Israel lending 'Jesus mosaic' from Armageddon to controversial Bible Museum in U.S. (2024)

Last week, expert conservators working at an archaeological site in a northern Israeli prison quietly completed the job of packing up and loading onto trucks one of the most important discoveries made in Israel this century.

The Megiddo Mosaic, which decorated one of oldest Christian prayer halls ever found, will soon fly overseas for a 9-months loan to the Museum of the Bible, Haaretz has learned.

The ancient worship space is located in a maximum-security prison that was built on the site in the 1940s, during the British Mandate. Since its discovery in 2005, the mosaic and the remains of the prayer hall have not been accessible to the general public for security reasons, according to Israeli authorities.

Lending the mosaic out will enable a key historical artifact to be seen by the public for the first time. But some consider the venue chosen to be highly controversial, and the deal showcases Israel's increasing political and cultural ties with far-right, messianically-bent evangelicals in the United States.

The Museum of the Bible is a private institution in Washington D.C. backed by evangelical Christian funders. Experts have heavily criticized it over lax acquisition policies resulting in the display of fake or looted artifacts, and for promoting a religious agenda.

The mosaic came to light during works in Megiddo Prison, located near the mound housing the ruins of the ancient city of Megiddo, in the Jezreel Valley. The site is also known as Armageddon in Christian tradition, and is prophesized to be the place where the final battle between good and evil will take place at the end of time.

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Mobile mosaic, mobile prison

The mosaic, dated to around 230 C.E., is seen as a precious testimony from a period when Christianity had yet to take over the Roman Empire, and is particularly noted for an inscription that contains an early reference to Jesus as God.

Since its discovery, the mosaic has remained locked up in the prison grounds, covered for its own protection and off-limits to the public.

For years Israeli authorities have been floating a plan to move the prison and feature the remains of the prayer hall and the mosaic as part of a broader archaeological park encompassing the Megiddo area. The putative park is still in fairly early planning.

Against this backdrop, the Israel Antiquities Authority acceded to a request by the Museum of the Bible to display the mosaic for nine months starting in September, the IAA told Haaretz by email.

"The mosaic is currently being treated by the IAA conservation experts, and is being preserved in a process that will take several months," it said. "It will then travel to the Bible Museum and other destinations, before returning to its original site as part of an archaeological park."

It remains to be seen at which other locations the mosaic, which is 54 square meters in size, will be displayed and when the proposed museum to house it back in Megiddo will be ready.

The IAA compares the artifact's upcoming travels with those of the Lod Mosaic, another late Roman-era find that was taken on a years-long world tour before returning in 2022 to a specially-built museum at its point of origin, the central Israeli city of Lod.

Looted tablets, fake scrolls

But the Lod Mosaic was displayed at the likes of the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which, while no strangers to controversy over their own collections, are at least considered bona fide scientific institutions.

Conversely, the Megiddo Mosaic is headed to a privately-funded museum backed by its founder Steve Green, head of the arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby. The Greens are major supporters of evangelical causes and Hobby Lobby successfully challenged Obamacare's mandate to cover some forms of birth control for its employees.

Green has also acquired a huge collection of antiquities through Hobby Lobby, and many of his artifacts have been displayed at the Museum of the Bible, which opened in 2017 near the National Mall in Washington explicitly "to invite all people to engage with the transformative power of the Bible."

Experts have frequently criticized Green for acquiring allegedly looted artifacts and in 2017 Hobby Lobby was slapped with a US$ 3 million fine and forced to return thousands of ancient clay tablets, including one displayed at the museum, that had been smuggled out of Iraq. The museum was also at the center of a storm for displaying a group of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments of dubious provenance, which were later revealed to be forgeries.

In that case, the museum cooperated with researchers that investigated the fragments, which Green had bought on the antiquities market, and said it was a victim of fraud. Green and the museum have since acknowledged "early missteps" and moved to tighten their acquisition policies.

But the Bible Museum remains the focus of criticism for allegedly using the story of the Bible to drive an evangelical religious and political ideology. While the museum claims it is a nonsectarian, nonpartisan educational institution some scholars have charged that it presents the biblical story uncritically, with a distinctly Protestant outlook, ignoring the views of other denominations and religions for whom the Good Book is holy.

