Original subtitles

[narrator] Jerusalem.

For Christians,

the most important events in history took place here.

[men chanting]

The Bible says this is the city where Jesus lived his last days

and was crucified.

What happened here changed the world.

Over 2,000 years, the city, too, has changed.

Destroyed and reconstructed more than 20 times

in as many centuries.

Only fragments, traces and ruins remain

of the Jerusalem that Jesus would've known.

Now, building on decades of research,

with state-of-the-art 3D graphic modeling,

we can reveal what it would've looked like to him.

The streets and gateways

through which he would've walked.

The complex water system

which kept this desert city from thirst.

The pools where some say Jesus performed miracles.

The temple complex, the heart of the city

and of the Jewish faith where Jesus taught and prayed.

An extraordinary piece of engineering

that was razed to the ground

almost as soon as it was completed.

[fire roaring]

We will reveal the lost world of the Gospels.

Jesus' Jerusalem.

[opening theme plays]

In Jesus' time, Jerusalem was the heart of Judea,

the kingdom of the Jews.

A people defined by their religion.

To them, this was the most important place in the world.

[beeps]

[beeps]

The Gospels describe three different occasions

when Jesus came to this city.

Forty days after his birth, when his parents presented him

to the priests in the temple.

At the age of 12, when he came to teach.

And for the last week of his life,

he entered the city walls in triumph

and then left them to die on a cross.

Jerusalem in the 1st Century

is the center of everything for the Judean world.

There's a strong contrast

between where Jesus has come from

and the Jerusalem to which he arrives.

[narrator] His hometown was Nazareth,

a small settlement 75 miles to the north.

Nazareth had a reputation for being rough and uncivilized.

It could not have been more different from Jerusalem.

He comes from the country and now he's coming to the city.

[indistinct chatter]

[Soltes] If we imagine Jesus coming to Jerusalem

for the first time,

he must've been absolutely awestruck by this structure

which was enormous relative to everything around it.

[narrator] This structure is the Temple Mount.

[beeps]

For Investigators trying to piece together

what this city looked like in the 1st century,

it presents a unique challenge.

Most of what was built here has been lost to time.

Destroyed within decades of Jesus' death

by a rampaging Roman army.

And because this site is sacred

to three of the world's great religions,

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,

no excavations have been allowed here

for more than 150 years.

Nevertheless, through detective work,

and the study of ancient records,

it is now possible to rebuild the Temple Mount

as Jesus knew it

and uncover the secrets of its construction.

It was the brainchild of Herod the Great,

king of Judea at the time of Jesus's birth.

Herod's achievements will always be overshadowed

by what is written about him in the Bible.

That he ordered the slaughter of newborn babies.

That he tried to murder the infant Christ.

Herod generally gets a bad rap in history.

Herod was an extraordinarily skilled administrator.

He was also a visionary builder

not just what he did to aggrandize the temple

and the Temple Mount,

he built this extraordinary fortress of Masada.

He built this extraordinary palace complex at Herodion.

He wanted to be remembered.

He wanted to be Herod the Great.

[narrator] And so the world that Jesus lived in

was one molded by his would-be killer.

In around 15 BC, Herod had embarked on a plan

to build a new temple complex far more grand

than what already stood there.

He would triple the size of the existing structure

to make it cover an area equivalent

of 25 football fields.

He would surround it with huge walls.

But he faced two major engineering challenges,

Firstly, in Jewish thinking,

there was only one possible location for the temple.

He would have to demolish the existing structure

and the priest didn't trust him.

They didn't believe he'd finish the job.

To prove his good intentions,

every stone needed for the new building

would be quarried before work began on the site.

One million tons of stone from sites all around the city.

It took eight years.

A still greater challenge

was that the summit of the Temple Mount

was a peak, not a plateau.

More than that, it was simply too small for Herod's plans.

Herod arrived at a simple

but extraordinarily ambitious solution.

He made the mountain bigger.

[rumbling]

The Temple Mount that Jesus knew

was, in fact, the largest man-made structure on Earth.

The floor of the plaza,

which would hold a quarter of a million people,

was effectively a roof.

It covered a network of chambers.

[Avner Goren]

[narrator] In the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount,

there are four level of arches making vaulted rooms.

