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the Sea of Galilee in the Holy Land Jesus lived on the shores of this lake preaching and performing the miracles that are contained in the four books of the Gospels our only record of his life but can we believe what we read in these books until very recently we assumed the Gospels were written long after Jesus died tails handed down from one generation to another at best a collection of distant memories but new evidence found in this library at Oxford University could change that not since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has there been such a potentially important breakthrough in biblical research on Christmas Eve 1994 The Times of London broke the story of the Jesus papyrus it told of a professor Carsten today's extraordinary claimed that three fragments of the Gospel of st. Matthew provide proof that the Gospels were written and read by people who saw the resurrected Christ with their own eyes the man who broke the story was Matthew d'Ancona now deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph he was working on The Times of London when he first heard about that Jesus papyrus my first feeling about the story was that there was obviously something quite extraordinary here was a fragment of papyrus in Oxford three tiny scraps from some Matthew's Gospel we knew that and here was a German scholar I'd never met claiming that they were incredibly early perhaps as early as 60 ad which even someone like myself who didn't know very much about the subject seemed an astonishing claim until now the only physical evidence of when the Gospels were written was a small fragment of the st. John's Gospel this was dated to 125 ad almost 100 years after the death of Christ anyone who witnessed the momentous events of his life would have been long dead according to T day that Jesus papyrus offers new physical evidence that the Gospels were written far earlier based on eyewitness accounts providing the first link between the written Gospels and Christ's own lifetime these three tiny fragments together no larger than a credit card are not very impressive to look at they have writing on both sides from chapter 26 of the Gospel according to Matthew in total six phrases in Greek on each scrap it is possible to read a few words they come from the verses concerning the last days of Jesus's life one of them describes his anointment by Mary Magdalene where it says a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of expensive ointment and poured it on his head on another piece is his betrayal by Judas where it is written the man called Judas Iscariot went to the chief priests and said what are you prepared to give me if I hand him over to you and a Last Supper where Jesus tells the disciples one of them will betray him saying someone who has dipped his hand into the dish with me will betray me the son of man is going to his fate we knew is going to be a big story what we didn't appreciate was quite how big immediately after we ran the story there was an extraordinary response around the world it was picked up by newspapers and radio and TV stations in countries ranging from Brazil to Italy to India and when I returned to my desk the day after the story had run it was covered with faxes and telephone messages from people wanting to know more and although the majority of the people who contacted Dan Kona in the weeks after the story ran were excited by today's findings the response he got from one of the leading experts was distinctly negative I don't think that he's correct and his claim that these little fragments of Matthew's Gospel can be dated to the middle of the first century along with nearly all experts in the field I think that these fragments were written towards the end of the second century all the evidence points in that direction and that has been the generally held view for some forty years now and I see no reason to modify that view Graham Stanton is the past president of the International Society of New Testament scholars and a professor at King's College the University of London although one of the leading opponents of today's claim he sees its appeal people are always interested in something new to do with Jesus in this particular case the claims are rather unusual in that instead of pouring scorn on Christian faith which happens now and again in meet in the media it's really the reverse these claims do seem to suggest to some that the Gospels may be rather earlier and perhaps more reliable and many have supposed well I don't hold that view myself dan Kona realized that today's find had created a controversy and he wanted to know more he'd heard the facts on both sides of the debate but he wanted to go beyond the headlines to track down the evidence for himself before following the trail of modern scholarship sat down by tea day Dan Kona had another mystery to unravel how did an ancient Greek document find its way to Oxford and come to the attention of a German scholar the chapel at maudlin College Oxford is a tribute to the glories of the Gospels here it is easy to see the traditions in music art and culture that they have inspired the Gospels are among the most important books ever written nothing short of the building blocks of Western civilization it was in the library of this college that Carsten today first saw the Jesus papyrus dan Kona went to madlyn College in search of evidence of the elusive Victorian chaplain Charles Hewlett the man who put the papyrus within today's reach his initial inquiries about Charles Juliet revealed very little but he did learn that Hewlett studied the classics here at Oxford's maudlin College this photo was taken while he was a student between 1882 and 1886 he would have studied many ancient documents including the Gospels in their original Greek this knowledge would enable him years later to recognize the tiny fragments of the Jesus papyrus as verses from the book of Matthew after graduating Hugh Liette moved here to Oxford's Wickliffe hall to train as a minister at Wickliffe he was given an evangelical education the evangelicals believe that the Gospels were literally true in every detail juliette would have graduated from Wickliffe with a solid faith in the evangelicals teachings and a desire to spread the good news of the Gospels after graduation Yulia traveled thousands of miles away to preach the Word of God in Egypt in those days the trip was a two-week journey he would have first crossed the English Channel to continental Europe then traveled by train to Brindisi in Italy from there he would have taken a boat across the Mediterranean Sea and then continued by train to Cairo the capital of Egypt the final leg a steamer journey up the Nile to Luxor would have taken about six days dan Kona retraced the chaplains journey to Luxor in the hopes that there he would find more clues to the origins of the papyrus it would have been a steamer much like this that took Helia to Luxor at a time when Britain ruled half the world it was not uncommon for a man such as Yulia to take up his Christian calling in a foreign land but all the same he would undoubtedly have been anxious it would have been his first trip abroad and he certainly had no idea that he was on his way to find what we now know to be a priceless treasure Matthew Dan Kona was on the trail of Charles Hewlett the man who discovered that Jesus papyrus after graduating from Oxford Hugh Leah traveled to Luxor to