A block marble was found inscribed in Latin, demanding that the tombs and graves remain forever undisturbed. A new law from the emperor in Nazareth that no one was permitted to remove a buried body. If anyone removes a corpse from the grave, they would be charged with tomb robbery, a capital offense. It’s known as the Nazareth Inscription. Since its discovery, no scholar has produced evidence to disprove its authenticity.
No one disputed the empty tomb, but how would the Jews explain it?
The lie. After Jesus’ resurrection, when the Jewish elders had taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. (Matthew 28)
We know that Nazareth is famous for only one thing, Jesus and the resurrection. The dating of the tablet is around the reign of Claudius who ruled during that time. Could it suggest that a Roman emperor was aware, of unsettling claims about a crucified man rising from the dead in a remote province of his empire? If so, the inscription might stand as the oldest physical trace of early Christianity.
Swoon theory. Perhaps Jesus didn’t really die but fainted. This would require that several people be guilty of the most unimaginable incompetence. It would require us to believe that the Roman military guard not only failed in their orders to execute Jesus but then also failed to determine if he was in fact dead. If the person on the cross lingered, they would simply take a rod and break their legs to prevent them from pushing themselves up on the beam in order to keep their lungs from functioning. And if after this they were still uncertain, they would pierce the side of the victim with a spear, which they did in Jesus’s case. We are told that “blood and water” flowed out from Jesus’ side when he was pierced (John 19:34), an indisputable sign of death, as the red and white blood corpuscles had separated.
So we are to believe that after enduring the cross, trials all through the night, a savage beating ordered by the Sanhedrin, a crown of thorns pushed into his head, and being beaten by Roman scourging a whip with several three-foot strands weighted with lead balls and pieces of bone. Designed to lacerate, the weighed thongs struck the skin so violently that it broke open. The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea recounts with vivid, horrible detail a scene of scourging. He says, “For they say that the bystanders were struck with amazement when they saw them lacerated with scourges even to the innermost veins and arteries, so that the hidden inward parts of the body, both their bowels and their members, were exposed to view” (Ecclesiastical History, Book 4, chap. 15). In addition, a spear in his side, massive loss of blood, three days in the tomb without medical attention, that Jesus then removed the heavy stone (about the weight of a car) from in front of the tomb, overpowered the armed guards stationed there, somehow convinced his disciples that he had conquered death and the grave, and then lived out his life in anonymity only to die of natural causes later. I don’t think so.
Mass hallucination. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to over 500 people. It’s one thing for one individual to hallucinate, but for Jesus to appear to over 500 people at the same time and experience the identical hallucination is virtually impossible. (1 Corinthians 15:6)
People will continue to invent alternate narratives for Jesus’ resurrection, only so they don’t have to believe it’s true. Some need evidence for the resurrection. For Christians, this tablet is simply a confirmation of what we already know is true. Christians believe by faith.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. Hebrews 11:1.
What is keeping you from believing the truth?