Each arch is 20 feet wide and 20 feet high.

The technique of arch building is well-known in Herod's time.

The Romans used it extensively.

What's different here

is that Herod's men used, not concrete,

but the local limestone.

The result was a perfectly executed piece of engineering

with three major advantages.

It was strong.

Strong enough to carry the weight

of tens of thousands of pilgrims.

It was long-lasting.

[Avner] It happened to last almost forever.

We are now looking at the building 2,000 years later

and it is still here and strong and very impressive.

[narrator] It was also light.

If Herod had tried the alternative,

to simply fill the space with earth or rubble,

the weight on the retaining walls

would've been far too great.

They would've had to have been made even thicker

or they would've collapsed.

As it was,

the walls that surrounded the Temple Mount were vast.

They were 15 feet thick and rising above the plaza,

they stood more than 120 feet high.

They were made

from hand carved stone blocks.

[indistinct chatter]

[Ronny] The Temple Mount is about a mile in circumference.

So we can say that a single layer of stone

would be, let's say, 800 to 1,000 pieces.

[narrator] On average,

each of these stones weighed around 9,000 pounds,

roughly the weight of a full-grown elephant.

Some were much bigger.

Archaeologist have located the largest of the blocks used

in the Temple Mount's construction.

It can be found in what are called the Rabbinical Tunnels.

[beeps]

Now buried by 2,000 years of progress and change,

in Jesus' time, it was in plain view at street level.

Dr. Jodi Magness is a world expert

on the architecture of Jesus' Jerusalem.

[Jodi] This very large stone

is part of what's called the master course.

The idea was to stabilize the Temple Mount

by incorporating a row of stones

that are much bigger, taller, and heavier

than all of the other stones.

[narrator] Its size is hard to comprehend.

It is 20 times larger than the largest stone used

in the building of Egypt's pyramids.

It's over 40 feet long, 10 feet high,

and weighs over 400 tons.

[narrator] Jesus or any other visitor to Jerusalem

would've been confronted by a building

of vast intimidating scale,

and Herod's builders took this into account

with a trick of enormous skill.

[Jodi] Each row of stone, as you work your way up,

is slightly set back,

slightly offset from the one below.

This, first of all, gives a stability

to the lower parts of the walls

necessary to carry the weight above

and it also creates,

or I should say, corrects an optical illusion.

If the stones had been laid flushed,

perfectly straight, one above the other,

the building is so monumental, that when you looked at it,

it would've seemed to have been leaning over.

It would've seemed to have been top heavy.

So this actually makes it look as if the wall rises straight.

[narrator] The stonemasons were so skilled

that the fit between the stones was almost airtight.

Shimon Gibson demonstrate their expertise.

They were able to fit the stones close together.

The stonemasons were so precise

that if I try to put this 50 dollar bill in here,

I could just get in

but that's about it, nothing else.

[narrator] This section of the wall has stood for 2,000 years

but engineers relied on craftsmanship,

not mortar, to hold the blocks together.

Eighteen thousand people were employed

in building these walls.

Work began 15 years before Jesus' birth.

It was still going on 80 years later.

The complex as Jesus knew it

was the world's biggest construction site.

But we can now create

what it looked like on completion.

The largest structure on Earth.

[rumbling]

It stood for only five years

before a brutal Roman army tore it down.

According to the Gospel of St. Mark,

Jesus is said to have pointed to the structures

on Jerusalem's Temple Mount

and said, "Do you see these great buildings?

There will not be one stone left upon another

that will not be thrown down."

Forty years later,

these words were proved to be prophetic.

The Roman army, suppressing a Jewish revolt,

destroyed the temple.

The result for modern investigators

is one of the most tantalizing challenges

of biblical archaeology.

To recreate the holy temple as it stood

in the middle of the Temple Mount.

It has taken the work

of generations of scientists and scholars

to build a picture of what Jesus would've seen

when he came here.

On entering the Temple Mount,

he would move upwards through a series of courts

or open spaces.

He would pass a sign written in Greek warning all foreigners,

meaning non-Jews,

that if they pass beyond a certain point,

they would be put to death.

Then he would be in the court of the women.

The last place where women were allowed.

