In March, a team of archaeologists excavating beneath Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher announced a new finding: ancient pollen and other botanical evidence indicating a garden had been there two thousand years ago. The finding corroborates John’s account of Jesus’s passion and death: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there”(John 19:41–42). The discovery gives credence to the traditional Christian belief, dating to at least the fourth century, that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher indeed marked the actual place where Jesus had died and was buried. But it also attests to something more: the reliability of John’s Gospel itself.
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