers" "He is the only teacher we know of from antiquity who... includes women into his group." "John talks about him talking with a Samaritan woman and... good gracious alive are the disciples depressed by this, what is the matter with this man?" "So he is even different than his followers" "Jesus never married nor had any children, his disciples were his immediate family, they weren't exactly going to bring the Roman army to its knees, but the number of disciples he picked is a clue that..." "Jesus wasn't targeting the Romans." "The number 12 was no accident it harked back... to the 12 tribes who originally founded Israel." "People at the time would have understood the symbolism, scholars believe Jesus was calling for a fresh start, he wanted Israel to go back to the ideals of its founding fathers" "In that world, the Jews of the first century - who are just as hungry for justice... as people today are - believed passionately that the god of... the all world was the god of justice, therefore if this god finally did what he promised they would get justice... and peace and mercy, that was what Jesus was basically offering them" "That put Jesus on a collision course, not with the Romans, but with the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem." "The power base of Jewish society and... headquarters of the Jewish faith was the temple," "Jesus had first seen the fabulous gold and marble building... when he came to Jerusalem at the age of 12." "The temple was run by a caste of Jewish priests, these are the people with whom Jesus takes issue with." "Several ancient texts vividly describe their duties, every day at dawn and at dusk they drew lots to make their sacrifice of... pure white lambs to god." "The sacrificial blood was then taken into the sanctuary and... sprinkled in front of a large curtain, the Jews believed the invisible presence of god lived behind it." "Every rite from the sacrifice to the burning of incenses was designed to... keep the sanctuary pure, but according to the gospels Jesus believed the temple no longer... was a holy place, but a den of iniquity and corruption." "The temple is not only the place of worship, it is the Jewish treasury, the Jewish bank, it is the Jewish base for authority and of course when... you have authority you have the problem of abuse of authority" "Jesus was to become a fierce critic of the temple system but he wasn't alone." "Hanan Eshel a Hebrew archeologist has found... in the Dead Sea scrolls evidence of wide spread discontent," "the scrolls were the work of a Jewish sect called the Ascenes, they had walked out of Jerusalem in protest of the power... of the temple priests and set up a rival community in..." "Qumran 20 miles away on the shores of the Dead Sea." "If you needed incense for the altar, they wouldn't tell it to anyone else that would be bought from their family and... the people from Qumran would criticize the priests for keeps those secrets and... taking as much money from the temple budget as possible" "It wasn't until archeologists dug up the streets of Jerusalem that... they found out how the priests spent their money." "In 1967 archeologist excavated incriminating evidence it... what is now the Jewish quarter of the city." "It revealed the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the high priests." "The area has now been redeveloped with blocks of apartments, but archeologists had 14 years in which to excavate the area what... they found has been preserved under these buildings." "The remains of a large first century house it had been decorated and... furnished in the finest styles of the period, without doubt one of the wealthiest households in Jerusalem." "It was close by to the temple so it could have belonged to one of the high priests... but there was no direct proof." "Then archeologists found this, a ritual bath, it was used for daily purification." "The Jews believed that contact with a corpse, a dead animal or with bodily fluids such as blood made them ritually unclean." "Jesus himself would have had regular ritual bathes, like most Jews he would have used public facilities, every town had one." "A few could afford their own private ritual bathroom, but this palatial house had several, that could only mean that it must have belonged to one of the top priests," "to make sure that they never mingled with common people... the priests even had a private bridge linking their mansions to the temple," "the rest of the people, including Jesus, walked beneath them, but that was only half of the story, there is also evidence that the priests were manipulating Jewish purity laws... in order to keep undesirables down." "Before Jews could enter the temple they had to purify themselves." "Ronny Reich is one of the leading archeologists excavating around... the Temple Mount, he had come to the conclusion that in the time... of Jesus the concern with purity had become an obsession." "He found that the walls of the original baths would have been carefully plastered, today only the bare rock and stone walls remain," "this ritual bath is just one of more than 100 Ronny Reich... has found around the Temple Mount perimeter, and it wasn't just body and soul that needed purifying." "If Jesus or a pilgrim was down in Jerusalem they may well have had to... use this large bath for their household vessels and utensils and... even for their beds and mattresses." "It was considered in those days like almost mania, lets imagine that the people who gathered here... during the festivals came on a pilgrimage, lived here in tents, what would have happened if one bed became impure?" "Lets say a menstrual woman touched it, it is impure." "Somebody coming back from the cemetery and touched it, then they had to purify that particular mattress, this could have been done here." "But no matter how many ritual baths they took Jewish law... stopped some people from going into the temple, the Mishnah, a book listing rules and regulations at the time says... that among others the lame, the blind, the sick," "the deformed were all excluded." "Above all they were the people whom Jesus wanted to reach, that made him popular and dangerous." "The mystery was how Jesus was going to break down those barriers," "the gospels claim that Jesus went traveling around Galilee and..." "Judea curing the incurable." "Not the call to arms many expected from a messiah, but it was just as radical, for Jesus was going to reach out to the very people... who were shunned by the temple priests and... the first on his list were the sick and the infirmed." "The Gospel of John tells the story of a pool of... spring water in a place called Bethesda in Jerusalem." "The sick would gather here in the hope of a cure occasional the waters... would stir the sick believed that it was a sign that... the pool had miraculous powers and they all rushed to bathe in it," "but a paralyzed man could never get to the water in time, when Jesus saw him he said get up, pick up your mat and walk." "When the paralyzed man was asked who had healed him he replied he had no idea." "Amazing though the stories of Jesus' healings are... they have mystified those trying to make sense Jesus' mission." "Did Jesus really have a gift for healing?" "And how could this possibly help his cause?" "There is a clue here in Hamat Gadeer, an ancient spa in Galilee." "Archeologist Joe Zias says that baths are prove... for the huge demand for healing in antiquity" "You have to realize that health and sickness is something... which everyone was concerned about." "I think even more so back then life was difficult, 50% of the people died before the age of 18, most people died