minister to the religious needs of Western tourists many would have been clutching this sky book eagerly anticipating their first glimpses of the newly excavated temples and tombs after all this was the beginning of the age of mass tourism the entrepreneur Thomas Cook was opening up Egypt to travelers from all over the world for the first time Cooke offered ordinary Victorians the excitement of foreign travel to exotic places most came to see and be photographed by the great temples pyramids and other ancient monuments that lie in the Nile and it was a good business in 1898 Egypt played host to 50,000 visitors approaching Luxor it is easy to imagine the thrill that he Liat must have felt as he set eyes on its great monuments for the first time the sudden sense that his long journey across a continent and into North Africa had been worthwhile at the turn of the century Thomas Cook's steamer is landed here as they still do today most of these tourists would have been taken on to the Luxor Hotel also built by cook and one of the few hotels in Luxor at the time opened in 1877 it was the jewel of the Thomas Cook Empire providing top-class accommodation to travelers who would often stay for many weeks to help look after their spiritual welfare thomas cook appointed charles hewlett as hotel chaplain i'm trying to find out something about a man called Charles Juliette who lived in the hotel in the 1890s is that the name that means anything to you do you know anything about him the current manager is of no help to Dan Kona in his search for any trace of Hewlett but in the lobby there is evidence of the hotel in its golden age when as well as tourists Luxor was full of explorers and archaeologists there was a portrait of Howard Carter the man who uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 he announced his world-famous discovery from this hotel there are paintings by David Roberts a Scottish artist who executed a famous series of pictures of Egypt in the 19th century this one of Luxor Temple pages from 19th century Thomas Cook guidebooks to Egypt line the back wall they include information on the Luxor Hotel a luxurious refuge were the wealthy vacationed at their ease it was in the farthest corner of the lobby that Dan Kona found what he really wanted evidence of Hughley its place in the history of the hotel a page from the 1905 edition of the guide explains how guests can attend the services given in the hotel by Reverend CB Hewlett at 8:00 a.m. 10:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. on another page the guide mentions Julio's role at the local hospital for natives where he also served as chaplain it had been founded in 1891 financed by an appeal organized by the cook family juliette seems to have been happy here in one of the few letters he left behind he wrote how any detailed report of the winters work would have to consist chiefly of the record of the kindness of all with whom I was brought into contact the presence of a resident winter chaplain in Luxor had he said become well-known among travelers on the Nile so that in many cases they shaped their plans accordingly and arranged to be at Luxor for Sunday both on the voyage up and when coming down you today the hotel is a rather dark and gloomy place much of its former grandeur has faded away but on the terrace the view is exactly as it must have been in hue leeet's day across the garden there is a glimpse of the magnificent luxor temple just a stone's throw away the construction of this mighty temple was started 1,400 years before Jesus was born by the Pharaoh Amenhotep the third it was a fitting shrine to the glory of the three ancient Egyptian gods a moon the god of fertility his wife mut the mistress of heaven and their son the moon God come soon during the millennia that past the temples importance to the people diminished in the 19th century much of its structure was buried by sand silt and mud merchants plied their trade in its grounds uninterested in the glory beneath when the Victorian tourists began to arrive it was being excavated and restored to its former glory the temples renovation was one of the great achievements of the 19th century archeologists who came to Luxor to reclaim ancient Egyptian civilization from the sands thanks to their work visitors today can see the great statues of the Pharaoh Ramesses ii in their full splendor guarding the entrance to the temple it was Ramesses following on from the work of Amenhotep who built most of what is here and added the statues as a testament to his own greatness the beautiful reliefs preserved by the sand for thousands of years on our the gods to whom this temple is dedicated the court of ramses ii one of the glories of the temple was once roofed over to form a giant arcade dan Coda's research told him that the temple was one of Hewlett's favorite places he visited it regularly marveling at the scale of these majestic monuments from this ancient civilization but what fascinated him most was not the work of the ancient Egyptians but the much more modest traces left by the first Christians who came here more than a thousand years later the last thing you'd expect to find in an ancient Egyptian monument is a Christian cross but in a little visited corner of the temple is occlude a Hewlett's fascination with Luxor Egypt was one of the first places in the world where Christianity took hold and in the 4th century Egyptian Christian worshippers consecrated parts of Luxor Temple the Christians converted this part of the temple into a chapel they were offended by the pagan images that surrounded them you can just see where they plastered over the ancient Egyptian reliefs and painted their own holy images in other places there are still traces of their censorship they chiseled out the bare arms legs and faces carved out by the ancient Egyptians they carved their own symbols into the bear surfaces columns and walls as a more fitting decoration for the temple dan Kona had discovered that Juliet was fascinated by this Christian vandalism in a letter he noted with evangelical approval the traces left of the time when Christians had consecrated these relics of heathen 'dom into the service of their and our Lord but there is no evidence that he had found the papyrus fragments at the temple dan Kona continued on the trail of Julieta and the papyrus in the luxor the chaplain knew so well he traveled by horse and carriage just as Julieta would have in his day passing by the west face of the temple magnificent in the late afternoon light Dan Kona found that it is only a short ride to the hospital where Hugh Lee had served as chaplain although it is still open today it would be hard to find any evidence of Hugh leeet's work as in so many other ways his life and achievements have been forgotten the trail of this elusive Victorian quickly grows cold but it was somewhere in Luxor that he found the fragile fragments of the Jesus papyrus further investigation would be required before Dan Cana could link the papyrus to Hughley ad in this town the River Nile separates Luxor from the West Bank on the other side is the Valley of the Kings where the ancient Egyptians are buried juliette must have made this journey across the Nile many times he would have been interested in the excavations that were taking place in the Valley of the Kings becoming friendly with the archaeologists and scholars working in the area many exciting discoveries were made in the Valley of the Kings