New archaeological discoveries beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem are shedding important new light on one of the oldest and most disputed questions in Christian archaeology: whether the traditional site of Christ’s crucifixion, burial, and Resurrection is historically credible.
The discoveries do not provide an inscription identifying the tomb as that of Jesus, nor do they constitute definitive proof that the tomb preserved within the Holy Sepulchre is the tomb in which Jesus was buried. What they do provide, however, is a remarkably detailed picture of the landscape that existed beneath the church during the first century. That landscape—a disused quarry subsequently used for cultivation and burial—fits important elements of the Gospel accounts and provides new archaeological context for the traditional identification of the site.
The excavations, directed by Francesca Romana Stasolla of the Sapienza University of Rome, have been conducted since 2022 as part of restoration work involving the floor of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. The preliminary results of the 2025 campaign have now been published in Liber Annuus, the archaeological journal of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem. The research represents the culmination of investigations in several areas of the complex and provides a broader topographical reconstruction of the site.
What existed here in the time of Christ?
One of the most significant conclusions of the excavations is that the area beneath the present church was originally part of a large quarry on what the researchers identify as Gareb Hill. The quarry was exploited in several phases and was subsequently abandoned. Afterward, portions of the landscape were reused for agricultural and funerary purposes.
This is important because the Holy Sepulchre does not stand today in anything resembling the landscape that existed during the ministry of Jesus. The modern church is surrounded by the densely built Old City of Jerusalem. In the first century, however, the area appears to have been quite different.
Archaeological research has long indicated that the site was outside the city at the time of Jesus. The traditional location therefore possesses an important geographical advantage: it is consistent with the New Testament's presentation of the crucifixion and burial as taking place outside Jerusalem.
A scholarly reassessment by Joan E. Taylor, for example, has examined Golgotha as an area associated with a disused quarry west of first-century Jerusalem. Although Taylor distinguishes the precise location of the crucifixion from the burial place within the wider area, she ultimately concluded that the traditional tomb may well be authentic.
The new excavations now give archaeologists a much more detailed picture of that quarry landscape.
A quarry transformed into a landscape of cultivation and burial
The quarry was not simply abandoned and forgotten. According to the archaeological team, parts of it were subsequently filled with soil and reused for agriculture. Archaeobotanical investigations have identified evidence associated with cultivated plants, including olive and grapevine. Stasolla has emphasized that the evidence demonstrates both agricultural and funerary use of the area before the major Roman restructuring of the site.
That discovery is particularly interesting in light of the Gospel according to John.
John states:
“Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid.”
—John 19:41
The excavation does not prove that this was the particular garden mentioned by John. Nor can the presence of ancient plants establish the identity of an individual buried nearby. But it demonstrates that the landscape beneath the Holy Sepulchre did indeed contain cultivated areas and funerary installations in antiquity.
Stasolla summarized the significance of the discovery by noting that the Gospel describes a green area between Golgotha and the tomb, while the excavation has revealed cultivated areas in the archaeological landscape.
The correspondence is therefore not a proof of the Gospel account, but it is certainly compatible with it.
Rock-cut tombs
Perhaps even more important are the funerary remains.
The excavations have documented rock-cut tombs within the ancient landscape. This is precisely the type of burial environment one would expect in first-century Jerusalem and corresponds with the Gospel descriptions of Jesus being placed in a tomb cut into rock.
Matthew describes Joseph of Arimathea as placing Jesus in “his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock” (Matthew 27:60). Mark likewise describes a tomb “which had been hewn out of the rock” (Mark 15:46), while Luke speaks of a tomb “where no one had ever yet been laid” (Luke 23:53).
Again, archaeology cannot establish that any particular one of these tombs belonged to Jesus. But the discovery establishes something historically important: the traditional Holy Sepulchre site actually possessed the kind of funerary landscape that the Gospel narratives presuppose.
This is more significant than simply discovering an ancient tomb beneath a Christian church. The question is whether the archaeological character of the location makes the traditional identification plausible. The new evidence suggests that it does.
The question of the city walls
Another important issue concerns the location of Jerusalem's walls.