by the time they were in their 30s," "people would come here to bathe in the springs for many different reasons, everything from leprosy to arthritis." "The sick and the infirm were a sizable group of outcasts... that's why Jesus was targeting them" "and it is now known that the setting for the story... of the paralyzed man really existed." "Although there are no pools in Jerusalem called Bethesda today, archeologists knew where to look thanks to John's gospel which says that..." "Bethesda was right outside that Sheep gate." "The Sheep gate was to the north of the city and north of the old city... today is a major archeological site with ruins dating back to the time of Jesus," "In the 1960s archeologists discovered a 1 st century temple, Asclepius, the Roman god of healing, they also found a series of small rock pools." "Jerry Murphy O'Connor took part in those early excavations and... he is in no doubt that this is the setting for the story of... the paralyzed man." "Well the location that Saint John gives in chapter 5 of the gospel is that... it was outside the Sheep gate and the sheep gate in the north wall... of the temple was just about 50 meters south of here." "In front of the sheep gate the Romans had built 2 large pools, these were typical Roman baths where ordinary citizens could come and bathe, that was in the daytime, the sick would come out at night," "but they headed for a place behind the twin pools to where the Romans... had also built a small temple to the healing god Asclepius." "And beneath it would have been a whole series of little baths like this, that is essential to the Asclepius cult." "And that is exactly where you'd expect sick people to congregate." "That is the context of the miracle story." "While archeology can authenticate the setting of... the healings it can't prove whether Jesus could actually heal." "But it is certain that many people believed that he could." "Wandering healers were a common site in ancient Israel." "12 miles north of Nazareth in the Palestinian town of..." "Aruba is the tomb of another Galilean healer." "Hanina Ben Dosa was a near contemporary of Jesus, his tomb is still revered for like Jesus people believed that he could heal the sick." "Rabbis wrote that families with sick children sought his help..." "Hanina's story shows that there where exceptional men around... who were believed to have to gift of healing, but in one key respect Jesus was different." "Jesus was executed." "The only explanation is that he was seen as a threat, historians now believe that unlike Hanina Ben Dosa," "Jesus used his gift of healing to defy the temple system." "On one occasion, after curing a leper," "Jesus says to him to 'go to the temple priests and... make the offerings set by the law'." "Jesus brought these people back into society, and not only did he bring them back into society but... he challenged the religious notions at that time, people who had the disease who were cured of... leprosy Jesus told them to go up to the Temple Mount," "something which these people were totally excluded from, it is this unfortunate attitude in antiquity toward people... that had any type of illnesses, was that you deserved it, the wages of sin is death, if you got sick you deserved it" "Anybody who can heal in a world without modern medicine is... bound to draw large crowds and this many account for Jesus' popularity in Galilee." "But however subversive the healings were hardily grounds to have him killed, something more must have upset the Jewish establishment." "These are the ruins of Jerash in Jordan a roman city built in the 1 st century AD... it was built with taxes collected in occupied provinces such as Judea, the tax burden under Roman administration was in fact crippling," "the money was brought in by Jewish tax collectors, according to historians in the time of Jesus the tax man was especially despised." "In any society and it is so today, people who go around collecting taxes get a bad press, and we all know that we've got to pay tax and we don't like the people... who come and do it," "just pick we don't like parking attendants and that sort of thing... because we feel that they are an intrusion on our liberty, however that was compounded by the fact that the taxes... were being collected for Rome and the ordinary Jewish people resented that... because they were rich and powerful and they thought... why should we pay more money to them, they've already got a lot." "But tax collectors not only did the Roman's dirty work, they made matters worse by keeping a cut for themselves, in the eyes of many people, not least the religious authorities this made them sinners and outcasts." "But Jesus welcomed these sinners, Matthew for example, one of his disciples was a tax collector, in fact the gospels say that Jesus shared meals and... feasts with all manners of sinners some times these included prostitutes," "they too were despised as sinners by the priests... because like tax collectors they many have been... in contact with an impure race, the Romans." "The Romans were gentiles they hadn't been circumcised like Jews" "A good Jew is not to be seen with a harlot, he is accompanying her, she is with him and of course you can imagine the rumors, he goes to the people that are marginalized, not only the tax collectors but also the people who aren't considered important." "Only the temple priests acting on behalf of god could forgive sinners but..." "Jesus shocked everyone by taking matters into his own hands." "On one occasion when Jesus is... invited to dinner a distraught prostitute comes into the house." "As the woman wept her tears fell on Jesus' feet, she then wiped the tears away with her hair, covered his feet with kisses and rubbed them with ointment," "when she was finished Jesus said to her your sins are forgiven" "Jesus is upstaging the temple, we can get a handle on what this means if you imagine the sort official things... that go on in our society, if you want to get a new passport... or a driving license you have to go to the issuing authority to get that," "what we find Jesus doing is out there on the street offering to... issue somebody a new passport and this is offensive because... he is bypassing the system and thereby presuming to speak for god." "The gospels say that the priests were outraged, by Jesus replied that he was simply following the Jewish law, which said that you should love your neighbor as you love yourself." "Jesus' actions must have rattled the temple priesthood" "Anyone in that world, which is so volatile and politically unstable, anyone who calls together large crowds is bound to be regarded as a threat, when they then on top of that see what he is doing and... how this is somehow functioning as an overturning of... the social world and the normal structures that they are used to and..." "Jesus must have been regarded as a dangerous character." "But Jesus didn't stop there he also told stories... with a deeply unsettling message and not just for the priests." "One of the best-known stories told by Jesus is the parable of the Good Samaritan, there was once a Jewish man, he began, a traveler who was attacked by a thief and left for dead on the road," "one priest saw him and passed him by, then a Levite came his way and also left him," "but a passing Samaritan had compassion, he bound up his wounds and took him to an inn," "he even left some money with the innkeeper to look after the injured man, most people think the parable was all about helping strangers in need, but in the 1 st century it would have carried a deeply unsettling message... for the Samaritans weren't strangers but neighbors, they