Caiaphas Ossuary

In November 1990, workers preparing a park in the Peace Forest, south of the Old City of Jerusalem, accidentally opened the roof of a burial cave. The Israel Antiquities Authority, with archaeologist Zvi Greenhut, found there a dozen ossuaries — limestone boxes in which the Jews of that time kept the bones of the dead, a year after burial.

The most beautiful of them, all carved with rosettes, bore twice, in Aramaic, the name Yehosef bar Qayafa (Joseph, son of Caiaphas). Inside were the bones of six people, among them a man of about 60 years. The bones were later reburied on the Mount of Olives.

The historian Flavius Josephus says that the high priest of the days of Jesus was called "Joseph, called Caiaphas" (Antiquities 18.35). For this reason many scholars link the ossuary to him or to his family. The identification is not certain — the name appears in a slightly different form and there is no priestly title on the box —, but the name, the place and the time match.

Why it matters: Caiaphas is the one who presides over the interrogation of Jesus (Matthew 26:57) and who said that it was expedient "that one man die for the people" (John 11:49-50). The find shows the wealthy priestly family of Jerusalem exactly as the New Testament presupposes it.