Inside the Tomb: How the Ancients Buried Their Dead

In this episode of Digging Deeper, Barry Britnell and Dan Kingsley discuss the fascinating world of ossuaries—stone boxes used primarily in Jewish burial practices during the time of Christ. From the ossuary of Caiaphas, the high priest who condemned Jesus, to the discovery of a heel bone pierced by a Roman crucifixion nail, these artifacts offer powerful connections to biblical history.

Join Barry and Dan as they explore burial customs from the time of Jesus, how archaeology sheds light on New Testament culture, and how these discoveries reinforce the historical reliability of Scripture. Plus, hear insights from Dr. Scott Stripling during a tour of the Israeli Antiquities Authority's warehouse in Jerusalem on what these ancient remains teach us about faith, death, and eternal hope.

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Have you ever looked in your Bible and read stories about burial practices that you perhaps didn't understand fully? Well, hopefully we'll be able to answer some of those questions today on this episode of Digging Deeper. Welcome to Digging Deeper, the podcast where we talk about the geography, archeology, people and cultures of the lands of the Bible. You can learn more about all of us here at Appian Media and watch our free video series at www.appianmedia.org. Our sponsor for today's episodes are CIA Bookstore and Sacred Connections. We'll be happy to share more about these two sponsors a little later in our program. Well, Dan, welcome. Good to have you again. It's good to see you. Good. Well, today we want to talk about, an interesting topic, at least for me anyway. It's called ossuaries. And to be honest with you, I'm all kind of turned a lot of this over to you. Dan has a medical background. So tell us a little bit about your background, and I've got some questions for you about these things. Okay. Well, after college, you do four years in medical school, I actually graduated back in 2001, so it's. It's been a little bit. Yeah. I have training in intro medicine, and then after that I specialized in medical oncology, hematology and hospice and palliative medicine. Okay. All right. So of the two of us, you're the medical expert. Let's just say let's just say that. So yeah okay. That's right. Okay. So as we read the gospels in the book of acts that, you know, the documents that we have around the first century, we read about, you know, people dying and people being buried, especially Jewish people. And there's some incredibly interesting, Jewish burial practices that we want to ask you about. So, first of all, can you give me a couple of examples of some of these stories I've been talking about? Oh, yes. We think about in John 11 with the death of Lazarus. Right. Right. When you read that, they talk about, you know, don't roll the stone away. Right. On his body. Decomposing. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And they also talk about the fact that he was wrapped in some linen strips. His. There was a cloth on his face. Right? Right. And, we think about with Jesus. Okay. Yes. Famous death in the Bible that his body was also wrapped and there were a lot of spices that would have been there because the Jewish people didn't embalm. Yeah. And the body was. Okay. And you didn't want a lot of smell. And so they would have the spices to help keep that down. And we read about, Jesus having the grave clothes and being after he rose being in one place. Yes, I remember right. Okay, so the bodies were prepared and they were buried in tomb. So explain to me a little bit about what these tombs would have looked like. similar to here in the US, where burial practices change over time. They changed. Okay. And you can actually date tombs in the Middle East, particularly in Israel, to maybe Iron Age or the New Testament times, depending on how they looked in and what was done right in New Testament times. Typically you would have had an antechamber where you could have gone in the body, would have been laid out to eventually decompose, and it would've been left there for about a year. But some tombs actually had, these niches or Cokin, if you go into the, church of the Holy Sepulcher and you go past the attic, you'll there's a little. Okay. Right. Yes. Tombs. Those are those cooking? Okay. All right. So. So after the body is buried and after, you know, it's been treated with spices and after it has decomposed, you know, after some period of time, what then do they do? You would collect the bones. Okay. Because those areas would have been reused, which is why it was important that Jesus was buried in a new tomb, because who rose was at him or the last person buried there. Right. But you would take the bones and you would either put them in a repository, which a lot of times it would have been under the burial bench. Okay. Everybody's bones or or by New Testament times, we start running into a lot of ossuaries. All right. Boxes that you would have put the bones in. Okay, so what are these boxes made of? How big are they? Things like that. They were carved out of stone. Okay. And depending on your wealth, they would have been just a plain box or they would have been very ornate. wealthier you are, the