still are." "The descendants of the Samaritans live in Samaria between Jerusalem and Galilee." "This is their annual Passover festival where they sacrifice lambs, which are then cooked in special pits." "The Samaritans and the Jews worship the same god and celebrate the same rituals, but long before the time of Jesus there was a major split... and Jews and Samaritans became enemies," "this was the real meaning of the parable, loving your neighbor also meant loving your enemy" "Jesus was trying to break down barriers that separated people, all these tremendous barriers, Jesus is a barrier breaker now... when you attack a barrier you run it to the problem... of being destroyed by it's collapse" "It was one thing to tell subversive stories from Galilee, but sooner or later Jesus would have to decide whether to... confront the priests in person." "This is the mount of the Beatitudes over looking the Sea of Galilee, it is the spot where the church says Jesus delivered the sermon on the mount, his most detailed vision on how he would usher in the new age." "Although it is right next to Capernaum archeologists can't be sure that... this was the right mount" "Well if there was a sermon on the mount it might well... have been somewhere in this area but actually we don't know either of... those things, because for a start Jesus could have come up not just this hill... which is quite a small one," "but any of the hills behind where we are or over the other side of the lake... and the chances are he said the same sorts of things again and again and again, they didn't have mass media, radio, TV," "didn't have any of that so what Jesus had to do was to say... the same things repeatedly so that different people would get the message, now it is quite likely that was we have in Matthew's gospel... which we call the sermon on the mount is an undoubtedly edited... and shaped version of some of the sayings that..." "Jesus would have said on that sort of occasion" "One of the most memorable things that Jesus said was the Lord's Prayer, some of it's lines, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, summed up the themes that Jesus was pursuing." "The Lord's Prayer is still recited by... millions all over the world in dozens of languages, remarkably it can still be heard in the language which Jesus spoke." "This little church is in the old city of Jerusalem, when Jesus spoke to his friends or to his disciples he would have used Aramaic, they don't speak it in Galilee anymore, in fact like so many ancient languages it has disappeared, well almost." "Aramaic is still spoken in remote parts of..." "Syria and this is a Syrian orthodox church." "This is the closed we are ever likely to get to hearing the sound of Jesus, the sound of the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic." "It may have been a memorable prayer but... prayer alone wasn't going to get Jesus very far," "so he tackled the question that was on everyone's mind, the use of violence." "Jesus was uncompromising, if anyone hits you on the right cheek he said offer him the other as well." "Often in the Sermon on the Mount we come upon saying that... puzzle us initially because it sounds as if Jesus is saying just be a doormat and... let people walk all over you, turning the other cheek is one example," "but that is not what is it all about" "According to Tom Wright Jesus was using the expression... as a metaphor for pacifist or non-violent resistance" "If I give someone a blow on the right cheek it will be with the back... of my right hand and may scholars have suggested that that is a demeaning, dismissive sort of thing to do which is what you'd do to a slave or child or," "alas in that culture, a woman." "So that to say okay now hit the other cheek is a way of saying hit me again... if you want but this time do it so that we are equals... it is a way of reaffirming ones own dignity often... with a kind of rye humor at the expense of the bully who is putting you down" "His disciples and close followers would have been in no doubt what that meant," "Jesus was ruling out the path of violence taken by previous messiahs" "Jesus is saying if you fight evil with evil it is always evil that wins, and somehow a different way of conquering evil has to be found" "No leader, no prophet in Jewish history had spoken in such terms." "For a year, maybe 3 Jesus traveled around the country preaching his radical message." "He caused further outrage by taking his message to gentiles." "On one occasion in his adopted town of..." "Capernaum a centurion asked him to heal his servant who was severely ill, this was a big test, the messiah was only supposed to come and save the Jews," "but once again Jesus overturned the expectations and healed the servant" "For Jesus to go to the house of a gentile or to do something in relation to... a gentile would have been like Jesus going to eat with a sinner or whoever, it would be a sign that he was breaking through normal barriers." "But if that was all it took to right the wrongs he saw in Jewish society then..." "Jesus could have stayed here in Galilee healing the sick and telling parables." "Instead the gospels say that Jesus decides to make a stand once for all, he told his disciples that there was no time to lose, they had to leave there possessions, their boats, even their families and follow him." "They made their way from Galilee to Jerusalem to confront the temple priests, as they journeyed down the disciples may... well have wondered how on earth Jesus was going to do it." "So far Jesus had used the symbolic power of healings and... parables to undermine their authority," "but that was in the relative safety of Galilee." "The evidence shows that Jesus was going to press on... with his symbolic protests only this time under... the very noses of the temple priests." "Much like religious Jews today 1 st century Jews were steeped in the... sayings and prophesies of their ancient scriptures... and every one knew that some of them foretold the coming of god and the messiah" "They even spelt out how the arrival of god could be recognized." "His arrival would be heralded by a messiah riding into the city on a donkey." "Riding on a donkey comes from the Prophet Zacharia, which speaks of a king who will come as a man of peace rather than... as a man of war and there are other prophecies... which speak about him coming through this east gate." "The evidence from the gospels is that Jesus decided to throw down the gauntlet... and challenge the priests by entering the holy city... in the way spoken of by the prophecies," "if Jesus had walked into Jerusalem no one would have batted an eyelid, but Jesus makes a point of riding in through the fabled east gate." "There are several prophecies that Jesus seems to be deliberately picking up and... echoing and it appears that Jesus was consciously acting out God's judgment... on the city and the temple system that was refusing his message" "The priests would have been outraged who did Jesus think he was?" "The messiah?" "God himself?" "They would soon find out" "Jesus couldn't have picked a more dangerous week to enter Jerusalem." "The gospels say that he arrived in time for Passover the festival... when Jews to this day remember the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt." "Helen Bond, as expert on the politics of the period believes Jesus' timing was deliberate." "Thousands of people were converging on Jerusalem and... flocking into this tiny, tiny city, all of them heaving together inside the walls, it was a very, very tense time." "And the whole city I think would have been like an immense tinderbox, that it just