This New York Times story about some archaeological discoveries in East Jerusalem is interesting for a few reasons: A political agenda masquerading as a religious agenda masquerading as science being funded by a private benefactor, the weirdly literal and fetishistic way that all the believers of the main monotheistic religions insist on physical evidence for their texts, the complete disregard of the scientific value of the discoveries in light of their (current) political context. It’s like these people have so little faith that they’re willing to put their money into producing evidence to justify their beliefs. If you don’t want to just believe, why be religious at all?

But the reason I’d link to it is the last line of the story. One great piece of evidence that the New York Times is still the best newspaper in existence is Steven Erlanger’s last sentence, and the way it sums up the article’s unstated subtext so elegantly.