This was the outer court of the temple proper

or sanctuary.

At the top of 15 semi-circular steps

was the beautiful gate leading to the court of the Israelites

and opened only to ritually purified Jewish males.

Jesus would not be able to go beyond that point

because within the temple itself,

only the the priest would enter.

And the holy of holies at the back of the temple,

only the high priest entered

and only once, on the day of atonement, per year.

[narrator] Piecing together the evidence from written sources,

it's possible to establish what the exterior

of this jealously guarded sanctuary looked like.

Archeologists have calculated the height

of the temple sanctuary

compared to the structure that stands there now.

The Muslim Dome of the Rock.

[narrator] So this cavernous structure

was the height of a 15-story office block.

Our investigators want to know

how the temple's builders managed to erect

such a building

with only the very primitive tools

and lifting devices available in Jesus' time.

It's clear that it would've required vast manpower.

The accounts say that since every stone of the building

was to be regarded as holy,

1,000 priests were trained as stone masons.

Dr. Guy Stiebel believes he can identify evidence

of their quarries.

[Guy] One of the exciting things

is that this cave preserves so freshly.

[narrator] In an underground cavern

two miles from Jerusalem,

he has found a series of chisel marks.

They match the exact shape of the stones used

to build Herod's Temple Mount.

[Guy] What you can see here very clearly,

you can see a line horizontally here

and another line goes down here.

You can see the edge of it.

Basically, they would use sort of pickaxe.

Cutting grooves and then using a crowbar

to lever or to detach the stones or stone block

from, uh, the cave itself, from the wall of the cave

and remove it.

[narrator] Some of these tools are still being used today.

-[indistinct chatter] -But in Jesus' time,

the workers didn't have access to trucks or earth movers.

You can see very clearly that from the chiseling mark,

this is a fairly neat straight line.

Once it was removed,

you can shape it exactly to the measurement

that was required by your architect.

And you wish to do it here

because then you have to schlep it on--

I mean, to carry it all the way whether to the Temple Mount

or to another area of construction.

If you reduce the waste

and all the things that you won't need later on,

you have less weight to carry.

So they were very, very practical.

[narrator] Transportation required

a combination of brute force and innovative engineering.

Archaeologist Dr. Ronny Reich has recreated one solution

that the builders' used.

It's called a Metagenes.

It's a simple but effective system.

The stone block becomes an axle between two wheels.

[Ronny] Ten men could roll it to-and-fro.

Uh, each one of them, actually, move 900 pounds of stone.

This is, of course, a burden

that a single person cannot do by himself.

So, with this device, that, uh, stone was moved.

[narrator] When the stones have been delivered to the site,

they still had to be maneuvered into place.

On average, each one weighed at least 10 tons.

Simple cranes were used to lift them.

Here we have constructed a bipod with ropes.

And pulleys and the ropes can be pulled with levers.

With eight people working,

we could lift the stone a meter, two meters, three meters high

and then let it down easily.

[narrator] The end result would certainly have been magnificent

but one aspect of the temple's construction

has always proved mysterious.

The writer Josephus says

that the temple was covered in marble and gold

and that from a distance,

it looked like a snowcapped mountain glittering in the sun.

Some modern investigators find this hard to believe.

And the reason is there's no marble in Israel,

in ancient Palestine, it doesn't exist.

It all has to be imported

from other places like Turkey and Greece.

And we have very, very little marble imported to this country

in the time of Jesus. It's not until later

that marble starts to be imported

in any sort of quantities.

[narrator] Hillel Geva may have found the answer.

[footsteps echoing]

Deep below the street level of contemporary Jerusalem,

he's excavated the preserved ruins of a rich person's house.

The walls and ceilings are covered with intricate designs

and these designs show that Jerusalem's builders

had the skill to sculpt plaster

and create the illusion of stone.

This wall has been cut to mimic the framed blocks

that make up the walls of the Temple Mount.

[Hillel] This is imitation in plaster of construction

in large blocks.

Each block has a train.

And here it was left white, not decorated,

but, eh, other examples are with decoration.

[narrator] It seems possible then

that the sanctuary's awe-inspiring facade

was created using a very cunning technique.