needed one spark and that was it" "The Roman Governor in charge of Judea, at the time was based 60 miles away in Caesarea his name was Pontius Pilate, he would also have had to make the trip to Jerusalem all be it reluctantly." "He would have had to leave his nice pleasant cool villa at..." "Caesarea full of all the pagan gentile things that he was used to and... he would have to make the journey with a fairly sizable amount of... troops down to Jerusalem, the feast attracted so many different people from all over the empire... that there was a worry from the Roman point of view that... there could be riots and insurrections." "It wasn't a good time to have rebels and would be saviors kicking up a fuss, yet that is precisely what Jesus sets about doing." "In the afternoon of his first day in Jerusalem the gospels say that..." "Jesus went around looking at everything in the temple area," "he would have gone up these steps and in through a double door, just here on the southern wall," "a long tunnel lead from the southern gate towards the money changers courtyard." "That day Jesus would have seen the evils that... he had denounced time and time again going on in the heart of the temple." "Pilgrims had to change their impure currency for pure temple coins, the coins were used to buy blemish free white doves to sacrifice to god," "the permanently impure such as the sick were kept out by guards, the next day Jesus went back" "And think a lot of people when they read the story about..." "Jesus and the moneychangers think that it is just like having a shop... in a cathedral or something like that and they think... oh this is terrible having commerce on this sacred turf," "but actually this is a calculated act, it is like someone deliberately going into the main square of the capital city... in Washington or London or wherever and burning the flag, it is a way of saying this system is under god's judgment and... people I'm sure would have heard it like that." "Everyone including Jesus knew that... the temple priests wouldn't tolerate any more insults," "Paunches Pilot too would have been alerted to the disturbance, had Jesus lost his mind?" "It couldn't be ignored for pilgrims... how come for the first time in their lifetime to Jerusalem and... they come with some kind of leader from Galilee and that's what the leader does, they will talk about this and that is exactly what... the priests didn't want to happen." "Everything Jesus had done so far, the healings, the parables, the provocative entry into Jerusalem would have won him more support, but equally it would have got him deeper into trouble, a confrontation with the temple priests was looming," "the out come of that encounter would decide the fate of his mission." "In the days before his death," "Jesus began asking for trouble." "And until now, scholars have wondered why." "New historical evidence now sheds light on Jesus of Nazareth and... the crucial hours before his death." "And for the first time scientists can put a human face... on the person more than a billion people... around the world believe is the son of God." "Every year Christians all over the world commemorate the death of Jesus, here in Jerusalem pilgrims reenact the last hours when... he carried his cross through the streets of the city to the place of his execution." "The crucifixion is one of the best attested fact in history, not only is it mentioned in the Bible more than 80 times, it is also recorded by the first century historian Josephus." "But Jesus's actions in the 24 hours before his death remain clouded in mystery." "He has many chances to avoid execution yet he never took them, quite the contrary." "Growing up in Galilee Jesus knew all about the risk of challenging... both the Jewish and Roman establishment." "Herod Antipas the king of the Jews, the temple priests and Pontius Pilate the Roman governor, had sent many Jewish rebels to their deaths." "Jesus had reason to fear them all." "And yet he became convinced that he was the messiah, the savior that Jews had been longing for." "Right away Jesus gathered around him 12 disciples and... launched a campaign that put him on a collision course, not with the Romans, but with the Jewish authorities." "He began to reach out the outcasts, the people rejected as impure by the religious leaders." "He healed the sick, he cured the blind and the lame, he forgave the sins of prostitutes, ands he welcomed into the Jewish faith long standing enemies... like the Samaritans and the Gentiles." "But all that was in the safety of Galilee and... one day Jesus decided to come to Jerusalem and confront... those responsible directly." "That meant standing up to the high priests, the aristocratic elite who restricted access to the temple." "Instead of walking he rode into the city through the East gate." "Just as the prophesy in the book of Zacharia said the Messiah would." "Then he went into the temple where the money changers were." "It was protest against all the injustices the temple system stood for." "But it was hardly going to bring it down" "Obviously many many people in the temple, would have been very proud of what he did." "Probably some of them would have been soldiers that were guarding the temple." "Certainly none of the priests, none of the soldiers in the temple did anything at that time to stop him." "What is in Jesus' mind why does he turn around now and walk out, what is going on Jesus." "That night was the eve of the holiest day in Judaism, Passover." "Missing another chance to escape," "Jesus invited his disciples to celebrate the holiday." "Passover was an uneasy time for both the Romans and the temple priests, for it commemorated the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt." "It was an occasion when Jewish thoughts inevitably turned to... freedom from oppression and injustice." "But the disciples couldn't have guess that... this was to be their last supper together." "The meal was held in the guest room of a well to do house in Jerusalem." "The last supper is an iconic scene in Christianity, but the historical evidence showed that it would have looked very different... to the familiar image immortalized by Leonardo Da Vinci." "In every detail, how they sat, where they sat Da Vinci got it wrong." "In this museum in Jerusalem, curators have recreated a typical Passover meal in a guestroom... as described in the writing of Josephus" "Historical sources tells us that important meals... would be eaten around 3 sided tables, pretty much like this one we have here." "With mattresses and pillows." "Josef also points out that the left side of the table, not the center of the table is the most important position." "So lets place Jesus here on this left side where I'm sitting, and at that time you'd be reclining to eat your meals," "I know that doesn't sound very comfortable today but... it would be back then, and you'd eat from the table" "The Gospels back up the idea of a Triclinium." "John's Gospel says that... the beloved disciple reclined his head on the master's chest." "It was the only way he could have comfortably spoken to Jesus." "Hannaniah Pinto believes it's also possible to tell... where some of the other disciples were sat." "The same Gospel tells us that Judas probably was to the left of Jesus, because he's dipping his food in Jesus' bowl." "It was meant to be a festive meal." "Instead, Jesus startled his disciples, he said that one of them would betray him, before the disciples had taken in the news, Jesus made a cryptic remark, he told Judas to go and do what he has to do." "The listener or reader of this story is meant to think that Judas was the trader, but