New York, Feb 29 (IANS/EFE): A group of archaeologists and experts on religious subjects presented in New York the results of a research project they say enabled them to obtain the first archaeological evidence of Christianity from a time before the Gospels were written.

"Up to now it seemed to me impossible that there were tombs from that time with credible testimony about Jesus's resurrection or images of the prophet Jonas, but the evidence is clear," James D. Tabor, professor and chair of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told EFE Tuesday.

The tomb under study was discovered in 1981 during the construction of an apartment building in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of East Talpiot, near the Old City.

Tabor, together with Rami Arav, professor of archaeology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, obtained permission from the Israel Antiquities Authority to excavate the site 2009-10, and the fruit of the project was the evidence presented Tuesday in New York.

On one of the ossuaries, which the experts date to around 60 AD, is the image of a large fish with a human figure in its mouth that they interpret as a representation of the biblical story of Jonah and the whale.

The research, aided by high-tech cameras, also allowed them to discover a Greek inscription which, in their opinion, makes a reference to the resurrection of Jesus, Tabor said, adding that the evidence was left "by the first followers" of Jesus.

"Our team was in a kind of ecstatic disbelief, but the evidence was clearly before our eyes, causing us to revise our prior assumptions," Tabor said.