[Jodi] So in my opinion, when air sources describe the temple

as being made of marble or covered with marble,

what they actually mean

is that the building was made of a shining white stone

or perhaps stone covered with a polished stucco.

[narrator] We can now show the temple

as it would've looked when Jesus saw it.

The focal point of the city.

White and gold

with plumes of smoke rising from the sacrificial altars

that stood in front of it.

The building was a magnet

for believers all over the Middle East.

When Jesus came to Jerusalem for his last passover,

there may have been a quarter

of a million other visitors there.

Jerusalem struggled to cope.

And while the pilgrims concerned themselves

with spiritual matters,

the daily life of this desert city was dictated

by something much more basic.

The need for water.

[narrator] Tradition has it that one week before his death,

Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem in triumph.

Crowds gathered to welcome him, chanting and waving palms.

[cheering]

Many of the people were his followers

but the city was already full

of people who come to celebrate the Feast of Passover.

[Ori] The normal population of Jerusalem

around the time of Jesus is probably well under 30,000.

And probably during the time of the festivals,

certainly the Passover Festival,

one can imagine that it might've been 10 times,

that it might've been 300,000.

[narrator] Jerusalem, at this moment,

was the fastest growing settlement in the Middle East.

It received over a million visitors a year.

Our investigators have been trying to build a picture

of what the city looked like

and how it handled this massive influx of people.

Some of the benefits seemed positive.

Pilgrims brought wealth.

The construction of the temple...

itself engendered or created a lot of money.

People came to Jerusalem as pilgrims.

They had to spend money for lodging, for food,

for gifts and souvenirs along the way,

and, of course, pay the temple tax

and also pay for sacrifices.

[narrator] Decades of deep excavation

along the western wall of the temple

have uncovered the remains of a street 30 feet wide

and 3,000 feet long

which functioned as a shopping mall.

It's known as the Herodian Street.

Jesus would've walked here.

[indistinct chatter]

[Ronny] This is the main street.

The main thoroughfare of Jerusalem.

And you have just to imagine, the large number of people

coming here to buy and sell things

in these various shops along the street.

All of those who came on pilgrimage.

This is... the heart of Jerusalem.

[narrator] Some archeologists call this place "Wall Street,"

acknowledging that it's the financial heart of the city.

They have also pieced together physical evidence

of the close relationship

between these commercial interests

and the spiritual life of the temple.

Examination of the wall at the southern end of the street

reveals the remains of an arch.

It's known as Robinson's Arch.

More than 50 feet tall

and with a span of at least 40 feet,

it served as one of the main entrances

to the temple complex.

And built into its base,

against the walls of the Temple Mount,

were stores that would sell goods to pilgrims.

[Ori] That area, the area below it,

leading down to the great stairs

that leave behind what is called Robinson's Arch,

all of that, one can imagine, just overflowing with commerce.

And all of these people after all,

they're heading up to the temple.

And meanwhile, all along the way,

there were hawkers saying, "Buy this. Buy that."

[narrator] Jesus must've encountered a scene like this

as he entered the temple.

Furious at what he saw,

he set out to confront the authorities

for the first time.

[chattering]

It's said that he makes his way

into the are called the Court of the Gentiles.

Like every Jewish male,

he had to pay a two shekel temple tax.

The special coin needed could only be bought

from the money changers in the temple complex.

They had a reputation for corruption.

[Ronny] I can imagine that changing money

might lead to fraud,

to, uh, taking advantage of innocent people

from-from the countryside, etcetera,

who are not used to city life.

And he probably was turning aside

and looked and watched

those people cheating occasionally

and this made him mad.

[thunder rumbling]

[narrator] This is the one occasion in the Gospels

when Jesus is said to have shown his rage.

-[thunder rumbling] -It's going too far

within the temple precincts as far as Jesus is concerned.

-"Get out of here." -[thunder crashing]

-[Bernt] He made a whip -[clinking]

and threw them out, turned round the tables

and said, "What are you doing?

You are converting my father's house

into a cave of robbers."

[coins falling, clinking]

[water whooshing]

[narrator] But if pilgrims gave the city its income,

they also had to be provided for.

And the most valuable resource in Jerusalem was water.

Jerusalem was and is a desert city.

It stands 2,500 feet above sea level.

