ABSTRACT

The recent broadly debated discoveries, which apparently designate the graves of Jesus of Nazareth's family, force us to deal with an old problem in a new degree of poignancy: what can archaeological research really tell us about early Christianity? The essay shows that the traces of Jesus' family cannot be found in the graves of Jerusalem and that the ossuaries allow at best only onomastic observations. There are, furthermore, no definitive traces of sanctuaries from the pre-Constantine period. The same can be said for the most recent finds at the Megiddo-Junction. The area does, however, offer a great deal of versatile material from the post-Constantine period, for example the so-called “Camp of the Bedouine Bishops”, which allows us to draw interesting conclusions for the assimilation of Christianity into the Bedouine culture.