in and around Hughley it's time in Luxor including the discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun here people are still making papyrus writing material in fact that Jesus papyrus may have been made very close to this spot be gypped exported the finished product all over the Mediterranean Basin and farther north south and east knowing how this material is made will help us understand how that Jesus papyrus could have survived for 2,000 years here papyrus plant still grow in freshwater marsh lands as they have done for thousands of years these workers follow the same methods that were used at the time that Jesus papyrus was written first they cut the stalks into small pieces then they slice them carefully into narrow strips next they flatten them using a heavy stone and place them in water for a couple of days to soften the fibers the workers take the supple strips and lay them out in a crisscross pattern that will eventually dry out to form the paper once they have assembled a sheet they place it between two boards to squeeze out all the water they put a heavy stone on top to speed up the drying and flattening process they leave the papyrus for a couple of days in the hot Sun to get rid of the last dampness the writing material that emerges at the end is strong and flexible in a hot dry climate a papyrus manuscript such as the Jesus papyrus can easily last for thousands of years the scribes who wrote on the fragments who Liat found would have used a reed append to shape the tiny letters on the papyrus sometimes papyri were also decorated using bright pigment as these craftsmen still do today recreating a spectacular designs and symbols of ancient Egyptian civilization these papyri will be sold to modern-day tourists as mementos of their trip and many of them will find their way to luxor market the very place dan kona believes that charles who yet found the jesus' papyrus juliette would have come here often on the lookout for ancient artifacts in Hewlett's day the market at Luxor was a famous center for the sale of Antiquities there was a brisk trade in stolen artifacts throughout the Middle East at this time communication and the exchange of goods between the various outposts of the ancient Roman Empire date back more than 2,000 years Hughley its education in the classics would have taught him this so that when he came to the market he would have been on the lookout not only for Egyptian antiquities but for Greek and Christian artifacts as well there was a very good chance that someone who knew what they were looking for could come away with something special today the market as much as it was then but one can only buy souvenir papyri in the bazaars and antique shops of the town the real thing is impossible to come by even with what little we know about you yet it is not hard to imagine his excitement when he first caught sight of the papyrus fragments they would have been lying on a market stall much like this one Juliette would have immediately recognized the brief passages from his beloved Gospels you find nothing going to you condone our places in Luxor where you could buy them now find a shop today he would have bartered for the lowest possible price doing his best to disguise his mounting excitement all right 15 I'll give it to discount I will make it five bound about I'll give you 15 then all right if you want to buy someone no no no lift this one and then we go all right I will give you because this is first time you come in Egypt all right and I want to know you and I won't give you 50% business for hospitality all right all right as Hugh Liat walked down this street he would have known that his precious fragments written in ancient Greek were very old he would have taken them back to his hotel to study them Juliet's examination led him to believe that the fragments were from the third century he obviously felt that he had found something spectacular and was anxious for confirmation he packed the papyrus up and posted it to his old Oxford College but he was a long way from home and was to be deeply disappointed by the way the Oxford scholars treated his precious find in October 1901 the Reverend Charles Hugh Leah sent his three scraps of papyrus to Oxford he hoped his college would be as thrilled as he undoubtedly was by the discovery this is the envelope he sent them in Matthew 26 refers to the verses from the gospel written on the Jesus papyrus but he also wrote on the envelope these found year after but evidently from same leaf this suggests that Hugh Liat had already sent some other fragments from the same four Pyrus unfortunately there is no trace of them today we will never know what ancient mysteries those lost papyri might have solved juliette waited anxiously for an acknowledgement from madlyn that it had received his precious Jesus for Pyrus but none came so he wrote to the college librarian I hope the papyrus fragments arrived safely they were dispatched by registered post on October 11th or 12 by my mother but I find that neither she nor I have heard of their arrival Juliet's letter is the only record of his discovery and gift of the Jesus papyrus now the most widely discussed fragment of the New Testament in the world what no one bothered to tell Hugh Liette was that his papyrus had been sent on to this man Arthur hunt hunt was one of the leading experts in the preserving and dating of ancient papyri hunt had secured his reputation with his work on a huge find of papyri and Oxyrhynchus in the egyptian desert the papyri were discovered preserved under the sand in an ancient garbage dump outside the town they included hundreds of lists letters and poems to this day it is the largest single collection of ancient papyri ever found according to hunt fragments from books like the Jesus papyrus could be dated no earlier than the late 3rd or early 4th century so it is no surprise that when he reported back to the College he gave the Jesus papyrus a late 4th century date hundreds of years after the death of Christ he noted nothing exceptional about the fragments to college librarian place the fragments at the back of this display cabinet in a little used corner of the library they remained there for nearly a hundred years as for hue Liat his term as minister in Luxor came to an end now with a wife and children he was posted across the Mediterranean Sea to the town of Messina in Italy it was to prove a fateful move on December 28 1908 Messina was devastated by the most destructive earthquake ever to strike the Western world in just 25 seconds 150,000 men women and children were killed in their beds 98% of Mussina's buildings were destroyed Charles Healy 'it was among the dead his wife and four children all perished with him in the rubble On January 6th 1909 The Times of London reported how after a long search the bodies of the British chaplain Charles Hewlett and his family had been found buried under the remains of their home Julia died ignorant of the importance of the treasure he had found all of his possessions were destroyed we will never know if he had other fragments of the New Testament papyri or not after his tragic death a bronze plaque was erected outside the Luxor Hotel to commemorate his years there as an evangelical chaplain the plaque is barely noticed by the people who stay at the hotel today this wouldn't have surprised Julieta who considered himself a failure in a letter to his wife Carolyn I wrote I have failed in everything imagine