The nearest river is 25 miles away.

How did all of those thousands upon thousands

of people in Jerusalem get their drinking water?

[narrator] There were 30 rain-filled reservoirs

around the city.

The largest held a volume of water equivalent

to 20 Olympic swimming pools.

And yet supply could barely meet demand.

[Ori] They must've crowded around them.

They must've waited around them for their turn

because there weren't that many

and there were many pilgrims.

[narrator] People didn't only need water

for domestic purposes

[Ori] They need an inordinate amount of water

for purification purposes.

They need to be ritually pure

to go up to the temple and visit it.

[narrator] As part of daily religious observance,

and particularly before going to the temple,

every Jew was required to cleanse himself ritually

by washing in what was called "living water."

Jerusalem had many pools designed for this purpose

called mikvahs.

It was at the biggest and busiest of these,

the pool of Siloam,

where Jesus is said to have performed

one of his final miracles.

[Ronny] In the Gospel of John,

we hear of the story of him healing the blind man.

He takes some dirt from the ground, spits on it,

smears it on his eyes and say,

"Now go and wash in the pool of Siloam."

[rumbling]

[narrator] It was a chance discovery

during engineering work on a nearby pipe

that lead Ronny Reich

to pinpoint the precise location of this pool

and understand just how large the Siloam pool was.

Fed by one of Jerusalem's only natural springs

via a tunnel 600 yards long,

it's thought to have covered up to 20,000 square feet.

[rumbling]

If Jesus did heal a blind man who came and bore witness here,

then the story of this apparent miracle

would've been heard by hundreds

and then spread throughout Jerusalem.

It was a public challenge to the city's authorities.

[narrator] As investigators, archeologists,

and biblical scholars try to understand

the unique metropolis that was Jerusalem in the time of Jesus,

an extraordinary picture is emerging.

This is a desert city obsessed by water.

Where spiritual matters govern every aspect of daily life.

Where practical innovative engineering

sits side by side with mysticism.

Where in the run-up to big religious festivals,

crowds would would gather at key points in the city.

Shimon Gibson has been part of the team

trying to uncover and recreate the most intriguing such site.

The Bethesda pool.

Lying to the north of the temple complex,

it is at this pool

that according to the Gospel of John,

Jesus told a paralyzed man to take up his bed and walk.

Archeologists have dug down 40 feet

through 2,000 years of rubble

to uncover the place as Jesus would've seen it.

What's fascinating is that even before he came here,

this pool was said to have healing powers.

[Ori] Jesus comes to the Bethesda pool

and there was whole line-up of elderly people,

of crippled people, of blinded people.

And they're waiting essentially to get their turn in the pool.

[narrator] The man who Jesus cured

is said to have waited years for a chance

to bathe in the waters here

and what Shimon Gibson discovers fits the story.

The steps from the time of Jesus are very well-preserved.

As you can see, there's a flight of steps here

with a landing between each set of steps.

These landings fit in very well with the Gospel of John's story

that the infirm were brought in to the pool itself

and that Jesus then enacted his miracles.

[narrator] The reason that the sick were carried here

to rest on the landings and bathe on the waters

was that the waters were said

to bubble and churn red with blood.

[water burbling]

Shimon Gibson investigates the hidden system

of tunnels and shafts

which regulated the flow of water

into the pool of Bethesda.

This was what produced the pool's famous bubbling.

[water burbling]

This is the area of the sluice gates

and you have two openings.

One large one on top, another small one at the bottom.

[narrator] The sluice gates gave precise control

over the depth of water in the pool.

They were accessed via a vertical shaft

sunk through 50 feet of rock.

If I can... Let's see. Here we are.

[exhales]

So to demonstrate how people

would have climbed up and down the shaft,

I'm climbing up here

and it's roughly about this level...

[exhales] that a pulley system would've been utilized.

They would then, um, extract the plug.

It was hard work but it was an ingenious system.

[water whooshing]

[narrator] Shimon has also found an explanation

for the apparent presence of blood in the water.

Um, here in the rock-cut wall, you can see here this fissure.

And within the fissure is this reddish soil.

Within the barrier wall,

within the tunnel which was cut through,

between the two pools, the soil is even redder.

