FRIENDS OF 17³Ô¹ÏWEBINARS
Unearthing an Imperially Glorious Byzantine Church near Bet Shemesh: From Fieldwork to Virtual Reality
Friends of 17³Ô¹Ïpresent the next webinar of the 2025-2026 season on February 4, 2026, at 12:30 pm EST, presented by Benyamin Storchan. This webinar will be free and open to the public. Registration through Zoom (with a valid email address) is required. This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will be sent a recording link in the days following the webinar.
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In the heart of the Holy Land, just 15 miles southwest of Jerusalem, lies one of the most remarkable Byzantine churches discovered in recent decades. The archaeological excavations at the Church of the Glorious Martyr unearthed a fascinating five-century story of faith and pilgrimage, yet the greatest mystery remains unsolved: who was the Glorious Martyr venerated in the sacred crypt? This lecture chronicles the remarkable transformation of a simple burial cave that evolved during the Byzantine period into a magnificent pilgrimage site funded by the emperor himself. Based on ancient pilgrim accounts, the site may be connected with a shrine dedicated to the biblical prophet Zechariah that appears on the famous sixth-century Madaba Map. The excavations demonstrate that the church survived political upheavals, earthquakes, and religious transitions, continuing to function even under early Islamic rule. Though the site was abandoned in the tenth century, its archaeological legacy continues to illuminate our understanding of Byzantine pilgrimage, religious architecture, and the complex relationship between Christianity and Islam in the Holy Land. Through 3D modelling and reconstruction, we can now experience the church as ancient pilgrims once did, complete with marble panels, bronze gates, and flickering oil lamps in the sacred crypt below.
Benyamin Storchan is a research excavation archaeologist for the Jerusalem Region of the Israel Antiquities Authority. He is currently a PhD candidate at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, writing a dissertation on Byzantine churches in the Holy Land during the transition to the early Islamic Period. Storchan has directed several large-scale excavations, including the Glorious Martyr excavations, the Pre- and Proto-historic settlements at Eshtaol, and landscape archaeology projects near Bet Shemesh. He has published multiple articles on Byzantine churches in the Holy Land, oil lamp production in the Roman period, and numerous final excavation reports.