how much less of a failure he would have felt if he had known the nature of his discovery a papyrus that might prove that the Gospels are an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus as an evangelical Christian such a discovery would have proved everything he believed in but it would take almost a century before this man Carsten T day a renowned pepper ologist and New Testament scholar would revealed the magnitude of hue leeet's find in 1994 tea day was visiting his wife's family near Oxford and took the opportunity to examine the three papyrus fragments at maudlin college library he had read the reports of previous paper ologists and seen copies of the fragments but this was his first chance to see the originals he had few expectations that they would reveal anything startling but when t de set eyes on the Jesus papyrus he knew it was something special dan Kona arranged a meet T day in Oxford he needed to speak to him and watch him at work before he could take his investigation further what do you think when you first saw it well when I saw the original papyrus for the first time having studied photocopies photographs before I was surprised and there was a certain sense of excitement because there was a sign next to it saying about 380 this was much too late and you could see that from looking at the original that the photographs were misleading and that people hadn't seen certain details on the on the papyrus details of handwriting so it was a gut reaction I got impasse that must be Ola and then I had to go back and and study comparative material too far how old it really was but the sense of excitement that was there in Italy T days experience told him that these fragments from the Gospels might be the oldest ever found fragments from a manuscript so old that it could have been written by people who had lived with Christ and seen the dramatic events of his life with their own eyes the implications of today's findings are far-reaching if he's right it changes the way we read and interpret the Gospels it also provides material proof of the life of Christ to both believers and non-believers his excitement was understandable crucial to the implications of his findings was the significance of the eyewitness period the Gospels could not have been written before the death of Christ in 30 ad because all four Gospels tell the story of the crucifixion they must have been written sometime after Jesus's death people who had witnessed the life of Jesus and could have written down what they saw are said to have lived during the i-witness period it is generally agreed that the i-witness period ends at about 70 AD this was the year the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the Christian community was dispersed this period is crucial to today's case the closer today can get the date of the Jesus papyrus to the date of the i-witness period the more significant his findings before today began his work to date the papyrus he set out to decipher every letter in mark to see if the Jesus papyrus would reveal a new reading of the Gospel of st. Matthew to the papper ologist a New Testament scholar a new interpretation of the Gospels based on ancient manuscripts is at least as important as one based on read ating since many of the letters on the papyrus were damaged deciphering it accurately required more than a knowledge of Greek than a good eye fortunately today was able to bring state-of-the-art technology to the task a uniquely sensitive and powerful laser scanning microscope this microscope is capable of differentiating between 20 separate layers of a papyrus manuscript and of measuring the height and depth of ink on the papyrus sheet the computer uses this information to build a three-dimensional image of each individual letter or ink mark things that the human eye or even a normal strength microscope might miss cannot escape the intensity of the laser tea day used the microscope to examine this black circle of ink on the gospel fragment describing the last supper previous scholars working without this tool assumed it was part of a damaged letter the microscope scanned the papyrus with its laser the computer then calculated the depth of ink on the disputed black circle and compared it to the depth of ink on an undamaged letter the microscope tells us that this what to think the center of the image has a depth moving of 4.0 micrometers whereas any letter and it's true better on the same papyrus on any of the fragments has a depth of think of 12.1 micrometers so the answer is 100 percent certain it isn't part of a broken-off letter it isn't a punctuation mark it is an accident of this drive and accidental rot I think a speck of ink left on the papyrus scholars used to think that the speck of ink was either a punctuation mark or a damaged letter but today's research shows that it is actually just an accidental blot of ink left on the papyrus by the scribe this identification changes the way the verse of the Last Supper is read and translated let us try and visualize the scene that is Jesus and now the trail of disciples at the last seven and Jesus suddenly predicts that one of them will betray him it's an all say all 12 of them including Judas will betray him indeed more surely not me we used to think that the disciples were speaking one after the other after that dramatic prediction of Jesus that one of them will betray him this sounds slightly odd you wouldn't expect 12 men to reply one after the other in such a dramatic situation now the Jews the Paris tells us that in fact they were speaking up at the same time all at once that situation of high drama and excitement so that Jesus papyrus gives us a new and far more convincing description of what actually happened at the Last Supper then do today's most widely-used Bibles so we're the new reading which is in fact the oldest possible reading yeah back at the historical scene back with the eyewitnesses who saw it and reported it and had it written down unfortunately the laser scanning microscope can't reveal a precise date for the fragments radiocarbon dating is also of no use in dating the Jesus papyrus for a number of reasons first the fragments are too small secondly the test would date the material but not the handwriting and finally the date yielded using this method is only accurate within fifty years to come up with an exact date for the papyrus techniques of comparison are still the most valid for this tea day would have to reach out to the ancient rather than the modern well when you want to today to papyrus you will have to use several several methods approaches the most common and most important one is what you call comparative paleography that is you compare your undated piece of papyrus to other manuscripts which are either dated or dateable which means they come from a site an archaeological excavation where you know this is the latest or the earliest possible period when anything found there could have been written comparing handwriting is the most important and difficult task of the patter ologist in antiquity the handwriting used by scribes changed significantly over time handwriting from the 1st century AD would look very different to that done 100 years later in much the same way that handwriting from Juliette's era is noticeably different from our so when you have a papyrus with no date on it you have to compare it to documents in a similar handwriting style whose dates are known you have to find