Truth you can trace
What the spade found
What has been dug up that touches the Old Testament, kept apart from what it is claimed to prove. The same, for the New Testament.
Old Testament
- Old Testament find
The Merneptah stele: the earliest "Israel"
In 1896 the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie, excavating the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Merneptah at Thebes in Egypt, found a tall black granite stele…
Joshua 11:23 · Judges 2:10
Read - Old Testament find
The Tel Dan stele: "the house of David"
In July 1993 a member of Avraham Biran's excavation team at Tel Dan, in the far north of Israel, noticed a broken basalt slab re-used in a wall; two more fragments turned up in June 1994.
2 Samuel 7:16 · 2 Kings 8:28 · 2 Kings 9:24
Read - Old Testament find
The Moabite (Mesha) stone: Moab's side of 2 Kings 3
On 19 August 1868 a German missionary, F. A. Klein, was shown a black basalt stele standing at Dhiban (biblical Dibon) in Moab, east of the Dead Sea, about 3 ft 10 in high and 2 ft broad, with a rounded top…
2 Kings 3:4 · 2 Kings 3:5 · 2 Kings 1:1
Read - Old Testament find
The Black Obelisk: the only picture of an Israelite king or his envoy
In December 1846 Austen Henry Layard, digging at Nimrud (biblical Calah) in northern Iraq, uncovered a black limestone monument about two metres high, its top stepped like a little ziggurat…
2 Kings 9:6 · 2 Kings 10:36
Read - Old Testament find
Sennacherib's prism: the siege that the Assyrians never finished
Assyrian kings recorded their campaigns on six-sided baked-clay prisms.
2 Kings 18:13 · 2 Kings 19:35 · Isaiah 37:36
Read - Old Testament find
The Lachish reliefs: a siege carved in stone, and dug from the ground
When Layard excavated Sennacherib's "Palace Without Rival" at Nineveh in 1845–47, a whole room was found lined with carved gypsum panels depicting one event in detail: the storming of a single Judahite city.
2 Kings 18:14 · 2 Chronicles 32:9 · Micah 1:13
Read - Old Testament find
Hezekiah's tunnel & the Siloam inscription: a wall a reader can still touch
Under the oldest part of Jerusalem runs a winding rock tunnel about 1,700 feet (over 500 m) long, cut to carry the water of the Gihon spring inside the walls to the pool of Siloam, engineering meant to keep the city…
2 Kings 20:20 · 2 Chronicles 32:30 · Isaiah 22:11
Read - Old Testament find
The Cyrus cylinder: the policy that sent the exiles home
In 1879 Hormuzd Rassam, digging at Babylon, found a barrel-shaped clay cylinder inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, the proclamation Cyrus the Great issued after he took Babylon in 539 BC. It is now in the British…
Ezra 1:1 · Ezra 1:2 · 2 Chronicles 36:23
Read - Old Testament find
The Lachish letters: a Judahite officer's last dispatches, dug from the gate of a burning city
In one line: Twenty-one inked potsherds found in the ruined gatehouse of Lachish in 1935 and 1938 carry the last messages of a Judahite officer as Nebuchadnezzar's army closed in, one says he is watching for the…
Jeremiah 34:7 · Jeremiah 38:4 · 2 Kings 25:1
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New Testament
- New Testament find
Capernaum: the town and the "house of Peter"
Capernaum (Kefar Naḥum), on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee, was excavated principally by the Franciscans Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda (western field, 1968–1986) and by Vassilios Tzaferis (eastern field…
Mark 1:29 · Mark 2:1 · Luke 7:5
Read - New Testament find
The Sea of Galilee boat (the "Kinneret boat")
In 1986 a severe drought dropped the level of the Sea of Galilee, and two brothers from Kibbutz Ginosar, Moshe and Yuval Lufan…
Mark 4:37 · Mark 4:39 · Matthew 8:23
Read - New Testament find
The Pilate stone (Caesarea Maritima, 1961)
In 1961 an Italian expedition under Antonio Frova, excavating the Roman theater at Caesarea Maritima (the find itself made by team member Maria Teresa Fortuna Canivet), turned up a damaged limestone block…
Luke 3:1 · Matthew 27:2 · Mark 15:15
Read - New Testament find
The "Caiaphas" ossuary (Jerusalem, 1990)
In November 1990, workers building a water line in the Peace Forest (North Talpiyot, just south of Jerusalem's Old City) broke through the roof of a 1st-century Jewish burial cave.
Matthew 26:3 · John 18:14 · Matthew 26:57
Read - New Testament find
The crucified man: Yehohanan's heel bone (Giv'at ha-Mivtar, 1968)
In 1968, building work at Giv'at ha-Mivtar (north Jerusalem) exposed a group of Jewish tombs, excavated by Vassilios Tzaferis.
John 20:25 · Mark 15:24 · Mark 15:46
Read - New Testament find
Magdala: two first-century synagogues and the Magdala Stone
At Migdal (Magdala/Taricheae, hometown of Mary Magdalene) on the lake's west shore, a 2009 Israel Antiquities Authority salvage excavation ahead of hotel construction (directed by Dina Avshalom-Gorni) struck…
Mark 1:39 · Matthew 4:23 · Luke 8:2
Read - New Testament find
First-century Nazareth
Nazareth's 1st-century remains are sparse but real, the village of the Gospels was tiny.
John 1:46 · Matthew 2:23 · Luke 2:39
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16 finds, every one citing its sources. See our sources and licences.
On contested questions we show every major view, attributed and cited, and pick no winner. Answers are synthesized from primary sources, truth you can trace, not opinion.