that's no necessarily how the disciples would have seen it." "The Gospel of Matthew says that Judas was... the only disciple Jesus called his friend." "In fact a careful reading of the Gospel, show that none of the disciple's suspected Judas" "When Judas leaves, during the last supper, everybody in that room including the beloved disciple, think there are 2 options;" "he's going to give money to the poor so they can celebrate Passover, or he's going to make preparation for the Passover for Jesus' group." "In any case everybody in the room thinks he's doing Jesus' will, what is going on" "The disciples would soon find out." "After supper the group, minus Judas, made their way home." "Being Passover night," "Roman soldiers and temple guards may well have been on patrol, some of them perhaps even looking out for Jesus." "On the way home to their lodgings in a nearby town... called Bethany they stopped for a rest on a garden... called Gesthemene on the mount of olives overlooking the city." "Though the disciples soon fell asleep," "Jesus was still up and about." "Luke's Gospel portrays Jesus that night... as a man in crisis agonizing over what to do next." "'ln his anguish', writes Luke, 'his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood'." "This evocative image is sometimes regarded as a figure of speech, but evidence shows that it may have been a very real experience." "Giving us a glimpse into Jesus' state of mind." "A similar phenomenon has been reported by doctors." "Doctor Frederick Zugibe is the chief medical examiner of..." "Rockland county in the New York State." "For nearly 30 years he's also taught forensic pathology at Columbia University, and in that times he's come across over 100 reports of people sweating blood." "In each case the people believed they were about to suffer extreme pain or die" "For instance I have found 6 cases where the individual were... on their way to the gallows or to the guillotine that the sweating occurred." "The condition is known as haematidrosis." "Under extreme anxiety the arteries burst and blood seeps into the sweat glands." "A case of a sailor in a storm, he thought he was going to die, and he sweat blood." "A young girl from Britain during the blitz, every time the blitz came she would sweat blood, and the doctors could do nothing to help her." "The forensic evidence strongly suggests that..." "Jesus was in anguish because he knew that the end was near." "It was nearly dawn and Judas wasn't back yet." "When Jesus returned to the disciples, he scolded them for not keeping guard." "Then suddenly Judas appeared with some temple guards." "They had come to arrest Jesus." "The Gospels point the finger at Judas, 'after all', they say, 'he admits he was paid 30 pieces of silver by the priest'." "But a new theory suggest that no betrayal was actually involved." "When William Klassen looked at the Gospels in the original Greek, he found that the word betrayal was a mistranslation" "Well the word Pottadidomy is the important one, that's the one that always used to describe what Judas did." "And in all classical Greek in all New Testament passages, where it does not apply to Judas it's always translated as simply handover." "William Klassen believes that Jesus chose Judas to hand him over to the priests." "Judas's job was to pay the temple tax to the high priests whenever... the group came to Jerusalem" "Even in Galilee already he kept saying, 'when I get to Jerusalem I'll have be to handed over to the high priests'." "When he came to Judas, I think because of Judas's reliability, because of his connection with the high priest," "I think that he in effect had planned that Judas would do it." "It certainly was not a betrayal in the sense that he snuck up on Jesus" "The 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas was only to be expected" "Anyone that did the handing over in the Jewish system had to be paid, there was no way around that, because the hands people over is the equivalent to our modern police." "And if you don't pay the police, if you don't pay them well, you get bad police work." "If Jesus had hatched a plan with Judas then it would help to make sense of... something that nobody disputes." "Jesus had time to escape, just beyond the crest of the mount of olives was the desert, where he'd have been safe, but he stayed put." "It seems like madness, but it brought Jesus closer to his goal, a confrontation with the chief priest of the temple, Caiaphas." "After the king," "Caiaphas was the most important figure in the Jewish establishment, he had the final say over who was and wasn't entitled to enter the temple." "Like modern Jerusalem at festival time, the city would have been heaving with pilgrims, soldiers on red alert, according to historians the last thing Caiaphas wanted, was a riot on his hands." "He would have to act decisively" "Caiaphas probably genuinely believed that Jesus was a trouble maker, genuinely believed that he was a false prophet who was leading the people astray... and genuinely thought that he should be got rid of" "Caiaphas wasn't the only official worried about security that week, the chief priest was ultimately answerable to Pontius Pilate, the ruthless Roman governor." "Jesus wasn't the only rebel to cross his path" "There's actually another messianic pretender in the time of Pilate, this man was a Samaritan, he claimed to be the Samaritan Messiah or Taheb as he was known." "And he gather a large of people to the foot of a mountain called Mt." "Garism." "Pilate heard about this, he heard that there was a great number of people all gathering in this... small town, and the people actually had weapons with them, so he sent in the cavalry, who executed lots of them and captured others." "Jesus was just a provincial, it wasn't worth it to allow a provincial to carry on, and possibly incite a rebellion, which then would have got to Rome and to would have looked bad on Pilate," "it's much easier just to get rid of him straight away." "But as Jesus was being led to meet Caiaphas the chief priest... would have know that Jesus was a popular figure, he would need a crime, he could sell to the people, preferably a confession." "The Gospels contain revealing glimpses into the exchanges that... took place between Jesus and Caiaphas, the chief priest accused Jesus of acting like a Messiah and... a new king of the Jews." "Both were charges that would make Jesus a criminal in the eyes of the Romans." "Jesus could hardly deny the charge, but it hurt his case by adding the Caiaphas would... see him exalted on the clouds of heaven, sitting on the right hand of God." "Outraged Caiaphas accused Jesus of blasphemy, in the Jewish faith no one, not even the Messiah could be identified so closely with God" "Caiaphas as a result of this onset has got 2 things that he wanted, on the one hand he can easily now hand Jesus over to the Roman authorities... and say, 'he thinks he's the king of the Jews you know what to do next," "and the Romans did', on the other hand Caiaphas can put it out among the Jewish populace that..." "Jesus is a Blasphemer and therefore under Jewish law he deserves to die" "Jesus must have foreseen that his action might cost his life" "Most of the prophets paid the great price." "Jeriamah's stoned, Isaiah is sawed in 2, who was his teacher John the Baptist, he's beheaded, who was the great miracle worker just before him, Honi, he was stoned just outside of Jerusalem, not far from here." "Stoning is probably what the priest had in mind for Jesus, scholars believe it's unlikely that... they would have expected him to be crucified" "If there were priests that turned him over