another manuscript that matches the style of the one you were trying to date and to be sure of Italy we must do this with several different texts comparable papyri comparable manuscripts can be found all over the world in archives and library and museums but what you want to do is to go back to the sources where most of the important prepare those we need for our work where written or discovered by archaeologists in our case that's Israel that's the Holy Land with Quran the Dead Sea Scrolls of some of the bodies the najara severe and even the fortress of Masada and all of these places parchment never papyrus fragments were found even inscribed piece of pottery Patras so-called ostraca and all those belong to a dated or dateable period so we can use them we must use them we must go there and look at them indeed look even at the places where they were far to find out why you think the papyrus is as old as you say it is I have to go to the Holy Land our detective work takes us back to a place to the places where it all happened well the eyewitnesses lived where they passed on the the accounts of what they had seen and where the oldest the oldest surviving manuscripts some of them which we need for our work were written and kept and discovered so it is time now for Matthew d'Ancona to follow today's footsteps it is a stark beautiful landscape a timeless place with an awe-inspiring history these are the hills through which Jesus himself wandered 2,000 years ago the Gospel according to Luke tells of how he was tested by the devil here as it reads Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert for forty days being put to the test by the devil Satan tries to tempt Jesus three times but each time he responds with quotations from the Bible and overcomes his demonic foe Dan Kona traveled with David Menninger to the site of the cave of Horrors in the valley of Nahal high bar in 1955 archaeologists found ancient scrolls here which helped today date the Jesus papyrus the history of this whole area is dark and tragic in 135 ad the Jews rebelled against the occupying Roman army led by the great Jewish leader Bar Kochba they tried to expel the Romans from the Holy Land but in the carnage that followed the Roman army slaughtered more than half a million rebels and their supporters the last surviving rebels made their way to this part of the desert to escape from the Romans in the cliffs dominating the valley hundreds of feet down they found a tiny cave to hide him above the cave are the remains of the camp the Roman soldiers built to beseech the rebels hiding below the rebels remained in a cave for several months not surprisingly the Romans won this ruthless war of attrition in 1955 archaeologists excavated the remains of the men women and children all had died horribly from thirst and starvation no wonder they call this the cave of Horrors as well as bones they found their possessions and most importantly they found manuscripts and these gave him a firm date none of the manuscripts could have been written after 135 ad the date of the massacre this is one of the manuscripts found in the cave of Horrors it comes from the scroll of the Minor Prophets T Day knew with absolute certainty that it could be from no later than 135 ad and the handwriting had been dated to suggest it was even older he found that the handwriting on this scroll bore remarkable similarities to the Jesus papyrus first he found its general appearance is comparable to the Jesus papyrus the letters are straight and upright there are no punctuation marks and no gaps between the words then when he looked at specific letters T Day also found revealing similarities the letter row extends below the natural line on both documents the horizontal bar on the ettus is slightly above the median height between the two lines these features are highly unusual and are evidence that the scribes who produced the two documents were writing at the same time the date assigned to the Jesus papyrus when ta found it was close to 300 AD but today's work shows how similar it looks to the scroll at the cave of Horrors and because that scroll could not possibly be later than 135 ad we have a new date for the Jesus papyrus we have taken a dramatic leap back in time but T Day still has to bridge close to 70 years to show that the Jesus papyrus actually fits into the i-witness period for the next piece of evidence Dan Kona follow today's trail across the desert from Mojave bear to the massive fortress of Masada another scene great cruelty this giant rock rises 1300 feet above the desert floor you the fortress was originally built by the Roman King Herod in 40 BC to protect himself against Cleopatra the queen of Egypt but in 66 AD Jewish nationalists known as zealots captured Masada from the Romans the capture of the fortress was one in a series of attempts to drive the Roman army from the Holy Land determined to put an end to the Jewish uprising 15,000 Roman soldiers besieged Masada from camps around the base of the mountain on the eve of the Romans final assault in 73 ad the zealots chose as a group to commit suicide rather than be taken alive by their enemies when the Romans broke through they found that of the 900 people who had taken refuge here only two women and five children and survived the flat plateau is surrounded on all sides by a sheer drop looking out from here it is easy to see why Masada was such a good natural fortress the Dead Sea's to the right and in those days would have been much closer to the foot of the fortress to the left the vast expanse of the Judean Desert this is a view that the ill-fated rebels saw on their last morning alive we know that the rebels died in 73 ad less than fifty years after the death of Christ so it is possible that some of the older men and women who committed suicide here had actually witnessed Jesus's ministry in Galilee just north of Masada and even his crucifixion and because Masada was then left untouched until it was excavated by archaeologists in 1966 anything found here which could relate to the Jesus papyrus would have a dramatic impact on today's theory it would bring us a step closer to the eyewitness period in fact archaeologists uncovered a crucial clue here in the oldest synagogue found anywhere in the world in a room off to the side where the priests would have once changed before the service archaeologists found a piece of pottery which had remained preserved under the sand since the destruction of Masada this is the piece of pottery it has the word Lea written on it in Greek we do not know who Lea was or what the writing on the fragment refers to but once again it is the handwriting that is significant today found its handwriting style was almost identical to that of the Jesus papyrus once again the general appearance is the same unlinked upright letters a style of handwriting known as unseal crucially individual letters also share almost identical features we can see that on the Alfa's the middle line is diagonal in form it begins on the bottom left and moves at an angle towards the top right rather than being horizontal the iota z' have what is called a serif at the top a noticeable widening the fact that the Lea fragment and Jesus papyrus share such stylistic similarities tells us they were almost certainly written at the same time the fragment found at the cave of Horrors took the dating of the Jesus papyrus back in time to before 135 ad but the evidence from Masada takes it even further