In the last year or so, I've become really interested in painting a more historically informed Jesus.

Now, of course, I don't know what mortal Jesus looks like any more than any of you out there listening.

But archaeology can tell us what average Jews in first century Roman Judea look like,

what clothing they wore and style and colors, what their houses and home life were

probably like, their pottery and utensils and food, working tools and animals that surrounded

them. In other words, archaeology can help me place Jesus in his historical Jewish context

to understand him and his teachings a little bit more clearly. The problem is, I'm not an archaeologist

who specializes in Roman Judea, but as God's good grace would have it, one of my colleagues here at

BYU religion, Professor Matt Gray, is. Dr. Gray is part of a team that within the last decade

discovered a synagogue with a really rare and fascinating religious

art mosaic floor in a small little town off the sea of Galilee, a town called Hukok.

This intricate and beautiful mosaic floor from the 5th century shows biblical depictions of

Samson, Jonah's Ark, Pharaoh's army being swallowed up in the

Red Sea, and some snapshots of daily life and antiquity, including fishermen at sea and crafts when

constructing a building, a profession which Jesus was likely employed. Here's Professor Matt Gray talking

a little bit about when they found this mosaic.

And one day towards the end of the season, Brian found something that none of us were

expecting going into this project, and that is that he'd get closer and closer to what we assumed

was the floor level of the synagogue. He was in there working with his hoe, scraping back dirt,

and all of a sudden his hoe hit something, he pulled it back, he heard this slight scraping stone, he looked down and peering through the dirt was the image of a female face

staring back at him. And at that moment, we all realized that what we had was a synagogue that

contained a beautiful mosaic floor

...