to Pilate, they may have, in their mind, 'let's get this great man, this one is a trouble rouser, this one that has problems the and gathers crowds," "let's put him with the high priest, let us put him with the Roman authorities for a day or 2'," "I don't think that the high priest thought that he might be crucified, would a Jew who was religious want that happen to another man that was religious" "Jesus' last hours are remembered every year by Christians... all over the world" "here in Jerusalem pilgrims retrace the route that..." "Jesus took from his prison to the place of his execution." "Some Christian go even further." "Here in the Philippines in the town of San Pedro, young men commemorate the scourging the Romans inflicted on Jesus." "San Pedro, is a poor but devout community, and the people here believe that their prayers for better times will be answered... if they endure this much pain." "Many of them volunteer to be nailed to the cross." "It's a powerful evocation of the scene in Jerusalem 200 years ago, but scholars have questioned some of the details," "for years some have argued that Jesus must have been nailed through the wrists, as the weight of his body would have torn the hands." "But now forensic tests reveal the traditional image may... have been right after all." "This is the home of Dr Frederick Zugibe, forensic pathologist with Rockland County New York State." "He's been applying his forensic knowledge of how people die to... analyze the circumstances of Jesus' death." "In this experiment a volunteer puts on special protective gloves, then hangs from the cross." "While his assistant monitors his heart rate," "Dr Zugibe test whether the hand can support the weight of the body" "Now I'm going to let him suspend without any feet rests at all... over there, okay, now, another pain over there, what do you feel" "A lot of pain, pressure of the upper arms" "The pain is a measure of how much stress the body is applying on the hands, it would tear in a matter of minutes." "Since the Gospels say that Jesus was up on the cross for 6 hours, it might seem as if the hand couldn't possibly support the body." "But Dr Zugibe has found that... the stress is instantly relieved the moment the feet are supported" "Now what if the difference over there, how is it difference" "Tremendous difference, there's comparably very... little weight on the upper arms" "He said there's very little pull on the hands themselves, all of the weight, all of the weight is here, it's only is the legs are free standing that... the hands would not hold it" "And the evidence suggest that Jesus' legs were not freestanding." "In 1968 archeologists in Jerusalem found the remains of a crucified victim." "One of the bones showed that the man's legs had been nailed to the cross." "Here we have a cast of this, and this is the heel bone, now we see the nail here, and here it's perhaps somewhat clearer with this here, you see what they done, there's a piece of olive wood, here's the nail," "they drove the nail through the plaque, it increases the diameter of the nail, they then drove the thing into the heel." "Nailed to the side of the upright, the legs would have been able to take... the weight off the hands." "Sometimes the Romans even nailed a piece of wood to... the cross for the victim to sit on, a man could be up on the cross for days." "Another detail of the crucifixion questioned by scholars, is the cross itself." "The conventional view is that Jesus was nailed to a specially made cross." "But the historian Josephus reveals that this view need revising." "With so many rebels to crucify, sometimes up to 500 a day, the Romans adapted old olive trees, roads into towns were often... lined with dozens of trees doubling up as crosses." "It was also common practice for the victims to be offered something... to quench their thurst or dull the pain." "The Gospels say a soldier gave Jesus a sponge soaked in vinegar, perhaps that's why he was able to stay alive for 6 hours." "But as Jesus hung on the cross the Gospels report that... some of the crowd we mocking Jesus" "And then you could hear the mocking, 'oh you who heal others, why don't you come down and heal yourself', the mocking." "Powerless, the great powerful one is now left powerless" "The Gospels say that Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene one of... his closest followers were also present." "It must have seen to all those there the mission Jesus had... launched back in Galilee was ended in humiliating failure." "But some scholars believe that suffering on this scale may... well have been part of Jesus' plan" "Well we do have evidence in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls of... martyrs by the time of Jesus and before the time of Jesus, believing that their death, their suffering will help atone for some of... the problems in the land." "Some texts said that salvation would only ever come through... the suffering of the Messiah." "He must have often asked himself whether he was out to lunch on this," "I mean his own family say he was mad, and he must have sometimes... wondered if they were right, but we mustn't think of Him, as though he was just some crazy suicide bomber or Kamikaze pilot or... something like that." "Jesus' glimpsed in the Jewish scripture that the way that God will defeat evil, is not by fighting it but curiously by leting it do it's worst to..." "God's anointed one, so that through his suffering the force of evil may be exhausted" "But Jesus was not immune to human emotions, 'in his final hours', said the Gospels, 'he cried out to God'." "'My God My God why have you forsaken me', it seems that he's a little bit frustrated, 'where the hell are you now God, when I need you'," "I think he's simply in a dialogue with God as he always had been," "'God where are you now'" "Jesus' mission had followed the tragic past of other messianic uprisings, the minute the movement threatens disorder, it's leader is picked out and eliminated." "Normally a dead Messiah led to the collapse of the movement." "With the crucifixion it's over, it's completely over, it's no more hope." "Well Christianity's around, what happened?" "There is something that happens, there is something that happens" "After 2000 years Christians from all over the world still make a pilgrimage to... the Church of the Holy Sephulcre, the place where Christianity believes..." "Jesus was crucified and buried." "Pilgrims still come here because they believe that the crucifixion... was not the end of the story." "It's now one the great mysteries of history." "Somewhere on this spot where a church now stand a small... first century Jewish sect, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat." "Dan Bahat is one of the Archeologists who've been trying to establish... what the area here was like at the time of Jesus' death." "He's discovered that the church of the Holy Sephulcre was originally... built on an old quarry." "You can see that actually it's an old quarry, you can see the incisions of the stone everywhere, of the nature of rock, because it was a quarry, and a quarry was always outside the city wall" "The archeologists had also found several tombs inside the church dating back... to the first century." "Archeologists are now able to strip away 2000 years of building history, and get back to the time of Jesus." "During the first century when the population was smaller, the city walls were less than 100 yards further back then where they are today." "Quarries had many uses, organic remains found under the church reveal that... the quarry would have been used as a garbage dump." "Quarries were also the place