Bible Synapse
Burnt House
Site · AD 70 · Time of Jesus · also called Kathros House, Katros House
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- AD 70 (the fire that destroyed the house)
- Found
- Jewish Quarter (the ancient Upper City), Jerusalem, 1970. Found in January 1970, early in Nahman Avigad's excavations in the Jewish Quarter for the Hebrew University.
- Now
- Burnt House Museum (at the site), Jerusalem
- Passages
- Luke 19:41–44, Luke 21:20–24
What it is
The basement rooms of a wealthy house in Jerusalem's Upper City, buried under ash, soot and charred wood. The excavators found a kitchen, a small stepped ritual bath, stone vessels, a spear leaning in a corner and the arm bones of a young woman near a doorway. The latest of many coins date from the fourth year of the Jewish revolt (AD 69), and a stone weight inscribed “(of) Bar Kathros” suggests the owners belonged to a priestly family known from the Talmud.
How it connects to the Bible
Josephus describes the Romans burning the Upper City a few weeks after the Temple fell in AD 70, and this house preserves a moment of that destruction. Luke records Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and warning of the day when “thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee” and the city would be “compassed with armies”.