When the water was flowing through from the northern pool,

those who were coming down to be purified

would've thought that perhaps

blood was emerging from the water.

-[water whooshing] -[narrator] At the same time,

the Temple Mount was often awash with real blood.

Because once a pilgrim have made himself ritually pure,

his next duty would be to go and offer a beast

for sacrifice.

At the time of major festivals, such as the Passover,

which brought Jesus to the city for the final days of his life,

vast numbers of animals would be killed every hour.

It was sacrifice on an almost industrial scale.

It's Easter. Pesach.

Just imagine several thousands of sheep

being slaughtered on a single day.

[narrator] This is the background

to Jesus' last days.

We have a clear picture of what Jerusalem was like

at the time that he was arrested, tried, and killed.

But many people want to try and get closer still

to pinpoint the places

where these events are said to have played out.

It's not just historians and archeologists.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims

come to the city in the hope of walking where Jesus walked.

But through 2,000 years of rebuilding and change,

the city has grown and so have the stories.

It's become hard to separate reality from myth.

A clear example is the site where Jesus ate

his Passover meal.

The way in which he has said to have broken bread here

has formed a blueprint for Christian services ever since.

And that's why so many come to this room,

the Cenacle or Upper Room on Mount Zion,

because they believe that it happened here.

[people clapping and singing in native language]

[Jodi] The architecture of the room

uh, that is today identified as the site of the Last Supper

is clearly much later than the time of Jesus.

The arches or the vaults of the room, which are ribbed,

are distinctively Crusader in style.

[Ori] And that's an architecture that won't come along

for another thousand years after the time of Jesus.

[narrator] These vaulted ceilings belong

to the 12th Century,

when crusading European armies

were battling Muslim forces for control of the Holy Land.

We have no archeological evidence

that the Last Supper took place in this room

or even on the site where the room is located.

It's just a tradition

that has come to identify this spot

as the site of the Last Supper.

[bell tolling]

[narrator] This site was the location

of one of the earliest Christian churches.

But there's also been a mosque

and a host of other buildings here

It's likely the Last Supper

was in one of Jerusalem's private houses.

It would've looked completely different

than the church.

[Jodi] Because it would've been in a simple house.

The roofing would've simply been flat wooden beams,

uh, covering the ceiling,

and nothing like the arches and vaults that you see today.

[narrator] The Gospels say after the Last Supper,

Jesus went with three of his disciples

to the Garden of Gethsemane.

[whooshes]

[beeps]

Again, it's difficult to ascertain the precise location,

but it's clear that this was at the foot

of what is now called the Mount of Olives.

Gethsemane means "olive press."

[Ori] The Garden of Gethsemane seems to be a small enclosure

up towards what we now called the Mount of Olives

northeast of the Temple Mount, northeast of the city.

And that seems to be the place out to which Jesus went

to pray on the night before he was captured.

[narrator] After a night spent in meditation,

he is seized by men acting for the temple authorities.

[Ori] Jesus is apparently apprehended

in the Garden of Gethsemane just before dawn,

that darkest hour before the dawn.

And the question is where is he taken?

[narrator] This is the final challenge for investigators.

To map the sequence of events known as the Passion of Christ.

Two thousand years on,

they will try to retrace the path

that lead to Jesus' crucifixion.

[narrator] The Gospels agree that after his arrest,

Jesus was brought to the residence

of Pontius Pilate, Judea's Roman governor.

This makes historical sense.

The Roman Empire had a tight grip on this city.

A big political decision

such as the execution of an apparent rebel

or revolutionary like Jesus,

had to be made by Rome's representative.

Again, tradition has attached itself

to one particular site

as the place where Jesus was beaten,

paraded before the mob,

and then sentenced.

Generations of pilgrims

have been told that it happened in the Antonia Fortress.

The Antonia was the headquarters

for the garrison of Roman soldiers stationed

in Jerusalem.

Very little remains of it now.

But investigators have been able to reconstruct it

from ancient writings.

Situated at the northeast corner of the temple,

it was a block-shaped structure with four massive towers,

each well over 50 feet high.

As such a strong image of Roman domination,

it's clear why the Antonia

came to be associated with Pilate

and the trial of Jesus.

Today, almost nothing of it remains.