where criminals were executed." "Jesus would have been crucified on an outcrop of rock somewhere here." "In Jewish law, a corpse was the most impure thing, so tombs were also built in quarries outside the city wall." "This first century tomb hewn into the rock in Jerusalem is typical of the tombs... in the time of Jesus." "His burial in a tomb like this should have been the end fo the story, but it's here that it developed a surprising twist." "The Gospels say that Jesus was resurrected, physically brought back to life." "Did it happen, there are Christian Bishops who say, 'this is an ancient myth, we have to get rid of it', but most Christians say the heart of Christianity... is the absurd claim that this man who was crucified was raised by God," "yes it is not a rational claim, it is an expression of belief." "The strength and depth of that belief is testified by the fact that... billions of people around the world believe in resurrection," "but in fact the Gospels do attempt to marshal some evidence." "They claim that Jesus appeared to his disciples." "On one occasion Jesus' uncle Clepoas and a friend are walking on the road to..." "Emmaus when Jesus suddenly appears to them." "Strangely, at first Jesus' followers don't recognize him." "Now apparitions are sometimes experienced by bereaved people." "Grief stricken, they imagine their loved are alive again." "According to Dr Mark Goodacre, in such trick of the mind, the bereaved have no difficulty in recognizing their loved one." "But the appearances reported by disciples and others in the Gospel are... unlike normal visions" "Now this means that somebody is seeing Jesus, who is a family member, who knows what Jesus look like, and yet somehow he doesn't recognize him, so this in a way also stands against this kind of hallucination idea." "And you also find there are quite a number of different recipients of... these vision including women, you know it's well know that if you want... to make up some sort of tradition, you don't pin it on women... in the ancient world, because they're not reliable witnesses," "so it's not the kind of thing that you make up." "There should be no room in a rational world for the apparition stories... reported in the Gospels." "Yet science can not explain them away convincingly." "For the time being they must remain a matter of faith, but the Gospels... do offer some other evidence." "They say that some women, came to visit the tomb 3 days after his death." "They found the tomb empty and fled terrified." "Since then people have tried to find a rational explanation for the empty tomb." "One possibility is that the body was never taken down to the tomb" "A lot of times when you were dead, the body was not taken down... from the cross, it's that the body stayed there on the cross, the animals took it down, the jackals the wolves, the dogs, birds, vultures." "And then a lot of times, and most of the time when the body... was taken down from the cross you ended up on the dump, on the city dump." "But the Gospels do say that the body was taken down and placed in a tomb, so could Jesus' body have been stolen from the tomb." "Gloria Moss is the latest in a long line of authors who have claimed that... some people may have had very good reason... for wanting to remove the body" "You could see that the apostles might wanted to have stolen the body... in order to simulate a resurrection." "But quite apart from that, there's another much more mysterious reason why... the body might have disappeared, and that is quite simply that Jesus... might not have been dead, might still have been alive and... simply walked out of the tomb." "This theory is a extraordinary as the resurrection, how could Jesus have... possibly survived the traumatic injuries suffered on the cross, this is the Chelsea Physic Garden, a botanical museum in London." "Here there is evidence of a primitive form of anesthetic... used in the time of Jesus." "It's called Mandrake, a plant which grows in Israel and... elsewhere in the Mediterranean" "There's a very important ingredient mainly in the root, called Hyacine... which is one of the major pre-meds to be used nowadays." "And it has an extremely powerful effect on the central nervous system, and renders people as if they are dead, makes them completely insensible to pain." "A text from the first century written by Discorsi, a doctor who traveled... with the Roman army, shows that Mandrake was in use at the time of Jesus." "The anesthetic was prepared by soaking a sponge with mandrake solution, the sponge was allowed to dry out, and then the whole thing was done again... until the sponge was absolutely saturated with the drug" "That sponge would have been moistened and would have released the hyacine... under the nose of the intended victim, and would have been breathed in" "But how could the drug, have been given to Jesus, ancient records show that... vinegar was used to dissolve medicines." "Perhaps the Mandrake solution was hidden in the vinegar offered to Jesus." "Certainly there are reports a people surviving crucifixion." "We know from Josephus he had 3 friends near Bethlehem who had been crucified, he came to Jerusalem spoke to the rulers, he then when back to Bethlehem and took him out of the cross... one of the men lived, happily ever after." "But even if an anesthetic was offered to Jesus many scientists believe that... this idea is deeply flawed." "It overlooks the repeated injuries and... massive loss of body fluids the Jesus would have sustained." "Okay." "It also ignores the fact that the Romans had plenty of... practice at crucifying people." "They were professionals, they were experts." "They had a team of 4 individuals and the exactor mortis who... went right around doing nothing but crucifixions, one of the items in their protocol was to use a spear to make sure that... they were dead, if there was any doubt" "John's Gospel confirms this practice, a soldier pierced Jesus' side with a lance." "Most experts agree that in the end it is a matter of faith" "Belief is not based upon proof or a stone or a prescribed statement, it comes from the human heart, and it can never be reduced to... the minimum in the human, and that is reason" "Many expert do believe however, that Jesus' followers themselves... must have been convinced that he'd been raised from the dead." "Without that belief it's impossible to explain the rise of early Christianity, we can imagine a messianic sect going on for a few years, but if they wanted to continue as such they would... certainly have got themselves another messiah," "James, Jesus' brother was a great leader in the early church, but nobody said James was the Messiah, but you'd expected them to do that if they knew that..." "Jesus' body was still in the tomb." "Jesus is now the icon of the religion which has nearly 2 billion converts." "Even amongst people who don't worship him, his face is one of the most recognizable in the world." "But are we sure in our view of what he looked like." "One would expect the Gospels to provide the clues, but surprisingly for a set of 4 biographies, the Gospels don't say... a word about Jesus' face." "So it's pretty strange that so many people think they know... what Jesus looked like." "In this Jerusalem bazaar, tourists can chose portraits of Jesus as souvenirs." "In an upstairs room, this bazaar hold literally hundreds... more portraits of Jesus, but unlike other images of Jesus, these are thought to be amongst the most authentic." "They are know as icons, a word that means faithful portraits of Jesus." "The first icons were painted in the fifth century, that's 400 years after Jesus