One traditional objection to the Holy Sepulchre has been that Jesus was crucified and buried outside the city, whereas the present church lies within the walls of Jerusalem.
But the walls visible today are not the walls that existed in the first century.
The archaeological evidence indicates that the Holy Sepulchre area lay outside the city during the time of Jesus. This is consistent with the Gospel accounts and with the description in Hebrews that Jesus “suffered outside the gate” (Hebrews 13:12).
This geographical point has long been central to discussions of the Holy Sepulchre. Modern Jerusalem can easily create the misleading impression that the traditional site must always have been inside the city. Archaeology shows that this is not the case.
The significance of the recent excavation is therefore not that it newly “discovers” the site was outside the city, but that it provides a much richer archaeological reconstruction of what that peripheral landscape actually looked like.
What happened to the site after the time of Jesus?
The subsequent history of the location is equally important.
According to the archaeological reconstruction, the quarry and funerary landscape were later incorporated into the changing urban landscape of Jerusalem. In the second century, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, the area underwent major Roman restructuring. The 2025 excavation report specifically examines the transformation of the quarry into the Roman city and documents the relationship between the quarry, later agricultural and funerary use, and subsequent monumentalization.
This provides an important archaeological background to the fourth-century construction of the Constantinian church.
The Christian tradition concerning the site was therefore not preserved in an untouched landscape. The location underwent substantial transformation during the intervening centuries.
That makes the evidence surrounding the Constantinian discovery particularly important.
Constantine and the discovery of the tomb
The traditional identification of the Holy Sepulchre is not a modern invention.
The fourth-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea describes Constantine's construction of the church over what Christians identified as the place of Christ's Resurrection. According to Eusebius, the site had previously been covered over and a pagan sanctuary had been constructed above it. Constantine ordered the structure demolished and the ground excavated. Eusebius then says that the original surface was uncovered and that the “most holy cave” associated with Christ's Resurrection was discovered.
Eusebius subsequently describes Constantine's construction of a magnificent church around the sacred tomb. He also explicitly identifies the site as the place of the Lord's sepulchre.
The church was eventually dedicated during Constantine's reign, with Eusebius recording the dedication in connection with the emperor's thirtieth year.
The archaeological discoveries do not independently verify every detail of Eusebius's narrative. Eusebius was a Christian bishop writing from a theological perspective, and his account must therefore be evaluated as an ancient historical source rather than treated as a modern excavation report.
Nevertheless, the archaeology has now established an important part of the physical setting underlying his account: there really was an ancient quarry beneath the Constantinian complex, and that quarry had been reused for agricultural and funerary purposes.
That correspondence is significant.
Was the Christian tradition simply mistaken?
This is where the new evidence becomes particularly interesting.
A major alternative to the Holy Sepulchre is the so-called Garden Tomb, located north of the Old City. But archaeological research has shown that the Garden Tomb itself is much older than the first century and therefore cannot readily be identified as the tomb of Jesus. Taylor notes that the Garden Tomb has been demonstrated to date to the Iron Age.
The Holy Sepulchre, by contrast, now has archaeological evidence for a first-century landscape containing quarrying, cultivation, and rock-cut burial.
This does not prove that Jesus was buried there. But it means that the traditional site has a stronger archaeological correspondence with the Gospel descriptions than the popular alternative sometimes assumed.
The question therefore becomes less a matter of choosing between a “biblical” and an “archaeological” location. The traditional Holy Sepulchre itself is supported by an archaeological setting that is compatible with the Gospel narratives.
The most important discovery may be the landscape itself
The tendency of modern headlines is to reduce the discovery to a single sensational question:
“Have archaeologists found the tomb of Jesus?”
That is not what the excavation demonstrates.
No archaeological evidence discovered so far can establish that the individual buried in the particular tomb was Jesus of Nazareth. There is no surviving inscription naming him, nor is there an identifiable human skeleton that could be associated with him.
But this limitation should not obscure the actual importance of the discovery.
The excavation has revealed a landscape beneath the Holy Sepulchre that had several characteristics expected of the place described in the New Testament: a quarry outside the first-century city, later agricultural cultivation, rock-cut tombs, and evidence of a landscape that could indeed have included a garden.
