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Excavations and geoarchaeology identify Patara as Lycia's major harbor and federal capital, matching the port where Acts says Paul changed ships for the voyage to Phoenicia. The site anchors the route but does not preserve the apostle's vessel, ticket, or exact transfer point.
Papyrus P33 is a sixth-century Greek papyrus witness to Acts 7:6–10, 13–18 and 15:21–24, 26–32. Four Vienna fragments once divided between P33 and P58 are now catalogued as one manuscript, making this record both evidence for Acts' transmission and a case study in correcting legacy manuscript identities.
Codex Glazier is a remarkably intact late-fourth- or fifth-century parchment book of Acts 1:1–15:3 in Middle Egyptian Coptic, retaining early binding structures and a full-page cross image.
Gregory-Aland P41 is an eighth-century bilingual papyrus codex in Vienna whose eleven fragments preserve Greek and Sahidic Coptic portions of Acts 17–22.
Papyrus Bodmer XVII, Gregory-Aland P74, is a seventh-century Greek papyrus codex preserving almost all of Acts and important fragments of James, Peter, John, and Jude.
One Greek parchment leaf containing Acts 5:3-21, held by the Berlin State Museums. A very early direct witness to Acts 5 and to the physical transition from papyrus to parchment codices in Christian book production.
Two surviving Greek inscriptions preserve the Temple boundary warning that foreigners must not pass the balustrade around the sanctuary. They make the accusation against Paul in Acts 21 concrete, while leaving Roman enforcement and any link to Ephesians 2 open to interpretation.
The planned ancient city, acropolis, monuments, and harbor geography of Rhodes anchor the island stop named between Kos and Patara in Acts 21.
The Hammat Gader synagogue yielded mosaic inscriptions honoring donors and community leaders within a formal worship building near the famous thermal complex. The texts preserve names, offices, gifts, and communal memory. The dossier connects the excavated evidence to Luke 4:15-17 and Acts 15:21 while keeping the historical claim narrower than the biblical narrative.
The excavated agora and harbor quarter of Kos establish the prosperous island city named as the first stop after Paul’s departure from Miletus in Acts 21.
Excavations at Nabratein identified successive synagogue buildings and associated village remains. Architectural fragments include a Torah-shrine façade and a dated Aramaic lintel, offering both built and written evidence for the community’s long history. The dossier connects the excavated evidence to Luke 4:16-17 and Acts 15:21 while keeping the historical claim narrower than the biblical narrative.
A monumental basalt synagogue at Umm el-Qanatir preserves decorated architectural blocks and an elaborate Torah-shrine arrangement. The rural building demonstrates substantial communal investment in worship and Scripture in the Byzantine Golan. The dossier connects the excavated evidence to Luke 4:15-17 and Acts 15:21 while keeping the historical claim narrower than the biblical narrative.
A first-century Jerusalem tomb produced a bilingual ossuary naming Alexander and Simon with a debated Cyrenian designation, an intriguing parallel to Mark 15:21 that documents a Diaspora family but cannot establish identity with Simon of Cyrene's son.
Excavation on land and underwater reveals the harbor, promontory palace, theater, entertainment district, streets, and water systems that made Caesarea the Roman administrative and maritime center repeatedly used as a setting in Acts.
Excavation of the harbor city, fortifications, streets, cemeteries, and waterfront of Akko-Ptolemais establishes the port where Acts says Paul greeted believers for one day.
Legal, administrative, diplomatic, and economic tablets from Bronze Age Alalakh preserve contracts, treaties, court cases, censuses, and royal seals. They offer a securely excavated comparison for the treaty, household, labor, and fugitive institutions encountered in the Pentateuch.
An ancient Jerusalem-style ossuary carries the consequential Aramaic line “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus,” but absent provenance and conflicting epigraphic and scientific assessments leave the antiquity of the complete inscription—and its New Testament identity—unresolved.
Rock-cut, plastered, stepped pools cluster around Jerusalem’s Temple approaches, documenting widespread concern for immersion and purity while also warning that form alone does not prove every pool’s users or exclusive function.
Hierapolis's eastern hill preserves an octagonal martyrium, processional route, basilical church focused on an earlier tomb, and a dense Christian cemetery, demonstrating Byzantine veneration of Philip while leaving the tomb occupant's apostolic identity unproved.
Three Greek inscriptions from Berenice in Cyrenaica record a Jewish politeuma, archons, civic honors, and named donors who financed synagogue repairs under Nero, providing direct first-century evidence for an organized North African diaspora community.
A Greek building inscription from late Second Temple-period Jerusalem names Theodotus, a priest and synagogue leader, and says his complex served Torah reading, instruction, lodging, and water needs for visitors from abroad.