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Dear BAS Library Member,
With Easter just around the corner, the April 2011 issue of The BAS Library Explorer highlights several thought-provoking articles from the BAS Library that provide historical and archaeological background for the stories of Jesus' death and resurrection. Included are a discussion of the archaeological evidence for crucifixion in first-century Roman Palestine, two articles discussing the evidence for how and where Jesus would have been buried, and an intriguing essay on how early Christian beliefs in resurrection were born from existing Jewish traditions. As a BAS Library Member, you will receive The BAS Library Explorer covering a new topic each month. We hope you enjoy this monthly guide to the vast array of material available in the BAS Library.
 In Crucifixion--The Archaeological Evidence, author Vassilios Tzaferis explains the significance of one of the few artifacts from a first-century C.E. crucifixion ever discovered--a small piece of heel bone pierced by a 7 1/2-inch-long iron nail. The bone fragment, found in a burial box, or ossuary, belonged to Yehohanan, a Jewish man in his mid-to-late twenties who was crucified in Jerusalem within decades of Jesus' death. After piercing the heel bones of both feet, the nail penetrated a wood plaque and then the cross; here the nail hit a knot, causing its head to curl.
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Jesus: The Last Day
The most important events in Jesus' life took place in less than 24 hours. Why did the Romans arrest Jesus? What happened at Gethsemane? Which route did Jesus follow to Golgotha? How did the earliest Christians interpret his Passion? Where was Jesus buried? Find the answers to these and other key questions in Jesus: The Last Day, an illustrated collection of articles from Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review.
Jesus: The Last Day Softcover, 136 pages, $14.95
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 According to the Gospels, Jesus died and was removed from the cross on a Friday afternoon, the eve of the Jewish Sabbath. But when Jesus was removed from the cross, where was his body taken for burial? The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) agree that Jesus was laid in a tomb that had a rolling stone closing the entrance, much like this Herodian-era tomb from Jesus' hometown of Nazareth. In What Did Jesus' Tomb Look Like?, author Jodi Magness discusses the burial customs of first-century C.E. Jerusalem and finds that the Biblical account of Jesus' burial matches what we know from archaeological evidence.
 Author Amos Kloner, however, disagrees with Magness about one significant detail of Jesus' tomb: the shape of the stone that closed the entrance. In Did a Rolling Stone Close Jesus' Tomb?, Kloner points out that while most modern reconstructions of Jesus' tomb--based heavily on English translations of the gospel text--depict a round stone blocking the tomb, the actual Greek word used to describe the stone can also mean "dislodged" or "moved." This textual ambiguity, combined with the archaeological evidence, suggests to Kloner that the blocking stone used to seal Jesus' tomb was most likely square, not round.
 Finally, in an essay for Bible Review, N.T. Wright attempts to understand the Jewish (and pagan) context in which Jesus' resurrection was understood. As he explains in The Resurrection of Resurrection, the early Christian hope for bodily resurrection clearly has a Jewish origin, since there was no possible pagan antecedent for the belief. While all Greeks (and Romans) were agreed that there was no resurrection and death could not be reversed, some Jews of the Second Temple period had come to see resurrection as the reversal and cancellation of physical death, granted only through God's passion for eventual justice. For early Christians, the concept of resurrection developed further and consisted of passing through death and out the other side into a new sort of bodily life.
And if you're interested in learning more about the thought-provoking historical and theological issues tied to Jesus' death and resurrection, request and instantly download our FREE e-book Easter: Exploring the Resurrection of Jesus. Here, you'll find a half dozen articles and essays written by expert Bible scholars and archaeologists who offer in-depth research and reflections on the resurrection story.
Don't stop reading after these! There are countless other articles in the BAS Library ready to engage and fascinate you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The powerful and easy-to-use search features can guide you even further through every article we have published in the past 35 years (6,000 and counting). Every photograph, more than 18,500 of them, is also fully viewable--along with the captions, of course. And this month, we've made it simple to delve into this rich topic in the Easter Special Collection, one of the many special collections offered in the BAS Library.
I hope you've had a chance to try some of the new features and sections that have been added to the BAS Library recently. Our BAR Notables section takes you directly to every one of our articles footnoted in the current issue of BAR. We hope you'll jump right in and find even more to fascinate and engage you online. You'll find it front and center on the BAS Library homepage and also as an item in the tan menu bar at top. Plus, there is now an Image Search function in the blue Search box found in the right-hand column of every page. Additionally, the Topic and Author Search has been made easier to use. Simply type a topic or author into these fields, and a drop-down list of suggested topics and authors will appear.
Whether it's to research a paper, to prepare a sermon, to deepen your understanding of scripture or history, or simply to marvel at the complexity of the Bible--the most important book in history--the BAS Library is an invaluable tool that cannot be matched anywhere else. I promise, you won't be disappointed by the wealth of material you'll find there.
Sincerely,
Sara Murphy, Web Editor
Biblical Archaeology Society
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