Tomb References John the Baptist's Father

By KARIN LAUB
.c The Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) - The discovery was a stroke of luck: the light of the setting sun hit an ancient tomb at just the right angle and revealed hints of a worn inscription, unnoticed for centuries, commemorating the father of John the Baptist.

``This is the tomb of Zachariah, martyr, very pious priest, father of John,'' the inscription of 47 Greek letters reads.

The inscription probably does not mean that the father of the biblical figure is actually buried in the 60-foot-high funerary monument at the foot of the Mount of Olives, say the text's discoverers. But it does give new insight into the local lore surrounding the early figures of the Christian Church.

Scholars say the words were probably written several hundred years after Zachariah's death - and after the tomb's construction - by Byzantine Christians.

The Byzantines scoured the Holy Land in the 4th and 5th centuries and, drawing on local tradition, marked sites they felt were linked to the characters they knew from the Bible. Leading the charge was Helena, the newly converted mother of Emperor Constantine, who selected the site now marked by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, said to be the site where Jesus was crucified and buried.

But even such second hand references are important, scholars say, because they confirm the traditions among early Christians and because there are so few artifacts directly relating to biblical narrative.

``We actually have contact with ancient history through Byzantine Christians,'' said Jim Strange, a New Testament scholar at the University of South Florida.

The text was discovered by physical anthropologist Joe Zias and inscriptions expert Emile Puech. Zias, an Israeli originally from Ypsilanti, Mich., and the French-born Puech are publishing their findings on the Zachariah inscription in the upcoming July issue of the Revue Biblique, a French quarterly.

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