more decorated. Of course. The same way it is today. Yes. A pine box or a very elaborate. That's right. They were only as big as they needed to be. And since we didn't break bones, we just collected the bones and put them together. Generally, the bone box was made long enough to fit your femur because that is the longest bone. Sure. Okay, that makes sense. All right. You, for an adult, need a much bigger box than it's a child. And so when you actually go and see actuaries, you can generally estimate was this for a child or an adult. Right. Okay. Understand that okay. And actually I have a few more questions for Dan. But let's take a moment real quick and have a word from our sponsors. during the entire history of Appian Media, we have had several companies reach out to us and offer to sell our products. One of the first to contact us was Sia bookstore. Sia bookstore has been in business for over 70 years and is a nonprofit religious bookstore and retail supplier of books, Bibles, church supplies, and other religious resources. They're located in Athens, Alabama, but serve customers across the entire United States. If you're in need of any of the wonderful products that they offer, we encourage you to reach out to them through their website at Truth books.com. Second connections is a safe online space for Christians to connect and build meaningful relationships, with a focus on community and channels dedicated to various interests and events. There is something for users at every life stage. And right now, when you download the app, you use the code, digging deeper to receive a special discount for all listeners of the Digging Deeper podcast. So we invite you to start your journey today by going to their website and learning more. Their address is Adobe Dot Sacred connections.com. Now back to the show. Okay, Dan, the information that you've given me is incredibly interesting. So there any of these actuaries? Obviously they're very old, but are there any of they're on display today? Oh there are there is a number. When you walk through the Mount of Olives and you go down the hill, you pass by Dominus Flevit. Okay. There are a number of Auschwitz that were discovered there. Most have been taken out, but there are some still left in sight. Okay. All right. The Israel Museum. Oh, of course, a museum. Yeah. Not the British Museum. Okay, but there's a museum. There is one there that is very famous. the fascinating thing for me is It's the ossuary of Caiaphas. the high priest. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How do you know it's carcass? It has his name on it. Well, that would help. They actually carved on both sides. Joseph and Caiaphas. Josephus was actually his real name. We know him under his father's name. Okay. But it was Joseph and Caiaphas. They did find a number of bones in there from, I think, six different people. There were bones of a 60 year old man in there, and that was about the age that he died. So we possibly have the bones of someone we read about. Wow. That's that's incredible. That, that's fascinating to me. But it's is so ornate. So you ever see pictures of it or see it in the museum and say wow this person he had some status. He had some wealth. Yeah. There as well is another one. And it's not that ornate. Okay. But it has helped us so much because it was the first proof, archeological proof of crucifixion. Very plain box. Yeah, but they found in a heel bone. And the heel bone had a Roman nail stuck through it. Oh, And when it went into the wood that there was probably a knock and the nail bent, couldn't remove it out to the heel because you want to conserve your resources? Yes. And so when they took all the nails out, they couldn't get one out, so they just buried them with it. But he was buried in an he's showing that not everybody was thrown in a common pit. Wow. Okay. That really is incredible. During our filming for, searching for a King, we got to go into the IaaS warehouse. Yeah. Right. And it was like a kid in a candy store. I have never seen so many ossuaries there, row upon row. Oh, wow. And I think I took a picture of every single one. But the really neat thing is we were there with an archeologist, Scott Stripling. Yes. And we were able to follow him around. That's not what we were there for. But he did give us a little bit of a tour while we were there. we're going to play that video for you now if you're listening on the audio podcast. We encourage you to really listen to this and kind of picture in your mind that last scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, because that's really kind of what this place looked like. But we also encourage you to go over to the video portion of this podcast and watch this video. So, Greg, if you don't mind, play that video for us now and then we'll come back and talk about this a little afterward. Well, you've heard about a kid in a candy store. You're in for a treat. This is one of my favorite places in the store's warehouse, so you can see why. Just from floor to ceiling, we've got Austin where he's on these next two wild. What happened was about 100 BC, there was a wave of ritual purity that swept through late Second Temple period Judaism, for example. They begin to interpret