welcome to expedition bible i’m joel kramer today i’m going to be talking about the archaeological evidence for crucifixion in the new testament we have a detailed account of jesus’s crucifixion and for example in acts 2 23 it says of jesus they put him to death by nailing him to the cross is there any archaeological evidence that the romans put jews to death by nailing them to crosses in 1968 in the northeast area of jerusalem a tomb was discovered and excavated and inside this tomb was found one of these limestone bone boxes called an ossuary and inside of the ossuary were found the remains according to the excavation report of an individual male between 24 and 28 years old now according to the excavation report both of the ankle bones of this individual had been pierced by an iron nail and this undoubtedly was a case of crucifixion in fact one of the heel bones of this individual had a nail still embedded through it [Music] we know the name of this individual because it’s inscribed onto the ossuary itself his name is jehohanan and so uh this embedded nail through yehohanan’s ankle is on display at the israel museum but this is a replica the real artifact is kept in a lab down in the department of anatomy and anthropology at the university of tel aviv where it’s still studied by scholars today and if you look at the nail sticking through yehohanan’s ankle bone you’ll see that the tip is bent and what is believed to have happened is that when it was driven through his ankle into the wooden beam it hit a knot of wood and that bent the tip of the nail so when the romans came to retrieve the nail to reuse it it was stuck and they ended up having to cut it out of the wood and uh so yahooganon ended up being buried with the nail still sticking through his ankle which allowed this archaeological evidence to be preserved and to be found later by archaeologists the drawing of jehoganon is only of his lower half because it’s undetermined how his hands were attached to the cross however we know from the archaeological evidence that his feet were nailed to either side of the beam of the cross through his ankle bones so there’s no question that yahoo hanan ended his life nailed to a cross in 1970 another tomb nearby this first one was discovered and excavated and inside of it also was found in ossuary and inside of this ossuary three iron nails were found with bones still fused to them so these bones were originally turned over to dr niku haas who was the leading physical anthropologist in israel at the time he studied them and determined that this was further evidence for crucifixion that this individual who he determined to be about a 25 year old male ended his life nailed to a cross through his hands and it was his hand bones that were still fused onto these nails now these nails are also kept at the same lab down at the university of tel aviv and they have been studied today by dr israel hirschkovitz and dr hirschkovitz has studied them intensively under a very high-powered microscope and he has determined that when the nails were driven through this individual’s hands that it broke some of the hand bones and it’s the bones from his hand bones that are fused still to these nails dr hirschkovitz is in agreement with the original interpretation by dr haas that this is in fact further evidence of crucifixion that this individual died being nailed to the cross through his hands now in this case they’re not sure how his feet were attached to the cross and so we have the illustration based on the archaeological evidence showing the upper part of this man’s body and how his hands were nailed to the cross so when we bring these two illustrations together we get this composite view of a crucified man from the first century a.d the time of jesus based on archaeological evidence of what crucifixion looked like at that time and it matches perfectly with the descriptions that we have in the new testament of jesus’s crucifixion again acts 2 23 says that they put him to death by nailing him to the cross we also have after his resurrection in john 20 25 the disciple thomas who felt the nail marks in his hands where the nails were and so this image that we have of jesus nailed to a cross through his hands and his feet is supported by the archaeological evidence [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you