Christianity Today has listed most impactful biblical archaeological discoveries in 2024. Archaeological discoveries over the past 150 years have changed the way “moderns” view the Bible and have served to strengthen its claims. Below is a brief rundown of nine of the identified top finds in 2024.
9. The Siege of Jerusalem. The Assyrian king Sennacherib “came down” on Jerusalem in 701 BC. The king ordered an inscription memorializing the feat, saying how he’d shut up Hezekiah “like a caged bird in his royal city.” Sennacherib conveniently omitted the fact that he failed to actually take Jerusalem. The site of that siege has been identified by archaeologist Stephen Compton using modern mapping techniques.
8. Skills of the ancient mariners.
The discovery of the deepest and earliest shipwreck ever found in the Eastern Mediterranean 56 miles offshore, suggests ancient mariners were venturing far from shore, which would only be possible with well-developed celestial navigation skills. This is a world-class, history-changing discovery, archaeologists claim as it reveals the ancient mariners’ navigation skills—capable of traversing the Mediterranean Sea without a line of sight to any coast. A natural gas company was surveying the sea floor with a submersible robot and came upon a huge pile of jugs a mile below the surface. A few of the jugs were raised to the surface and identified as Late Bronze Age Canaanite storage vessels from the 14th–13th century BC. The Canaanites later became known as seafaring Phoenicians and developed a trading network that ranged across the Mediterranean Sea during the Iron Age.
7. A libation token.
Clay seal impressions with images and letters on one flat side and perhaps the impression on the other are common in biblical archaeology. It’s quite rare to find a blob of ancient clay that is pinched on one side with writing and an image on the reverse, but that’s what a team at the Temple Mount Sifting Project found. The discovery, made in 2011, was identified in 2024 as a pilgrim’s token, which could be exchanged for an offering at the temple. The wine jar depicted on the token may indicate it was payment for wine to be poured out on the temple altar. The use of such tokens is described in the Mishna, the oral Jewish law compiled in the second century.
6. Canaanite complexes. Some of the excavations that took place in 2024 explored Canaanite cult complexes dating to the Early Bronze Age, 1,000 years before Abraham, and to the Late Bronze Age, around the time of the Exodus. Salvage archaeologists found a building that had been used for ritual activity before being suddenly abandoned. Tiny cultic vessels, which probably had a symbolic purpose, were still intact. As well, six miles south of Jerusalem, another Canaanite cult complex has been uncovered at Tel Azekah. Archaeologists say it began as an open-air sanctuary with a spectacular view and was later enclosed. It was dubbed “the Temple of the Rising Sun.” Also, in northern Israel at a dig called Tel Shimron, researchers found two bronze bull figurines, which are typically connected to the worship of El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, or the storm god Baal. They also found 40,000 animal bones and 57,000 pottery shards, including remnants of a rare Minoan jug from Crete. “In terms of religion, we don’t have anything like this,” archaeologist Daniel Master said. “This is on a scale that we don’t have anywhere else in this region.”
5. The gate of Shiloh. When the Israelites lost the ark of the covenant to the Philistines, the priest Eli fell off his chair and broke his neck at the gate of Shiloh (1 Sam. 4:18). In 2024, the excavation by the Associates for Biblical Research at Tel Shiloh finished uncovering that gate. Near the pillars, archaeologists also found geometric paving stones forming a plaza, which is unexpected for that time. In another area of the tel, or mound, excavators are uncovering the walls of a building the size of the biblical tabernacle, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. They have also discovered a favissa (a pit) with bones from sacrifices, pottery, and gold objects, which were apparently pendants.
4. Redating a Jerusalem wall. A wall once attributed to King Hezekiah is now thought to have been built earlier by King Uzziah. This indicates that Jerusalem was expanding even before a flood of refugees arrived after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel in 732 BC.
3. The start of the alphabet. The earliest use of alphabetic writing has been pushed back 500 years through the discovery of four small fingers of clay in a tomb at Umm el-Marra in northern Syria. The tomb, which contained burials in gold and silver, was discovered in 2004 and carbon-dated to 2400 BC, the Early Bronze Age, when Umm el-Marra was a crossroad of trade routes between Aleppo and the Euphrates River. Previously, scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BC, but these artifacts are older and from a different area on the map, suggesting the alphabet may have an entirely different origin story than thought. Numerous references to writing in the Old Testament seem to indicate a level of literacy that archaeology has been slow to support. But recent developments, including the discovery that topped Christianity Today’s 2022 archaeology list, are providing a fuller picture of early literacy.
2. Jesus recognized in Germany. A silver amulet was found in an 1,800-year-old burial outside Frankfurt in 2018. In 2024, researchers were able to scan the item, virtually unrolling the thin amulet to read the Latin inscription inside, which says the amulet will “protect the man who surrenders himself to the will of the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, since before Jesus Christ every knee bows: those in heaven, those on earth and those under the earth, and every tongue confesses.” This discovery, announced in December, provides the earliest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps, indicating that Christianity spread to Northern Europe more quickly than had been thought. The person who wore it was buried between the year 230 and 270 AD.
1. A mosaic free from prison. The Megiddo Mosaic was discovered 20 years ago, but the amazing artifact, built for a small group of Christians who worshiped together about 200 years after the time of Jesus, was inaccessible behind prison walls. The mosaic floor includes three well-preserved inscriptions, and one, in Greek, mentions “God Jesus Christ,” clearly testifying to the recognition of Jesus as more than a good teacher. The design shows the space was intentionally built for Christian worship. Centered on a Communion table, it more closely resembles a Jewish synagogue than the Roman basilica, and depicts two fish, the most popular Christian imagery before Constantine. This is only the third church building that archaeologists have discovered that dates to the time before Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire. There is one at Dura-Europus in Syria and another at the location traditionally believed to be the apostle Peter’s house in Capernaum. Those were both houses converted for worship. This mosaic floor was not discovered at Tel Megiddo, a famous archaeological site, but a few miles down the road during the renovation of a prison.