back to before 73 ad the Year Masada was destroyed so we are now just a few years off the i-witness period to help us make the next step TD needed to see the most famous ancient scrolls of them all the Dead Sea Scrolls the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is the home of one of the world's greatest ancient treasures it houses the famous Dead Sea Scrolls the shrine of the book was added to the museum in 1965 the distinctive design is said to resemble the lids found on the jars in which the sacred scrolls were discovered inside the scrolls are displayed in reduced light with controlled heating to avoid any possibility of damage the scrolls were found in the Judean Desert 50 years ago by a Bedouin Shepherd they are all about 2,000 years old together the 800 Scrolls give us a unique insight into the daily life of an ancient Jewish society that lived in the Holy Land at the same time that Jesus began his ministry they tell extraordinary stories of the daily lives laws and beliefs of these people although most of the scrolls were found as fragments which had to be reassembled some leather manuscripts were found almost intact on the next stage of his quest Carsten today made a painstaking search through these manuscripts looking for anything written in a style that might resemble the Jesus papyrus he knew what an important breakthrough it would be if he could find such similarities the scrolls were found 30 miles from Jerusalem at Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea Qumran is the former home of the ancient Jewish society known as the Essene ease in 152 BC they left Jerusalem unhappy with the way in which the temple was being run they believe that religious standards had declined scandalously and withdrew to the desert to form their own community based on a simple life of prayer and study they lived in this isolated desert hideaway for more than 200 years separate and independent of the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem once again following today's trail of investigation has led d'Ancona to the site of an ancient massacre Dan Kona met up with Qumran scholar Hanan Eshel who showed him around the site as with the cave of Horrors and Masada the Essene EES were to meet the tragic end at the hands of the Romans in 68 AD the 10th Roman legion marched down from Jericho and drove the Essene ease out burning their homes and destroying their way of life forever the Acehnese must have sensed that the end was near because as we now know they hid their most sacred treasure the 800 Scrolls that form their library in the caves that surrounded Qumran the Qumran settlement was then hidden by sand for 2,000 years everything here remained untouched until 1947 when a Bedouin Shepherd stumbled across the Acehnese precious Scrolls once again tdye knew that anything found here must be older than 68 AD the year the Romans destroyed the settlement so if anything uncovered here resembled the Jesus papyrus it would provide crucial evidence to support and even earlier dating and this is the cave which contained that crucial piece of evidence known as cave for 15,000 fragments were discovered here and later reassembled to form 530 Scrolls some believed the scrolls had been slashed by Roman soldiers seeking to destroy the Essene a library forever but luckily for today the fragments survived once again protected by the dry sand among those 15,000 fragments ta found this manuscript from the Book of Leviticus because it is from the Old Testament it would have been a central part of the Essene a library the handwriting style of the Leviticus fragment is almost identical to that of the Jesus papyrus and like all the Dead Sea Scrolls it must be older than 68 AD the general appearance is the same on both the letters are drawn in an even manner the horizontal and vertical strokes being equally thick once again individual letters also share a number of similarities the Upsilon reaches below the bottom line on both fragments as with the Lea pottery found at Masada the Alfa's share the same peculiar feature where the middle stroke is diagonal rather than horizontal in form so today's work has pushed the date of the Jesus papyrus past 70 AD for the first time it is a remarkable achievement it takes us into the i-witness period but only just the further back into the i-witness period T Day takes the Jesus papyrus the more certain we can be that the Gospels were written by people who knew Christ so is there any evidence that the Gospels were written even earlier is it possible to show that they were written well inside the eyewitness period there are indications in the geography of the Holy Land that suggests an earlier date we must travel to Banyas Israel's most northerly point here at the source of the river Jordan is the most northerly point visited by Jesus and His disciples and like the desert the lush landscape of baniyas is rich in gospel stories it is the place where the true nature of Jesus was recognized by the disciples Simon the Gospels tell us it was here that Simon declared Jesus to be the Christ the Son of the Living God but it is the name Banyas that provides a surprising clue to the date of the Gospels themselves for in both the Gospel of Mark and Matthew it has a different name in the Gospels this place is referred to as caesarea philippi but this name was no longer used after 62 AD when it's name was changed to Banyas by King Herod Matthew's use of the old name suggests he may have been writing when the old name was still in use before 62 ad this name change is yet another indication that the Gospels were written within the i-witness period at the head of the river is the ancient city of Baniyas itself it was built by Herod in honor of the pagan god Pan here Jesus renamed Simon Peter after Simon had declared him to be the Son of God as the Gospels tell us so I now say to you you are Peter and on this rock I will build my community and the gates of the underworld can never overpower it and it is this cave here in the pagan temple that seems to have been the Gateway Jesus was referring to as if it really were the gateway to hell the words of the Gospels seem to match what we can see with our own eyes today here at Baniyas the Gospels begin to read like the account of the eyewitnesses to help him push the date of the Gospels even further back today returned to the desert to Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls here at the collapsed caves seven archaeologists had found another tiny piece of the scrolls which today believed could take us even further inside the eyewitness period this tiny fragment with letters written in Greek is no bigger than a postage stamp today's research has shown that it is another piece of the Christian gospel this time the Gospel of st. mark bearing a few words from Chapter six many people dispute that this tiny fragment is from st. Mark's Gospel but today's evidence is convincing on the fourth line of the fragment are some letters which he argues are part of the word gana Sarat the old word for the Sea of Galilee the word in this form cannot be found anywhere else in the Bible it appears only in the Gospel of st. mark today found further evidence that the fragment comes from the Gospel of st. mark in Jerusalem Matthew Dan Kona followed today's investigation of the st. mark fragment here to the John Rockefeller Museum where huge quantities of precious artifacts from the Holy Land are stored it was built in the 