What is the full text and scholarly history of the Nazareth Inscription and competing translations?
Executive summary
The Nazareth Inscription is a Roman-period marble slab bearing a Greek imperial rescript that warns capital punishment for anyone who disturbs tombs or moves sepulchral stones; it entered scholarship after publication in 1930 and has since been argued to date to the early first century AD and to have possible, though contested, links to the Christian story of Jesus’ empty tomb [1] [2] [3]. Debates center on the exact wording and translation, the inscription’s provenance and date, and whether recent isotopic analysis tying its marble to the island of Kos severs the connection to Galilee and a response to the resurrection narratives [1] [4] [2].
1. The object, the publication history, and what the stone actually says in summary
The tablet—catalogued after Franz Cumont publicized it in 1930—was reported as sent from Nazareth in 1878, entered the Froehner collection, and resurfaced in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris where scholars first read and translated its text [2] [3] [5]. Modern accounts summarize the inscription as beginning “Edict of Caesar” and then forbidding the disturbance, removal, or moving of tombstones and bodies, stating that offenders shall be put to death and that tombs should remain “forever unmolested,” but the exact line count and minor textual variants differ between treatments (sources describe the text as 14 lines in some summaries and 22 lines in others) [2] [1]. The primary limitation of available reporting is that the full original Greek line-by-line text is not provided in the supplied sources, so a verbatim reproduction cannot be supplied here from these reports [2] [1].
2. Scholarly dating and paleography: first century or wider range?
Epigraphers who examined the letter forms early on placed the inscription roughly at the turn of the era or in the first century BC–AD span; Francis de Zulueta argued for about 50 BC to AD 50 on paleographic grounds and many scholars narrow it to the first half of the first century AD [2]. That dating underpins interpretations linking the decree to the Roman emperors active during early Christianity (Augustus, Tiberius, or Claudius) and explains why some read it as an Imperial rescript rather than a later medieval or modern fake; the inscription’s style has not been widely regarded as a forgery in the scholarly literature summarized here [6] [7].
3. Competing readings and translations: law, tomb-robbery, or targeted rescript?
One broad translation family treats the piece as a general imperial edict criminalizing grave tampering and elevating such crimes to capital offenses—language that is unusual in Roman law and therefore attracts interest [8] [1]. Christian apologists and some commentators read that wording as a targeted response to reports of an “empty tomb” in Judea—most commonly assigning the rescript to Claudius and suggesting Rome reacted to alleged body theft or public disorder [3] [9]. Conversely, other scholars caution that the text is a standard anti-robbery rescript or a local response to non-Christian incidents of tomb desecration and emphasize that the inscription itself contains no reference to Jesus or Judea-specific names [2] [1].
4. Provenance controversy and the Kos isotope study that shifted the debate
A decisive recent turn came when isotopic analysis of marble from the tablet matched quarries on the Greek island of Kos, suggesting the stone material came from the Aegean rather than local Galilean marble, which weakens the Nazareth-origin hypothesis and makes alternative contexts—such as a Roman rescript issued after vandalism of the tomb of a Kos tyrant—more plausible [1] [4] [2]. Investigators note that Froehner’s terse inventory entry “sent from Nazareth” cannot be verified and that antiquities-dealer provenance practices of the 19th century could have misled early cataloguers, factors that complicate claims tying the text to Jesus’ tomb [2] [4].
5. Current consensus, open questions, and why competing translations persist
Most scholars accept the inscription as authentic and first-century in style but disagree on its precise origin, imperial authorship, and historical referent; the competing translations persist because the Greek rescript is concise, its provenance is uncertain, and interdisciplinary tests (epigraphy, isotopes, historical parallels) point in different directions—so the inscription functions as a suggestive piece of evidence rather than a smoking gun for any single historical narrative [6] [2] [4]. The strongest recent challenge to the “response-to-Jesus” reading is the Kos marble match, but the inscription’s language and early publication history keep alternative readings—rescript of Claudius, general anti-robbery law, or local reaction on Kos—alive in scholarship [1] [3] [4].