If the purpose of science is to raise questions, then Nova's presentation of "Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land," airing Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), certainly raises some interesting questions about the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans shortly after the time of Jesus. It doesn't answer them, but that is the beauty of the piece.

The hour-long documentary is actually about two archaeological expeditions to what is now called The Cave of Letters. The first, in 1960, led by Yigael Yadin, uncovered a cache of documents, among them letters from Jewish partriot Shimon Bar Kokhba, who led a revolt against the Romans in the year 132, Christian Era. Yadin also discovered hidden bronze ritual items, some with pagan designs on them, which led Yadin to believe they'd been stolen from the Romans and hidden in the cave where the revolutionaries were hiding.

This first expedition is the background to the main expedition of the documentary led by Jewish historian Richard Freund, who uses even more modern technology to re-visit Yadin's work. Freund also comes up with a controversial theory based on a cryptic reference from one of the artifacts that was uncovered with the famed find of the Dead Sea Scrolls: that the ritual items that Yadin uncovered are actually the last surviving artifacts from the second Jewish Temple.

This bit of Jewish history touches on our Catholic history. The documentary notes that this Temple was the one Jesus knew. The Scripture reading from Nov. 14 (Luke 21: 5-19), in which Jesus predicts that the Temple will be destroyed, is often used by Scripture scholars to date when St. Luke's Gospel was written. The Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. by the Romans, a fact most of the early readers of that Gospel would have known, but it's a part of history that we Christians don't know as well.

Also, understanding these two revolts by Jewish zealots and the ferocity and brutality with which the Romans put them down does help us understand why the religious leadership of Jesus' day were so intent on stamping out any kind of radicalism, including Jesus. The Pharisees had good reason to be scared of Jesus, at least from their perspective.

But the documentary is also fun because Freund can't conclusively prove his theories and, in fact, notes that finding the answer to his questions is probably part of something bigger than he is. The film also looks at the scientific process. Freund talks about how he came up with a way to search under a pile of rubble while undergoing a medical procedure.

The downside of the documentary is that it is disjointed and touches on a lot of material but doesn't really go in depth on any of it. For example, it touches briefly on how archaeological theories are affected by politics and religion, but just when the debate gets interesting, the film backs off. Because it is short (only an hour), younger viewers should be able to take it in and enjoy it. And, who knows, it may wake up an interest in archaeology.

Anne Louise Bannon of Altadena writes on media from a Catholic perspective.