1930s by the Rockefeller family was called Palestine archeological Museum and up until probably the 60s I would say that probably was the major archaeological museum for the Josiah's a museum curator told Dan Kona how he had helped today to work his way through the countless artifacts stored deep in the basement of the museum okay these are the stores of the Israel Antiquities Authority you have thousands of objects here going back the late 19th century oh we got over 75,000 Saint Mark's Gospel is widely believed to have been written in the city of Rome and it is this historic detail that helped today construct his case we see large Canaanite storage jars these things of today heard that a jar with the word Rome on it had been found next to the disputed st. mark fragment in cave seven at Qumran he maintains it was the jar which contained the scroll of the Gospel of st. mark and I guess what you wanted to see probably the most interesting thing I think is this jar here and this is if this is a famous jar from cave number seven at Qumran he was found by archaeologists by French archaeologists back in the 1950s they were excavating and it's unique in many ways first of all he was found in a cave which is right next to the site most of the caves were some distance from the site but this is something which is right on the same plateau where the site was and the cave is rather unique cave 7 in the sense that all the documents found there were made out of papyrus whereas the other 800 some documents which you have from Qumran with with very few exceptions everything is made out of leather well first of all he was I think very interesting to us and here's a jar which had been sitting in the museum since the 1950s and actually nobody even expressed any interest in it until Carson thede came along and Carson theory suggested that perhaps that there may be some relationship between early Christianity and the fragments which are found in the site and the basis of this inscription here what was the joy use for and why might it be important when we see this class of jars it's clear that these things are made for one thing and one thing only and there was the storage of Scrolls the reason is is because it's a unique morphology which was designed to hold the scrolls and how do we know this so first of all we see these lug handles what they did was that the documents were put in the jars they didn't put a camp this is one of the original caps from Qumran once the camp is aand and what happens that there's an cordage which then ties the camp on to the vessel itself it wasn't made to hold wine wasn't made to hold water it was the old ancient documents this inscription on the scroll jar is the word Rome written in Hebrew historians believe that the jar came from Rome they also believe that st. Mark's Gospel was written in the city of Rome finding the jar next to the disputed fragment provides today with further proof that the fragment found in Qumran does indeed come from sake Mark's Gospel so T Day now has another fragment dated back to 68 AD and crucially this one is from a scroll the Jesus papyrus came from a book the next stage of his theory relied on the fact that the first time the Gospels were written down it had to be on two Scrolls the fact that the mark fragment of Quran is a scroll fragmentary first Christians were writing on Scrolls the first generation of Christian writings was on Scrolls hence we have to allow for the fact that the wars are Scrolls of Matthew's Gospel before the Jesus papyrus book fragments which we now have this is a vital argument until the mark fragment from Qumran was discovered it was believed that the Christians wrote the Gospels down only on books but now there is evidence that there were scroll versions of the Gospels first which were then copied onto books like the one from which the Jesus papyrus must have come so according to today the fragment said maudlin must have been copied from Scrolls which would have been even older because of a fact that there were Scrolls before the book format and that that must have been a scroll of some Matthew's Gospel before for Jesus papyrus we have sufficient evidence to show that this particular gospel and the other Gospels in all - what we call the Irishness pure T day has proved using his comparisons with documents from the cave of Horrors Masada and Qumran that the Jesus papyrus must be older than 68 AD but this discovery at Qumran implies that the earliest Gospels were actually written onto scrolls if this is true then there should also have been a much earlier scroll of Saint Matthew's Gospel now lost but from which that Jesus papyrus was copied he has now dated the Gospels within 20 years of Christ's life the fact that we have documents going right back to the eyewitness period tells us that the first Christians are trying to preserve the historical information about historical Jesus they interviewed eyewitnesses some of them were eyewitnesses themselves they knew what had happened and I could write down what they knew was true was historically accurate this anyway is the most important result of the analysis of such manuscripts that we can now as historians go back to the text and find out how those eyewitnesses and how those people who interviewed eyewitnesses dealt with historical information that was available to them it's not missing or was not a legend it's total right back to history any historians should be someone who wants to go out into the field and and and try and understand what the people would have thought would have felt when they experienced these things and when they wrote about them it helps want to reassess one's own attitude towards history and the writing of history to see where it happened and how it was compiled into writing into historical records the Sea of Galilee is the place where Jesus called his first ministry where Christianity began 40-day the landscape of this area is very important if the Gospels are to be treated as historical records then the landscape should reflect the events and images they describe here in Galilee today's academic arguments come to life the complex work of a scholar becomes relevant to everyone with an interest in the Gospels for Dan Kona this is where today's theory would take shape this lake is at the heart of many of the most important gospel stories this is where they say that Jesus calmed the storm which threatened the lives of the disciples as they traveled across the lake by boat they were so astounded that they said whatever kind of man is this that even the wind's and the sea obey Him on a hill just above the lake is the mount of beatitudes it is the place where it is said that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount this sermon set out the beliefs of Jesus and went on to form the ethical heart of the Christian faith in the greco-roman world most professionals had the skill of shorthand st. Matthew who as Levi Matthew was a customs official would have had this skill if the Gospels are eyewitness accounts as today's findings suggests there was no reason to believe that Matthew or another eyewitness did not sit with the disciples on the same Hill writing down the words of Jesus as he said them so the words we have today could be very close to those that Jesus actually uttered this theory upsets many New Testament scholars who are convinced that this particular sermon is a late and unreliable compilation of scattered sayings and drawn up