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Archaeologists have completed an excavation beneath one of Christianity’s holiest sites, revealing a fuller picture of the ancient landscape where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried and providing support for scripture — something an early Christianity expert said he found very compelling.
Francesca Stasolla, an archaeology professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, led the excavation in 2025, which focused on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The findings were recently published in Liber Annuus, the archaeological journal of Jerusalem’s Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, in a 98-page preliminary report on the campaign.
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The report follows findings noted by Fox News Digital last year.
At the time, Stasolla confirmed that her team had uncovered ancient seeds and pollen in layers dating between the site’s use as a quarry and its later Roman occupation.
The evidence is consistent with John 19:41 in the New Testament: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.”
The pollen and seeds date to “between the use of the quarry and the Roman age, when the area had a funerary use,” Stasolla told Fox News Digital in 2025.
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“The quarry had to be gradually abandoned and as the stone extraction ended, it was used for agricultural areas and tombs,” Stasolla said.
“This must have been what it looked like in the first century A.D.”
The church was identified as Jesus’ burial place during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, when the first church was built there.
Though it has been a Christian pilgrimage site for nearly 1,700 years, archaeologists are now reconstructing what the area may have looked like around the time of Jesus.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Stasolla for additional comment.
The findings add archaeological support to details described in the Gospel of John, said Douglas Estes, associate professor of religion at New College of Florida.
Estes, who specializes in early Christianity and was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital that the Book of John is often dismissed by skeptics as exaggerated.
Archaeology has “over time, confirmed, again and again, details from the Gospel of John,” he said — even though critics consider John’s writings less accurate than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
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He added, “For example, in the 19th century, scholars questioned whether or not there could be five colonnades [at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem], as John 5 describes. Later archeological discoveries have found that, yes, there were five colonnades there.”
He said that “in the same way, scholars have largely doubted whether or not Jesus would have been buried in an orchard.
“But instead we find confirmed that there was a garden there — and so the Gospel of John has been proven to be accurate again in the details.”
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The professor said he was personally excited by the recent discoveries and that he has “a lot of hope that archaeology will continue to reveal significant finds about the life of Jesus.”
“It’s an exciting time to be alive, to be able to experience everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls all the way to the discovery of this funerary landscape,” he said.
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“These great archeological discoveries are great for those of us who want to learn more about first-century Judaism, first-century Christianity and the life of Jesus,” he added.
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