About 150 feet long, the musty tunnel is so narrow they had to crawl at some points to get through. But the ancient passage 20 feet below the city of Jerusalem was where Brent Nagtegaal and other students from a college in Edmond wanted to be.

“It was quite amazing … the chance of finding something amazing inside a tunnel that no one has been in for two and a half thousand years,” Nagtegaal said.

Nagtegaal, 23, a senior from Australia, is one of several students at Herbert W. Armstrong College who have spent months helping excavate a site that Eilat Mazar, a prominent Israeli archeologist spearheading the dig, believes is a remnant of the long-sought palace of David.

Above: Jerry Cocomise, left, and Brent Nagtegaal, students at Herbert W. Armstrong College in Edmond, work in Jerusalem at the site of what one archeologist believes was the Temple of David. PHOTO PROVIDED

The work is important for Christians because it lends more weight to accounts in the Bible, said Stephen Flurry, president of the college situated on 170 acres in north Edmond. The campus also serves as the headquarters of the Philadelphia Church of God, which runs the college. The church broke away from the Worldwide Church of God, founded in 1989 by Armstrong.

The tunnel at the Jerusalem dig site runs beneath a massive wall 15 feet wide, part of what Mazar theorizes is the palace, Flurry said. “Her theory is that David’s palace was built sort of along the narrow ridge of what used to be the City of David.”

If it is David’s temple, the site could prove that the Israelites were more than “just a small tribal group of nomads,” Flurry said, and that David “did establish a kingdom there and it was much more substantial than some of the biblical minimalists maintain.” That would show that the Jewish people were in Jerusalem thousands of years ago, adding more weight to their modern claims to the land, he said.

“You can’t help but sympathize with the Jewish plight today,” he said. “It’s becoming more popular for their enemies to discredit their history.”

Mazar received funding for the dig from a donor in New York, then the Philadelphia Church came in on the second phase of the excavation.

Nagtegaal said he was at the site when excavators discovered the tunnel. “All this hot air just rose as soon as the entrance opened,” he said. “It smelled like a hot type of water vapor.” He and other students also were involved over a period of several years in other key finds. While sifting through soil from under the wall, crews found about 50 small clay “bullae,” or seals believed to be used by people to authenticate business transactions and other communications.

On some of the seals names written in Hebrew can be seen, two of which match those mentioned in the Bible: “Gedaliah the son of Pashur,” and “Jucal the son of Shelemiah.”

Nagtegaal hopes to return to the site to continue helping with the excavation.

“We’re hoping that the tunnel’s location is very significant and therefore it will lead to something extremely significant,” he said. “It’s quite an exciting job.”