Archaeology and the Resurrection of Christ

Wayne Jackson wrote this piece which appeared in the August, 1976 edition of The Christian Courier. It was published by the East Main Street Church of Christ in Stockton, California and was edited by Jackson.

The resurrection of Christ is the foundation stone of Christianity. If that event did not occur, then both our preaching and faith are in vain (I Corinthians 15:14). If any fact of antiquity is provable, surely the resurrection of Jesus is. The great classical scholar Thomas Arnold, who served as professor of Modern History at Oxford in the past century, once called the Lord's resurrection the, "best-attested fact in human history." There is a good possibility that archaeology has further strengthened the already unassailable case for the resurrection event.

In 1930, historian Michel Rostovtzeff discovered the "Nazareth Decree." This stone slab, containing some twenty lines of Greek, was set up in the city of Nazareth by Claudius Caesar, in all probability sometime shortly before 50 A.D. The inscription states that it is the pleasure of Caesar, "that the graves and tombs remain undisturbed" and that anyone apprehended transferring corpses to other places or displacing "the sealing or other stones" is to be put on trial. If found guilty, the person is to be executed. How does this relate to the Lord's resurrection?

Archaeologist E. M. Blaiklock pieces it together this way. The early Christians must have been preaching in Rome by the early forties of the first century. Naturally, the resurrection would be central to their message. Jewish enemies of Christianity would counter with the story that Christ's disciples stole the body (Matthew 28:13). Possibly irritated by this controversy, Claudius, "commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome" (Acts 18:2). After further investigation of the matter, during which he learned that Christ (called "Chrestos" by the Roman historian Suetonius) was a native of Nazareth (Matthew 2:23) it is likely that the emperor authorized a decree to be erected (for emphasis in Jesus' hometown) making body stealing a capital crime and thus hoping to prevent other religions from arising upon the basis of such stories. If this line of reasoning is correct, and it is highly probable, we have here the first secular testimony to the resurrection of Christ.