Browse Items (24 total)

Tiberias was founded by Herod Antipas in 20 CE and has been continuously occupied since then. It is located on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee. At the top of the picture one sees the modern city of Tiberias which sits on the ruins of the Arab…

This photograph shows the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, originally commissioned in the 4th century CE by the emperor Constantine and built under the supervision of his mother Helen over a cave that they identified as the site of the birth of…

This photograph shows a page from the Codex Sinaiticus, which was created in the 4th century CE. The extant pages (400 of an estimated 730) contain the oldest complete manuscript of the New Testament. It was found at St. Katherine's Monastery in the…

This photograph shows a page from the Codex Vaticanus, which was created in the 4th century CE and is arguably the most important ancient manuscript of the Greek Bible. Codex Vaticanus originally contained both the Old and the New Testaments, but…

This photograph of the modern city of Nazareth, in Lower Galilee, shows the Church of the Annunciation, which was originally built in the 4th century CE by Helen, the mother of the emperor Constantine. It stands over the place where, according to…

This photograph shows the central panel of the mosaic floor in the fourth century synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. The stones running through the middle of it are a later wall that was built in such a way as to destroy the mosaic. At the center of the…

This photograph shows the upper panel of the mosaic floor in the center of the fourth century synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. It is the last panel that a worshipper would see/walk across as he walked toward the standing Torah shrine on the southern…

This photograph shows a close-up of one of the panels of the mosaic floor in the 6th century CE synagogue at Beit Alpha. The panel tells the story of the Akedah, or the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19). At the left two servants stand with a beast…

This photograph shows a close-up of the figure at the center of the zodiac that is in the central panel of the mosaic floor in the fourth century synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. This very fine mosaic shows a depiction of the sun god Helios riding his…

This is a photograph of the synagogue of the ancient city of Tiberias. Several synagogues were built on this site over the centuries; much of the architecture that you see here dates to the 5th-8th centuries CE. The mosaic floor that you will see in…

This map was found to be part of the mosaic floor of a 6th century CE church in Madaba, Jordan (east of the Dead Sea), and includes this map of Byzantine Jerusalem. A broad, column-lined street runs from the north gate south through the center of the…

This photograph shows a small aedicule, a chapel built over the rock cut empty tomb believed to belong to Jesus. It stands at the center of the rotunda, the round architectural structure that was built there by the Crusaders and right underneath the…

This plan shows the original layout of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the time of Constantine and his mother Helen. The complex is made of 3 separate units: at the bottom of the plan, a basilica ending with an apse and Golgotha incorporated into…

This close-up of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is looking northwest, shows the two domes of the church: the Anastasis (the larger dome, on the left) and the dome over the basilica (the smaller dome, on the right). The entrance to the…

This map shows the 3 political powers in the Mediterranean world on the eve of the Crusades: Catholic Europe (yellow); the Byzantine Empire (orange); and the Arab kingdoms of the Middle East and North Africa (red). The arrows represent the various…

This monastery in the Judaean Desert, initially called the Great Laura and later Mar Saba (after its founder, Sabas of Cappadocia), was built in 483 CE. It is the result of Byzantine-era hermetic monasticism: in 457 CE, at the age of 18, Mar Saba…

This photograph shows the cliff-side monastery called Choziba or St. George's Monastery, which is in the Wadi Qelt, approximately 3 miles west of Jericho, in the Judaean Desert. The monastery was established in the early fifth century, during the…

This photograph shows the interior of the Aedicule of the Anastasis, where Christians as early as the 4th century CE believed that Jesus' body was laid before his resurrection.

This photograph is taken from the Armenian chapel dedicated to Queen Helena (the mother of Constantine who was entrusted by her son to oversee the building of the church in the 4th century CE). The steps in the background are the 29 steps that lead…

This photograph shows a gold ring that depicts the Aedicule of the Anastasis at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was found in a 6th-century building south of the Temple Mount and shows the Anastasis as a free-standing structure (which was how it…

This map shows the provinces of Roman control around the Mediterranean. The red circle is around Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire, and the arrow points to the city of Constantinople, which is where Constantine moved the capital of the Empire in…

In the background of this aerial photograph of the Old City of Jerusalem we see the hills of the Judaean desert, as well as Transjordan in the distance. In the near distance, just beyond the city, is the Mount of Olives and Mt. Scopus. In the center…

This close-up aerial photo of the Old City of Jerusalem depicts the complex of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (at the bottom left, with the two grey domes). In the middle background is the Temple Mount and the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock.…

This plan shows what Jerusalem looked like in the Byzantine period. The Temple stood in ruins, as did the short-lived Temple of Jupiter that some scholars believe was erected in its place. Multiple churches were built during and after the reign of…