The Megiddo Mosaic is not the first item the IAA has loaned to the museum, with which it has a longstanding alliance, or to other evangelical-backed organizations. Earlier this year, for example, it provided dozens of artifacts for an exhibition about David and Solomon in Edmond, Oklahoma, at Herbert W. Armstrong College, a private institution sponsored by the Philadelphia Church of God.

But the Megiddo Mosaic is arguably the most high profile loan to the Bible Museum, given the size, uniqueness and fragility of this artifact and especially the importance it holds for the history of Christianity and for all its denominations.

Coexisting at Armageddon

The large mosaic is not just an artistic marvel, with its geometric patterns and representations of fish, which are an early Christian symbol, says Dr. Yotam Tepper, the IAA archaeologist who led the team that discovered the ancient house of worship. The structure hails from a time before churches as we know them today were built – hence it is considered a prayer hall rather than a church.

The mosaic's inscriptions are also of great relevance, Tepper tells Haaretz. Besides the aforementioned and all-important recognition of Christ's divinity, they also memorialize the names of five women, highlighting the centrality of women in early Christianity, he says. Another inscription names the Roman officer who paid for the mosaic to be made, showing that Christianity was already making inroads in the empire's army.

In this case it would be amongst the soldiers stationed at Legio, the nearby encampment of the Sixth Legion – itself a unique archaeological site slated to be part of the future "Armageddon park."

While history records innumerable tales of war and slaughter that accompanied the Roman occupation of Judea, the prayer hall tells a rare story of coexistence. The structure was located in Kfar Othnay, an ancient Jewish and Samaritan village, which, apparently, peacefully hosted a budding Christian community connected to the nearby legionnaire's encampment, Tepper says.

In the late third century, the prayer hall was abandoned and the mosaic was carefully covered up, probably because the Sixth Legion was transferred to Transjordan, he adds.

For an evangelically-minded public however, the mosaic's significance is also linked to its proximity to Megiddo and the area's connection to end of times prophecies. Evangelical churches generally stress the apocalyptic side of Christianity, pushing the idea that we are living in the end times, and that believers must work to hasten the final battle of Armageddon, which is to be followed by Jesus' Second Coming.

Many evangelicals believe that supporting Israel is crucial to achieving Jesus' return, and some also think that at that time, Jews will finally have to accept Christ as the messiah or be damned for eternity.

The Museum of the Bible did not respond as of press time to a request for comment on how they plan to display the mosaic and tell its story to visitors.

Archaeologists go 'meh'

When reports that the IAA was considering loaning the mosaic to the Bible Museum first emerged last summer, some scholars were horrified.

The museum acts as a "right-wing Christian nationalist Bible machine," Cavan Concannon, a religion professor at the University of Southern California, told the AP at the time. "My worry is that this mosaic will lose its actual historical context and be given an ideological context that continues to help the museum tell its story."

Now that the deal is done, Israeli archaeologists interviewed by Haaretz were lukewarm about it, but did not condemn it outright.

"While some of the founders and actions of the museum are questionable, and the museum clearly has a very ideological agenda, I don't think a 'purist' agenda is very helpful here," says Prof. Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. "As long as everything is done by the letter of the law, I see no problem."

The main concern for Israeli scholars appears to be ensuring the mosaic returns eventually and facing recent threats to the archaeological sites in the Megiddo area brought by development plans, particularly road expansion works that are slated to destroy part of Legio, the unique Roman army camp found there.

"The mosaic is one component in a set of unique archaeological heritage sites," says Tel Aviv University's Prof. Israel Finkelstein, who heads the excavation of the ancient mound of Megiddo. "Eventually, the mosaic must be restored to its original place or very close by, to give the visitors the ultimate experience of this special area. No less important, the Megiddo landscape must be protected from trends of over-development."

The tour abroad could help draw attention back home for these endangered sites and for the archaeological park, plans for which remain hazy at the moment.

"If the mosaic will complete its tour and will return to a museum in the Megiddo tourist center after the prison is moved, in its site original site and archaeological context, then we will be able to count our blessings," Tepper says. "The question is whether this will happen and when."