lt was a time of great unrest and turmoil in ancient Judea. Restive under the rule of pagan Rome, the Jews of Palestine in the 1st century A.D. repeatedly defied their conquerors with covert gestures of opposition and open acts of rebellion. The Roman response was usually swift and cruel. Perhaps because he participated in one of these uprisings or committed some other grievous offense in the eyes of Jerusalem's stern rulers, a young Judean named Yehohanan (a Hebrew form of John) was sentenced to death. Like thousands of other Jews—including Jesus of Nazareth —who were also condemned by the Roman procurators during those turbulent years, Yehohanan died slowly and painfully on the cross.
First Evidence. Yehohanan's death was quickly forgotten. No documents have ever been found that record his crime or recall his crucifixion. Yet, after nearly 2,000 years, he has now suddenly and sensationally re-emerged from the dustbins of history. Last week Israeli archaeologists announced that they had identified the remains of the unfortunate young man and found clear evidence of his grisly execution.
The Israeli scholars, who studied the find for more than two years before making their announcement, were understandably cautious. What they uncovered and authenticated is the first firm physical evidence of an actual crucifixion in the ancient Mediterranean world. Although history records that this form of punishment was continued by the Romans until the 4th century A.D. (when it was finally outlawed by the Emperor Constantine I, who legalized Christianity in the empire), the only previous physical evidence of crucifixion was extremely tenuous. It consisted of a few bones, excavated in Italy and Rumania, containing holes in the forearms and heels that could have been made during crucifixions. But there was never any trace of the nails that might have been used to penetrate the body of the victim and fasten him to the cross.
The new archaeological evidence, a byproduct of intense excavation and building activities by the Israelis in the territories they conquered in the Six-Day War, is far more substantial. In June 1968, a year after Israeli troops occupied all of Jerusalem, workmen began bulldozing a rocky hillside more than a mile north of the Old City's Damascus Gate in preparation for putting up a modern apartment-house complex. They discovered almost immediately that the site, called Giv'at ha-Mivtar (meaning Hill of the Divide), was honeycombed with burial caves dating back to biblical times.
Summoned by Israel's Department of Antiquities and Museums, Archaeologist Vasilius Tzaferis quickly pried open the lids of 15 ossuaries, or stone coffins, which held the skeletons of 35 people—eleven men, twelve women and twelve children. At least five of the Judeans had met violent deaths. But Tzaferis was especially intrigued by what he found in one ossuary, which contained the bones of a child about three or four years old and those of an adult whose name—Yehohanan—was inscribed in barely legible Aramaic letters on the outside. The man's heel bones were penetrated by the rusty remains of a 7-in.-long nail.