Bible Synapse
Heel bone of Jehohanan
Object · 1st century AD, before AD 70 · Time of Jesus · also called Yehohanan ossuary, Giv'at ha-Mivtar crucifixion
See it on the map and timeline- Date
- 1st century AD, before AD 70 (the burial)
- Found
- Giv'at ha-Mivtar, north-east Jerusalem, 1968. Building contractors exposed a group of Jewish family tombs in 1968; Vassilios Tzaferis excavated them for the Israel Department of Antiquities.
- Now
- Israel Museum (the ossuary), Jerusalem
- Passages
- Luke 23:33, John 19:17–18, John 20:25
What it is
A stone ossuary inscribed “Yehohanan son of Hagakol” held the bones of a young man and of a small child. The man's right heel bone was still pierced by an iron nail, bent at its tip, with a fragment of olive wood on the point and a small plaque of other wood under the nail head. It is a rare physical trace of crucifixion from the Roman period.
How it connects to the Bible
The Gospels describe Jesus' crucifixion outside Jerusalem in the same period, and John records Thomas speaking of “the print of the nails”. This find shows that crucified men in Roman Judaea could be fixed to the cross with nails, and that a crucified man's body could still be given to his family for burial, which fits the Gospels' account of Jesus' burial.
What scholars debate
How he was fixed to the cross is debated: the first study proposed nails through the forearms, but a re-examination in 1985 found no sign of them and suggested his arms were tied.