[ad_1]
JERUSALEM (AP) – The Franciscan friars of Jerusalem opened a new museum filled with artifacts related to everyday life in the time of Jesus
The new wing of the Terra Sancta Museum, built in the ruins of the crossed and Mamluk Via Dolorosa buildings in the Old City, presents objects discovered in excavations on biblical sites during the last century.
The Custody of the Holy Land – the organ of the Franciscan Order in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Cyprus – has conducted several archaeological excavations around the region, focusing on the sites with links to the Bible.
Several of the exhibits in the new exhibition, entitled "The House of Herod: Life and Power in the New Testament Times"
Coins, ceramic fragments, the ossuaries and stone slabs bear inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Samaritan, illustrating the kaleidoscopic variety of cultures present in the world. Holy Land during the first centuries. Artifacts include everything from the elegant Corinthian columns of Herod's palace to the humble objects of the Galilean houses.
Fr Eugenio Alliata, director of the museum, said that it was important to "present something of the real life of people at that time". the teachings of Jesus "are so interspersed with the common life of people."
Among the highlights of the exhibition are one of two known half-shekel silver coins struck by Jewish rebels in the first year of the revolt against Rome in 66 AD. A shard with the word Herod, the famous king of the gospels, was found during excavations at the monumental tomb of the Judean monarch south of Jerusalem.
Shimon Gibson, an archaeologist from the University of North Carolina excavating Jerusalem in the Roman era, said that the Franciscans' contribution to the field of archeology in the Holy Land was "crucial," and that their collections were "a treasure of information."
[ad_2]
Source link
