The Cave of John the Baptist.

The Cave of John the Baptist Written by Shimon Gibson Published by Random House, New York, 2005, ISBN: 0385503482, Softcover, pp. 382, $39.95 CAN

The subtitle of this book is misleading ("The first archaeological evidence of the historical reality of the Gospel story") since it is intended to refer only to St. John the Baptist, not to the whole Gospel.

The author is a British archaeologist working in the Holy Land. From 2000 to 2003 he excavated a cave that existed well before the first century but shows unmistakable evidence of ritual use in the first century and contains early Christian drawings depicting John the Baptist and the three crosses of the Crucifixion. Besides art, the excavation has unearthed pottery, coins, bones, remains of a ritual fire, and pieces of cloth. The author makes this claim: "By fitting together all the new' archaeological facts with the basic historical information that has been available ... I am able to throw an amazing amount of light on the personality and mission of John the Baptist" (the book jacket).

The cave is quite large (ten feet high and twenty-two feet long, with the floor sloping gently downwards). It was built by hand about 700 B.C. It is on the shore of a small stream which provided water for the cave's cistern. The water, it is argued, was not used principally for drinking or irrigation but for ritual cleansing, even in Old Testament times. The author gives evidence that such a practice was common.

In the cave are small primitive drawings, allegedly of John the Baptist and related subjects. There are layers of evidence of the cultures which existed from the Iron Age to modern times, through the Persian, Hellenistic, Early Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, and Ottoman eras. The cave is near Ain Karim, to the west of Jerusalem, where John the Baptist was born; the cave itself is just west of Ain Kaim, in a semi-desert area (the "wilderness" in which St. John is said to have spent his younger life as a shepherd of sheep and goats). This "wilderness experience" was followed by a later similar experience in the lower Jordan River district.

The author states in his conclusion: "Apparently, the inner end of the cave was used for baptism purposes.... There can be no doubt that these activities reflect the beliefs of a particular group of Jews with a unique approach towards purification in water. Hence, the cave was most probably used by John the Baptist during his sojourn in the hill country, because of the proximity to his hometown at Ain Karim, and it was also certainly used during the course of the first century by his followers or by a group of Jews who were baptists.... Since John the Baptist appears to have regarded himself as a successor to the Israelite prophets, what better than to choose a plan to conduct his rituals of baptism where there was already an established tradition of ritual cleansing extending back to their time?" (p. 212).

The author thinks that, before the Islamic period, some monks frequented the cave. It seems however that activity in the cave ceased about 1200 A.D., probably because of disturbances during the Crusades.

A large part of the book is devoted to the death and burial of John, his tomb, and his relics.

The author wonders what happened to the body and to the head of John after he was beheaded. He was killed at Machaerus, Herod's fortress palace, a little to the east of Bethlehem, which is about five miles south of Jerusalem. But literary sources and archaeological evidence point to the fact that John was buried in Sebaste, in Samaria, in central Palestine, about forty miles north of Jerusalem. Perhaps the burial in Sebaste was not the original burial but a burial hundreds of years later. Muslims wrought havoc with the tomb and its church.

As for other relics of St. John, the author, without making a claim to have exhausted the subject, describes numerous ancient churches and chapels dedicated to him, many of which are simply ruins today. Several of them are said to have, or to have had, parts of John's body The sorting out of these histories is complicated by the fact that it is known that some relics were often transferred from one place to another, and by the likelihood that some, perhaps most, are forgeries. The author states: "I can report that during my most recent count of relic bits and pieces of John, I did come up with the figure of some nineteen heads (or parts of heads, notably cranium fragments, jawbones, and teeth) and something in the order of fifteen hands or arms (including fingers). Of course, one must also not forget the scores of bones of John existing as well." There is no doubt that John was popular.

The author has become so preoccupied with John that he seems to think that Jesus was John's disciple rather than it being the other way around.

This book will appeal to Scripture scholars, Near Eastern archaeologists, and devotees of St. John the Baptist, but the details may prove to be too much for the average reader.

BOOK REVIEWED BY FR. LEONARD A. KENNEDY, C.S.B.