37. Jesus of Nazareth – Multiple Roman Historical Sources
Archaeological findings give strong context for Jesus’s life in first-century Judea. The Pilate Stone, found in 1961 at Caesarea Maritima, confirms that Pontius Pilate really ruled as Roman prefect of Judea, the same man who, according to the Gospels, ordered Jesus’s execution. A limestone block called the Magdala Stone, discovered in 2009 near the Sea of Galilee, shows carved Jewish symbols from a synagogue where Jesus might have taught. In Jerusalem, archaeologists uncovered the Pool of Siloam mentioned in John’s Gospel, while in Nazareth, they found houses from the exact time Jesus lived there. Physical proof of Roman crucifixion practices came from a shocking discovery in Jerusalem: a man’s heel bone with a nail still driven through it from around Jesus’s time. The famous James Ossuary bears an inscription mentioning “Jesus’s brother.” Finally, in a letter to Emperor Trajan, Roman governor Pliny the Younger wrote about early Christians singing “hymns to Christ as to a god.”
