Jesus and the Remains of His Day: Studies in Jesus and the Evidence of Material Culture

This book is a collection of thirteen articles on various aspects of how archaeological evidence enlightens our understanding of the life and death of Jesus and the culture in which he lived. Nine of the book’s thirteen essays were published previously, though several of these have been revised or augmented for inclusion in the present book; four of the book’s essays are new. Several of the essays deal with the death of Jesus and the burial practices of his day.

Articles in the book include:

• 1. A Tale of Two Cities: What We Learned from Bethsaida and Magdala
• 2. A Boat, a House, and an Ossuary: What Can We Learn from the Artifacts?
• 3. Excavating Caiaphas, Pilate, and Simon of Cyrene: Assessing the Literary and Archaeological Evidence
• 4. “Have You Never Read?” Jesus and Literacy
• 5. Shout at the Devil: Jesus and Psalm 91 in the Light of Early Jewish Interpretation
• 6. “Hang Him on a Tree until Dead”: Hanging and Crucifixion in Second Temple Israel
• 7. The Family Buried Together Stays Together: On the Burial of the Executed in Family Tombs
• 8. Death Becomes Him: On the Execution and Burial of Jesus
• 9. Keeping Up with Appearances: The Talpiot Tomb Façade in Context
• 10. The Talking Dead: Post-Mortem Beliefs in Pagan, Jewish, and Christian Epitaphs

The book’s introduction explains the value of material culture (i.e., archaeological evidence) for interpreting Jesus and the Gospels and discusses the limits of such evidence. Also, the author is including several of his own photos in this book.