John the Baptist’s Cave Found?

British archaeologist Shimon Gibson is claiming to have discovered a cave used by John the Baptist. It's located near the village of Ain Karim, John the Baptist's birthplace according to traditions.

IOL reports:

Gibson said a figure holding a staff reminiscent of representations of John the Baptist in early Byzantine art was among images incised into the rock during the fourth and fifth centuries, by which time the cave had become a shrine to the Baptist. "I am now certain that this cave was connected with the ancient cult of John the Baptist. Indeed, this may very well be the cave of the early years of John's life, the place where he sought his first solitude in the wilderness and the place where he practised his baptisms," Gibson told The Times.

Not all news reports seem to be including one little detail: Gibson isn’t the only archaeologist to work on this and others disagree with Gibson’s conclusions:

"Unfortunately, we didn't find any inscriptions," said James Tabor, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Tabor and his students have participated in the excavations. Both Tabor and Gibson said it was very likely that the wall carvings, including one showing a man with a staff and wearing animal skin, told the story of John the Baptist. The carvings stem from the Byzantine period and apparently were made by monks in the fourth or fifth century.

The evidence that this place would have been used by any specific person is equivocal at best. It certainly doesn’t point to the truth of anything contained in the New Testament — but unscholarly comments like those form Gibson will fuel speculation and exultation on the part of religious believers who are even worse when it comes to basic reasoning. Unscholarly? Yes: one of the things which differentiates good from poor biblical scholarship is that the good ones make very cautious, very tentative claims in the knowledge that the evidence and arguments are always equivocal. The poor scholars make sweeping, dramatic claims from the flimsiest data — but they are always believed by someone for whom the claims seem to verify some treasured belief.

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