The archaeological evidence therefore supports the plausibility of the traditional location without providing absolute proof of the identity of the tomb's occupant.
A tradition with deep historical roots
There is another dimension that archaeology alone cannot answer: the history of Christian memory.
The Holy Sepulchre became a major Christian shrine in the fourth century, but the question is how and why that particular location was identified.
Eusebius's account indicates that Constantine's builders believed they were recovering a pre-existing sacred site associated with Christ. The excavation now demonstrates that the location contained a genuine ancient funerary landscape beneath the later structures.
This does not establish an uninterrupted chain of documentation from the first century to Constantine. The historical evidence is not that simple.
But neither is the traditional identification an arbitrary medieval invention.
There was a real first-century burial landscape at the location. It was subsequently transformed by Roman construction. And in the fourth century, Christians deliberately excavated and monumentalized a particular location as the place of Christ's tomb.
The archaeological evidence therefore provides an important physical context for understanding how the traditional site could have been identified.
What does this mean for the traditional tomb of Christ?
The most responsible conclusion is a nuanced one.
The excavation does not prove that the Holy Sepulchre contains the tomb of Jesus. But it strengthens the archaeological case that the traditional site is historically plausible.
Indeed, several previously separate pieces of evidence now converge:
- The site was outside the first-century city, consistent with the Gospel accounts of the Passion occurring outside Jerusalem.
- The area was a quarry, explaining why the location could have remained relatively undeveloped and suitable for execution and burial.
- The quarry was later reused agriculturally, providing a physical context for John's reference to a garden near the place of crucifixion and burial.
- Rock-cut tombs existed in the area, corresponding to the Gospel descriptions of Jesus' burial.
- The area underwent major Roman transformation in the second century, explaining why the original landscape was substantially altered before Constantine's intervention.
- Constantine's builders deliberately excavated and monumentalized the location, preserving a specific tomb as the center of a Christian sanctuary. Eusebius explicitly describes the discovery of the sacred tomb after the removal of the material covering the site.
- The archaeological investigation now confirms that the Constantinian complex was built over a genuinely ancient funerary landscape, rather than over an arbitrary or obviously unsuitable location.
Taken individually, none of these points proves that Jesus was buried there. Taken together, however, they make the traditional identification increasingly difficult to dismiss as merely a late or arbitrary Christian tradition.
The discovery therefore does not overturn the traditional identification of the Holy Sepulchre. If anything, it gives that tradition a richer archaeological foundation.
The real significance of the excavation is consequently not that archaeologists have suddenly “found Jesus' tomb.” The tomb has been identified and venerated at the Holy Sepulchre since Christian antiquity. The significance is that modern archaeology is now revealing, layer by layer, what the site actually looked like when Jesus lived—and that ancient landscape bears a striking resemblance to the kind of place in which the Gospel accounts locate his crucifixion and burial.
As Stasolla herself has emphasized, the excavation is ultimately revealing the history of the people who transformed this place through their faith. Whether one approaches the Holy Sepulchre as a believer or as a historian, the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the site possesses a remarkably deep and complex history of quarrying, burial, cultivation, Roman transformation, and Christian veneration.
For Christians, therefore, the discovery is significant not because archaeology has “proved the Resurrection”—which is not something archaeology can do—but because the physical setting traditionally associated with the Passion and Resurrection of Christ continues to correspond in important ways with the historical and archaeological evidence of first-century Jerusalem.
Sources and further reading
The most important source is the 2025 preliminary archaeological report itself, rather than the sensational headlines derived from it. The report was published in Liber Annuus, vol. 75 (2025), pp. 619–716, by Francesca Romana Stasolla and colleagues.
The 2024 preliminary report is also useful because it documents the earlier stages of the excavation and notes that the quarry extends beneath much of the present church complex and that its exploitation continued over an extended period, followed by later reuse.
For the historical tradition concerning Constantine's identification of the site, Eusebius's Life of Constantine, Book III, chapters 26–29, is the essential ancient source.
And for the broader question of Golgotha and the traditional tomb, Joan E. Taylor's scholarly reassessment is particularly useful because it argues that the traditional tomb may well be authentic while distinguishing the precise locations of the crucifixion and burial.
