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Scientists made a groundbreaking discovery when Jesus’s tomb was opened for the first time in centuries. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of the most important holy sites in Christianity, and it houses Jesus’s tomb. After centuries of decay, scientists began the renovation of the tomb in October 2016. They removed a slab of marble and discovered a never-before-seen burial structure beneath it. According to the New Testament, Jesus’s tomb was built close to the place of his crucifixion and was meant to include both his body and the cross on which he died. While the exact site of the barrel has not been proven archaeologically, historians know that the first church on the site was built by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in about 326 CE.

Constantine’s mother, Helena, was sent to find the exact location of Jesus’s tomb three centuries before. With the help of a bishop named Isubius, she believed she had found it, and the Emperor Constantine’s mother established the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the site. The church lasted through various iterations and was boosted greatly by centuries of crusaders. The church’s bell tower collapsed in 1545, and Franciscan friars completed their own renovations on the long-neglected church. The monks then sealed the burial in 1555 to preserve the site and prevent pilgrims from touching the actual bedrock where Jesus’s body once sat. The monks installed a slab of marble over the limestone burial, and for centuries it remained unopened.

Archaeologists had wanted to excavate further into the burial to see if there was any archaeological proof that Jesus’s body was once there. Modern restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was long overdue, but implementing change at this most important church of Christian holy sites was notoriously difficult. Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that three major Christian denominations, Roman Catholic, Armenian Apostolic, and Greek Orthodox, share custodianship over the church, and they do not always agree with one another. For example, a debate has lingered for two and a half centuries over whether or not to remove a ladder of Lebanon cedar that sits above the entrance to the church. The object has been effectively nicknamed the immovable ladder and is still here today.

The priests finally decided it was time for a cleanup, little did they know what they would eventually bear witness to. In 1947, during British colonial rule, iron scaffolding was placed around the Ottoman-style edicule to keep it from crumbling to the ground. Then came a 2016 project to help preserve this traditional site of Jesus’s tomb undertaken by a team of scientists from Athens University. This restoration would also include an archaeological excavation of Jesus’s tomb. Hopefully, they might reveal its innermost contents. The growing field of biblical archaeology aims to reveal the historical truth, or conversely, to disprove it, of events in places described in the Bible. This was exactly the plan of the 2016 excavation. Modern technology would provide unprecedented access to information that has taunted Bible enthusiasts for their entire life.

The main question that scientists were looking to answer was whether the current tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was really the final resting place of Jesus. Centuries of wars and natural disasters made scientists highly suspicious that the edicule really housed Jesus’s tomb. A few decades after his death, Jerusalem was completely destroyed, raised to the ground in 70 CE during the first Jewish-Roman War. To further complicate matters, despite what’s written, there is only physical evidence of two crucifixions carried out by the Romans during the time of Jesus. One was found near Jerusalem in 1968, and the other in Italy in