Israeli Archeologists Rush to Excavate ‘Jesus Boat’ From Sea of Galilee

An ancient craft described by the excited Israeli press as “the Jesus boat” has inspired one of the most unusual archeological excavations ever in a land known for biblical discoveries.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” marine archeologist Kurt Raveh said as he watched a group of volunteers race nature to dig the remarkably well-preserved boat out of the muck in which it has been buried for possibly 2,000 years.

Usually, Raveh said, it takes months or even years to organize an archeological expedition, but “this was organized in one day.” And, instead of the usual secrecy surrounding a dig, this one has been a spectator event almost from the moment two weeks ago when two brothers from a nearby kibbutz discovered the craft.

In Pajamas at 2 A.M.

Word quickly spread to the press, and “we had to get police and the army to protect us,” Raveh said. “We had people who came in pajamas at 2 a.m. just to touch it.”

There are so many visitors that an enterprising businessman is selling beer and ice cream cones out of a van parked on the beach a few yards from the dig. And there have been arguments about who will put on display what everybody expects to be a big tourist attraction.

Nobody knows for sure whether the boat existed when Christ began his ministry here in what is now northern Israel, much less whether he was ever a passenger in it. But a volunteer worker pointed out, “There’s no information to the contrary.”

If all goes according to plan, Raveh and his colleagues will refloat the 25-foot boat, encased in a protective wrapping of plastic, today or Thursday. They will move it a few hundred yards along the beach to a waiting vat of chemical preservatives in which it is to be submerged until it is ready for display.

The operation is technically complicated and without precedent, and scientists from the Israeli Department of Antiquities had hoped for much more time.

Hopes for Financing

The original plan, according to Raveh, was to mark the discovery and quietly allow the rising waters of the Sea of Galilee to conceal it while the archeologists organized a more conventional excavation--complete, they hoped, with financing by National Geographic or some other organization.

“But, the next day, somebody leaked it to the press, and all the trouble started,” he said.

The water level of the sea, which had been unseasonably low but which is now rising after recent heavy rains, quickly became the “clock” against which the volunteers had to work.

Also, after all this time buried in the mud, the boat will disintegrate if exposed to the air for long, according to Orna Cohen, a Hebrew University expert in the preservation of wood. She described the craft as like “a sponge full of water” and said that the problem is to replace the water with a wax-like substance that will substitute for the wood’s lost structural integrity.

Cohen said the process will take up to seven years, and this apparently has put off for now a threatened fight over rights to display the boat.

Ownership Dispute

Ownership of the section of beach where 33-year-old Moshe Luffan and his brother first spotted a piece of the boat sticking up out of the mud is in dispute between Kibbutz Ginosar, a lake-side collective farm that has branched out into the tourist business, and Migdal, an agricultural cooperative situated near the already excavated site of the biblical city of the same name.

However, Luffan is a member of Ginosar and, for a while at least, the boat is scheduled to remain in its preservative bath at the kibbutz.

Luffan said he had been sure he would find an ancient boat here ever since the day last summer when he discovered a few old coins nearby, at a place where he had helped pull a truck out of the mud.

Then, he said, he and his brother walked along the shore almost every day, until earlier this month, when their search paid off. “I was very, very happy,” he said with a broad smile.

Luffan said he fantasizes that the boat may have been involved in a famous battle between Rome’s legionnaires and its rebellious Jewish subjects in AD 67.

‘Thick With Wrecks’

The Roman historian Josephus Flavius, in his chronicle of the Jewish revolt, said: “The beaches were thick with wrecks and swollen bodies . . . . Such was the outcome of this naval engagement.”

Volunteers have already found pieces of at least two more boats nearby, but the so-called Jesus boat is almost completely intact and lying at a right angle to the beach. A wrecked boat that had washed up on shore could be expected to be positioned parallel to the water line, Raveh said.

J. Richard Steffy, an authority on ancient ships from Texas A&M; University, said that, if this was an ocean-going vessel, the design would identify it with the 1st or 2nd Century BC. But, inland, he said, a boat style might survive much longer.

“One has a tendency to make assumptions here,” said Steffy, who was brought in as a consultant by the Department of Antiquities. “And then you take it back in the laboratory and find you’re totally wrong. That’s why I hate to put a date on it. It may turn out to be 12th Century.”

‘Really Marvelous Find’

Steffy is more interested in the man who built the boat than in who might have used it. He called it “a really marvelous find” and added: “These are the ones that really tell you what life was all about.”

He said he hopes to learn much about how the boat was built by studying such details as tool marks in the wood.

Glancing at the crowd watching the dig, Steffy shook his head and observed, “I’ll bet 10 people never showed up to watch the guy build this thing.”

Carbon Dating Planned

Raveh said that a piece of the boat has been sent to a laboratory for carbon dating, but results are not expected for a month. It appears from weights found inside that the boat was used for fishing, he said. The weights are of a type used on ancient fishing nets.

Beyond this, Raveh is almost as cautious as Steffy. “We want everybody to be happy,” he said, “but, archeologically, it’s a Roman wreck--nothing more and nothing less.”

Still, Raveh concedes that the find is “the most exciting” of his 12-year career.