Leviticus 11 very stringently. When your pottery becomes impure, you must break it, says the Lord. And when's the last time you heard a good sermon on that? Nope. Well, they began to say pottery is susceptible to ritual impurity, but it doesn't say anything about stone vessels. So that's when we begin to see the stone vessels. And also they begin to practice a secondary form of burial. The body decomposes after a year. You collect the bones and you place them in a bone box. Notice some of the motifs that we find on these ossuary is the most prominent. One is the rosette typical late second temple period motif. So when you see that, let's say on a tomb, that's a good indication that you're dealing with that first century culture. We get inscriptions on about 20 to 25% of the ossuary, and they may tell you who's buried there and you can get them in Greek, Aramaic. Hebrews would be a variety of languages. High infant mortality rates in the first century. And so we see a lot of children's also areas of all of all different sizes. This must have been a big person because normally these are long enough for the femur bone, the longest bone in the body. And so this was a big guy. Okay. So let's check out this inscription. It's in Aramaic and it's going to read I believe it's me if I'm reading it correctly. Miriam, daughter of Caiaphas and not Caiaphas, the high priest. Although we do have a very famous his his own ossuary. Joseph. Caiaphas, who condemned Jesus to death. But this is also a priest named Caiaphas. And this is, I believe, his daughter that it's referring to died at a young age. So no one's exempt from death. And now, on the Mount of Olives, there's a site called Dominus 11. The necropolis there is fascinating. Yes. 500 ossuary came out of that necropolis, and a number of them with Christian iconography on. Think about that for him. I mean, here you've got a pre 8070 Jewish ossuary with Christian iconography on it. You're talking about the early followers of Christianity. So the potential that also theories have to help us understand the New Testament culture is enormous. So when it comes to your personal faith, what I'm hearing is, is the time that you've spent researching and digging and exploring the physical material is that it's reinforced your faith, right? I was a Christian before I began excavating, so it did not bring me to faith, but it never scared me to examine the tough questions. And sometimes we do have questions where we scratch our heads. But in archeology, we say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There's some things we cannot prove, a lot of things we can we can establish, for example, that Jesus existed outside the New Testament. We have numerous literary sources. We can prove where he lived, the type of life that he lived. I think we know where he died and when he died. And in fact, in this building we have examples of crucifixion victims, nails still in the bones, so I can prove all of that to you. But what I can't do is I can't prove that when Jesus died and he had your sins upon him on the cross, that's a matter of faith. So in other words, archeology can bring a person to the cross, and from there it's the Holy Spirit that works in someone's life and brings that person to faith. Our direct goal is not to prove the Bible or to bring people to Christ, but is there an apologetic function of archeology? You better believe there is, and it comes across all the time. The subject of death is not one that's particularly enjoyable to talk about. When a family member or close friend passed away, you want to do whatever needs to be done to demonstrate the love that you had for that person. in the book of Ecclesiastes we read, it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. For this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. The wise man gives us this piece of advice, because he knows that thinking about death is ultimately a good thing. So as we conclude this episode, we encourage you to think about death. Think about your own eternal destiny. Think about that plain ossuary with the bones of the crucified man inside, and think about that one crucified dead man whose bones never actually made it to the ossuary because he rose from the dead. And because of what Jesus did, we can not only not be fearful of death, but we can actually look forward to it. Digging deeper is a production of AP media. We are a nonprofit media production company that is 100% crowdfunded. If you're interested in learning more about how you can support Appian Media so we can continue to create more great free content. Visit us at appianmedia.org/listen. Listen. If you'd like to contact Barry Rye, you can reach us at Berry Dot right now. And happy immediate alert and Dan Kingsley at AP immediate. Org. We would love to hear from you and answer any questions that you may have along the way. I'd like to thank our entire Appian Media team, who are working hard on making sure that this podcast is a success. Join us next time as we go underground. See how the ancient Israelites protected their water from the enemy. So be sure to bring your water shoes. Until then, thank you for joining us and we look forward to being with you on the next episode of Digging Deeper.