THE NEW TESTAMENT'S UNSOLVED MYSTERIES

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Another community that played a major role in Jesus' life is Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. It was there, according to the Gospels, that he began his public ministry, probably in A.D. 28. Archaeologists have uncovered a 1st century house in Capernaum that according to tradition was the home of St. Peter. The building contains a meeting room that might have been used for worship. Some experts speculate that this was the synagogue where Jesus preached, as recounted in John 6: 59.

The Gospels contain no fewer than 45 references to boats and fishing as they relate to Jesus. In 1986, two members of a Galilean kibbutz came across the remains of a 26-ft.-long wooden dory, buried in the mud near Kinneret on the Sea of Galilee, that has been carbon-dated to the 1st century. Almost certainly, this was the kind of vessel used by Peter, James, John and the other fisherfolk whom Jesus recruited as his first disciples.

Time and again, archaeological finds have validated scriptural references. Discoveries of an astonishing variety of 1st century coins, for example, help explain the need for money changers, whom an angry Jesus drove away from Jerusalem's Great Temple. Still, there are many questions that archaeology cannot now answer. Did Pilate pass judgment on Jesus at the Antonia fortress near the Temple site, or at Herod's palace across town? (If the latter, then the famed Via Dolorosa--the route that Jesus followed carrying his cross to Golgotha--is incorrect.) Is the tomb of Jesus beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, as tradition holds, or some place unknown outside the Old City's walls?

Science may never say. Many devout believers do not care. For them, the divinely inspired testimony of the Gospels is infinitely more reliable than any evidence unearthed by the hammers of archaeology.