Pray Your Way · Stones

Stones

One claim at a time: the scripture it touches, the evidence on record, and the sources named so any of it can be checked. Every entry states plainly what the find shows — and what it does not prove.

This week’s stone

Historical Record

Josephus Names Jesus Twice

The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the 90s AD, twice mentions Jesus: once in Antiquities 20.9.1 as "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James," and once in Antiquities 18.3.3 in a longer passage that most scholars regard as containing later Christian additions.

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Archaeology

The Empire the Critics Said Never ExistedNineteenth-century critics counted the Bible's dozens of Hittite references against it — no trace of such a people was then known. Excavations at Boghazkoy from 1906 uncovered the capital and royal archives of a Hittite empire that treated with Egypt as an equal.Erastus, Who Laid the PavementA first-century pavement inscription at Corinth names Erastus, a city official, as the one who laid it at his own expense — the same uncommon name and city as the Erastus Paul greets in his letter to Rome.Pilate, in StoneA dedication stone discovered at Caesarea in 1961 bears the name and title of Pontius Pilatus as prefect of Judea, the man named in the Gospels at the trial of Jesus.The House of David, Carved by an EnemyAn Aramean victory stele found at Tel Dan in 1993 names the 'House of David' — the first reference to David's dynasty found outside the Bible, written by a king boasting against Israel, not for it.The Siloam Inscription — Hezekiah's Tunnel SpeaksAn inscription carved into the wall of Hezekiah's water tunnel records the moment the two digging crews met as they tunneled toward each other from opposite ends.

Manuscripts

A Complete Isaiah, a Thousand Years EarlyThe Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, copied around 125 BC, contains the whole book of Isaiah — roughly a thousand years older than the oldest complete Hebrew copy previously known, and the text is substantially the same.

Historical Record

Cyrus's Policy, in ClayThe Cyrus Cylinder records the Persian king's policy of sending captive peoples home and restoring their sanctuaries—the same policy Ezra 1 describes when Cyrus sends the Jewish exiles home to rebuild the Jerusalem temple.The Bird in a Cage — and the City That Did Not FallSennacherib's own prism records that he confined Hezekiah to Jerusalem 'like a bird in a cage,' yet never claims to have captured the city, and this omission corroborates the biblical account that Jerusalem alone resisted his campaign.The Governor Who Asked What to Do With ChristiansAround AD 112, the Roman governor Pliny wrote to Emperor Trajan describing Christians in Bithynia who met before dawn and sang "to Christ as to a god"—pagan eyewitness testimony to early Christian worship in the province 1 Peter addresses.