Looking for hard evidence,

Jodi Magness heads to a paved area

identified as the Lithostrotos,

supposedly attached to the fortress

and the place where Jesus was crowned with thorns.

[Jodi] The Lithostrotos is mentioned in the Gospels

as the site where Jesus

was sentenced to death

by Pontius Pilate.

So, modern Christian pilgrims

to Jerusalem revere this site.

[narrator] The problem is that the science

just doesn't support this part of the traditional story.

[Jodi] In fact, we know from archaeology,

that this pavement didn't exist in the time of Jesus.

It was laid later in the 2nd Century AD

by the emperor Hadrian,

as part of a marketplace that he built here.

[man talking in native language]

[narrator] For centuries now,

pilgrims have walked a route beginning at the Antonia,

down which Jesus has said to have carried his cross.

This route is called the Via Dolorosa,

the Way of Sorrows.

By tradition now, we have adopted 14 stations

where people stop to remember

where Jesus has suffered.

[man talking in native language]

[narrator] But there's little to prove

that this is the right route.

[Ori] People who believe

they are following the footsteps

of Jesus to the point and place

where he is confronted by Pontius Pilate,

where the soldiers hold him in captivity,

where they jammed the, uh, crown of thorns on his head,

may be mistaken.

[people singing hymns]

[narrator] The idea that this is the route that Jesus took

is based on a simple misconception

that Pilate's residence

and the headquarters of his troops

were the same place.

Actually, records suggest

that Pilate probably lived in another building,

a palace constructed by Herod.

We now know that, contrary to medieval tradition,

the trial of Jesus would've taken place

within the old palace of Herod the Great,

the praetorium, where the governor, Pontius Pilate,

coming up from Caesarea would've been lodged.

[narrator] No trace of this palace has been found.

But we do know that it stood to the southwest of the temple.

And if this was Pilate's residence,

and Jesus was brought here,

then his final journey did not follow the Via Dolorosa.

[indistinct chatter]

Modern Jerusalem is not the city that Jesus knew

and it is almost impossible

that anyone could now walk the exact path

that Jesus took.

For most of the people here,

it's the spiritual dimension to this journey

-that's important. -[praying indistinctly]

And yet, remarkably, there is strong evidence to suggest

that we do know where Jesus was killed and buried.

Scripture talks about Golgotha, the Place of the Skulls,

as the place where Jesus died.

Today, as they have done for 1,500 years,

believers say that place was here

where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands

in the center of Jerusalem.

It is thought that this place

only became a church 300 years after the death of Jesus.

But some scholars have argued

that it couldn't be the true site

of Jesus' death and burial

because the Gospel says that these events

took place outside the city walls

since Jewish law forbade either execution

or burial inside the city.

[Ori] In the case of Jerusalem,

the configuration of the city was different then.

And that the site of Golgotha

was outside the city at the time of Jesus,

but subsequently, of course,

it's within the bounds of the city.

What we do know based on archeological excavations

is that the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,

in particular the Rotunda, was part of a larger cemetery.

In other words, this was an area

that was beyond the city walls.

It was not within the city.

[narrator] At a spot on the edge of the church,

Jodi Magness finds proof

that burials did take place on this site 2,000 years ago.

What we see here is an example of a typical Jewish tomb

in Jerusalem, in the time of Jesus.

These tombs were typically rock-cut tombs

with burial niches or loculi

cut into the walls of the burial chambers.

[narrator] All the facts fit.

The weight of the evidence suggests

that this really might be where the burial took place.

[Jodi] The location of Jewish tombs

on this spot is as close as we can get, archeologically,

to saying that this is the authentic spot

where Jesus was crucified and buried.

[narrator] Jerusalem is an extraordinary city today,

and we can reconstruct a detailed picture

of what it was like 2,000 years ago.

[Katharina] We're capable

of reconstructing 1st Century Jerusalem,

physically and spiritually.

Some of those remains we have to dig up.

They're hidden underneath the soil,

but others are there.

They're still a central part of the city of Jerusalem.

[indistinct chatter]

[rumbling]

[narrator] By rebuilding it,

we get a glimpse of a time and a life

that, whatever we believe,

played a massive part in shaping our world.

[triumphant music playing]