died, there's a legend that the Gospel... wrier Luke painted a portrait of Jesus which inspired all the others, but it's just a legend." "Now there may be a better way of finding out what Jesus looked like." "The icons were not painted in Israel, but in the Eastern Mediterranean in countries like Greece and Turkey, they don't reflect the face typical in ancient Israel." "Jesus was a Jew who lived all his life in a Jewish environment, his people remained apart from other ethnic groups... there was little or no intermarriage," "so it's in Jesus' homeland that clues to his true likeness must be found." "This is one of Israel' leading centers of Forensic science, these boxes here are full of skulls and bones unearthed by... archeologists in they land, they'll be given a proper burial once... the experts have finished studying them." "But what's in these boxes may tell a story that... should get us closer to the face of Jesus." "Joe Zias, has found the face in the icons corresponds to... a type a skull not found in Israel." "These 3 skulls on the other hand, are Jewish skulls found in Jerusalem, they date to the first century, the same period as Jesus." "Here's proof that the long thin face associated with Jesus is not accurate." "If you look at the skull here, these things, rather than being long headed which many of the skulls are, these things are very very wide here in terms of the parietals, narrow over here, sometimes these things are even almost round." "Joe Zias has found that non Jewish skulls are quite different." "And if you look at this, notice how this is very long and... this is very very narrow, it's a complete complete different type, if we put, particularly these next to each other, perhaps you can see clearly... what I'm talking about." "The one on the right, the Jewish skulls is clearly rounder and... wider than the one on the left." "This is much more gracile, much more fine, as compared to this one here, this one's much more robust, even in terms of weight." "There are of course many other faces used to represent the man many believe... is the son of God, but they too reflect the cultures of their artists." "Now using the first century skull, it may be possible to get even closer... to the face of the Jesus of history." "What can scientists deduce." "Richard Neave for the Unit of Art and Medicine at the University of..." "Manchester in England is one of the world's leading forensic artists." "Using forensic skills he can reconstruct the face of... an average first century Jewish male." "The basic face, basic shape the general configuration of the face is... determined by the skull and the face that will immerge from... this reconstruction will be broadly similar to the kind of face that... this man had when he was alive" "The face Neave constructs will be that of a first century middle eastern man." "Weathered by desert life and hard work, probably one that was old before it's time." "Much like the face of Jesus would have been." "This certainly doesn't look anything like the images that one associates with Him, and I think it's much more likely to be a accurate reflection of... a majority of people who would've been around at that time" "It looks like an older man than Jesus, but Neave argues that it... easily fits the profile of a man in his mid 30s for that part of the world." "Especially at the time the average life expectancy was well below 50" "With an archeological reconstruction, that is a fair thing to do, for somebody who you know has probably been living fairly hot climate, with lots of bright sunshine, which does tend to make the brows... become more furrowed and the skin more creased and wrinkled." "It's very much the kinds of face that you see in parts of the world today." "In parts of North Africa and Egypt and around into parts of Jordan and Israel." "But this face still leaves many question unanswered." "What kind of hair did Jesus have?" "how long was it?" "Did he have a beard?" "How would he have worn it?" "and what was the color of his skin?" "To find the answers the reconstructed face was first scanned into a computer." "Biblical scholar Dr Mark Goodacre has discovered a number of... historical clues which, when fed into the computer, could get us even closer to the likely face of Jesus." "One of the most telling clues are these images from a Jewish synagogue in Syria, they were painted in the third century, less than 200 years from the time of Jesus." "They are the earliest pictures of Jewish people in the world, and they provide an insight into Jewish styles of beard and hair." "They kind of hair style that you get, it's short it's curly, if you like Afro in style, and this seems to be almost uniform in the way that..." "Jesus is depicted there." "Moreover it's likely that Jesus would have had a short cropped, kind of black sort of beard, something a little bit like this." "This length of hair is confirmed by Saint Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians composed barely 20 years after the time of Jesus." "He write, that it's disgraceful for a man to have long hair." "And what's interesting about this is that," "Saint Paul knew members of the family of Jesus, he knew the disciples of Jesus, it's unlikely that Paul... would have be able to say something like this if it was well known that..." "Jesus himself had long hair." "Dr Goodacre, believes that the traditional depictions of..." "Jesus' skin color may also need revising." "Firstly, most historians would assume that in Jesus' part of the world, people would be darker skinned." "In addition, Dr Goodacre has now found supporting evidence... in the Gospels themselves." "Matthew writes that when Herod order the massacre of children under the age of 2," "Mary and Joseph escaped with Jesus to Egypt." "Now it's very unlikely that Jesus would have been able to be hidden in Egypt... if he had a very different color skin from the people that were in Egypt." "Intrigued by this possibility, Dr Goodacre investigated further." "He looked again at Mathew's and Luke's Gospel and... found some unexpected clues." "Detailed genealogies or records of Jesus' ancestry." "There are quite a good number of people of Afro-asiatic origin, in particular you see women of Afro-asiatic origin, people like Rahab, people like Ruth and so on, who if you like, would have been much more likely to have dark skin tones." "Although this is not the actual face of Jesus, it does takes up beyond the... idealized images of the last 1500 years and closer than... ever before to the real Jesus of History." "There can now be little doubt that a real flesh and blood man called..." "Jesus of Nazareth challenged the Jewish establishment." "At the time his mission must have seems like an act of folly." "Not only did he pay the ultimate price, but the temple system he attack survived." "For Christians of course, Jesus' death became the ultimate sacrifice, and a new source of hope in the world." "But now historians too are recognizing Jesus' place in first century politics." "The temple system may well have survived Jesus' challenge, but not for long." "When he was alive, Jesus had warned that the temple would be destroyed... before his generation had passed away." "After his death, Jewish resentment against oppression and injustice deepened, the chief priests remained puppets of the Romans, new Messiahs came and went." "In 64 AD, 1000's of Jew's began to revolt." "The Roman response was brutal." "This city was burned down, the temple destroyed, 1000's were massacred." "Jesus had been proved right after all." "His campaign wasn't an act of madness." "He had understood before anyone the need for change."