by the early Christian communities but today's findings mean that we have to consider this possibility and just along a shore is to purnam which according to st. Matthew was Christ's own town Jesus resided here during his ministry in Galilee healing many of the town's sick and possessed the lake is full of places commemorating Jesus's life and death these churches were built on the site where according to tradition Jesus appeared to his disciples for the third time after the resurrection the Gospels tell us how Jesus spoke to the disciples saying all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me go therefore make disciples of all nations many of these places are so named only because of local tradition linking them with particular gospel events the holiness of this land is not in dispute but TJ's findings are although today has gained supporters for his claim back in London professor Graham Stenton remains to be convinced I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a fragment of the Gospels might conceivably be discovered from a period as early as the middle of the first century no that is not totally impossible I think it's exceptionally unlikely but not totally impossible now my fundamental disagreement with Teta concerns his interpretation of the papper logical evidence Stanton's objections are based on two points first he believes that because the fragments of the Jesus papyrus were found in Egypt in the 19th century that today's comparisons should have been limited only to documents found in Egypt today's supporters point out that the Jesus papyrus could have been brought to Egypt from the Holy Land at any time since it's writing Stanton's second charge against tea day is more serious but also more difficult to prove Stanton believes that today has exaggerated the degree to which the Jesus papyrus is similar to the dateable documents he used in his proof so it's for those two different reasons that I don't accept that he has made out a case for mid first century dating for the fragments of Matthew from Oxford but even if professor Stanton did accept today's findings it wouldn't affect his view of the accuracy of the Gospels if I were to be persuaded that the Gospels were totally eyewitness accounts I don't think it would make much difference because we know all too well that eyewitnesses don't agree and they don't always report accurately what they have seen but if the Gospels aren't eyewitness accounts how do we explain the miracles they record along with most other scholars I have no problem at all with the healing miracles Jesus clearly had unusual healing gifts more problematic however are the so called nature miracles the stilling of the storm the walking on the water and the feeding miracles the site of one of the most famous feeding miracles is here at the church at tadka on the shores of the lake of galilee this is where the Gospels report that Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish st. Matthew writes he took the five loaves and the two fishes and looking up to heaven he blessed and brake and gave the loaves to the disciples and the disciples to the multitude and those that had eaten were about five thousand men beside women and children this rock is said to be the rock on which Jesus placed the loaves and fish the story is commemorated in these fifth century mosaics for stanton the story of this miracle is a symbolic one that can't be interpreted literally but if tea day is correct and the Gospels reflect historical events written by eyewitnesses then we could say with greater certainty than ever that this miracle happened here Jerusalem this is the place where Jesus came after his ministry in Galilee here he was betrayed by Judas and of course this is where he was crucified it is the end of matthew dan Kona's journey he has followed the path of the Jesus papyrus back to Jerusalem he wanted to experience for himself the legacy of the gospel stories today the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem's Old City according to tradition Jesus followed this path as he made his way to the place of crucifixion following the Roman custom of the time he had to suffer the shame of walking through the city bearing his cross on his back but many doubt whether Jesus actually followed his route as with most of the gospel stories it was faith rather than historical evidence that few will believe then as now pilgrims come here from all over the world to follow in what they believe to be the footsteps of Jesus they come to see the 14 Stations of the Cross each of which commemorates one of the dramatic events on Jesus's agonizing last walk for death the fourth station marks the spot where Jesus's mother Mary is believed to have spoken to him on his way to Golgotha the sixth station is thought to be the spot on which stood the house of Saint Veronica a pious woman said to have wiped the face of the suffering Jesus with her veil and at the seventh station Jesus is said to have fallen for the second time under the weight of the cross although the authenticity of this route is questionable people still come here to commemorate the last hours of the man they believed to have been the Son of God for these people faith is about more than scientific evidence and at the end of the Via Dolorosa lies the end of Jesus's journey the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the holiest place in the Christian world people representing all the different churches within Christianity come here they come to see the resting place of Jesus and to kiss the stone where his lifeless body was washed and anointed before being placed in the tomb here you can see the tomb which is said to be the place the body of Christ lay after his crucifixion pilgrims wait in line to touch the very stone under which Jesus is said to be buried it is particularly moving to see 2,000 years later the depth of feeling his death still inspires for most of the last 2,000 years science and faith have been at war with one another Galileo was condemned by the church as a heretic Darwin's evolutionary theory contradicted the creation myth and Freud destroyed the idea of Christian moral responsibility but in Carsten today's work science has become the handmaiden and faith rather than its archenemy encouraging belief rather than undermining it the Gospels want to achieve two things I want to strengthen the faith of their readers but motive legends not with nice or funny or entertaining stories or even sad bits and pieces for the passion of the Lord but with historical fact so historical fact on one side and its and strengthen the faith of the believers from the other side isn't a contradiction in terms and it is indeed something that other historians knew a chick would he did there was always a message for as far as the post tendency something people wanted to get across in the case of the gospel system it's the message of these toric to Jesus who is also tries to faith two sides of the same coin no scientist can yet say that the Gospels are literally true in every word they can only form a judgment as to whether they are authentic and if the Gospels can be shown to be more authentic than scholars have thought then the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith become one almost 100 years after chaplain charles juliet found that jesus' papyrus its full significance has been revealed history and the Gospels now stand before us bathed in a new light of understanding