Extrabiblical Evidences of Biblical Persons, Places, or Events: The Pilate Inscription

The only known ancient inscription which mentions the Roman governor Pontius Pilatus was found in June 1961 in Caesarea-on-the-Sea (Caesarea Maritima) by Dr. Antonio Frova in the ruins of the Fourth Century Roman amphitheater at the site. 

The original flat stone was part of a dedicatory plaque for a temple dating from 26 to 36 AD. In the Fourth Century, the stone was used as one building block for a set of stairs in a theater.  The original inscription is now housed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. 

This phenomenon is seen repeatedly in the Middle East. Many ancient stones were pulled from ruins of ancient towns and cities and re-used as building blocks for later buildings.

The inscription reads as:

 Line One:  TIBERIEUM,,

 Line Two:  (PON) TIUS

 Line Three:  (PRAEF) ECTUS IUDA (EAE)

The original article cited is here.

Bible Printer's Errors: The Pilate's Tile Bible

These Bible Printers Errors are all in the English language.  They are from printed editions of the King James Version of the Bible created during the time when the printed text had to be hand set using individual letter keys. There are probably just as many variant printed texts in other languages created during the same time period.  Proofreading is very important.  Sometimes one word, or even one letter, changes the entire meaning of a passage.  The following is an example to prove the point.

WHAT IT SHOULD HAVE SAID:  

“And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.”

WHAT IT SAID:

“And Pilate wrote a tile, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS."

This is from the 1612 “Pilate’s tile” Bible. The text is from John 19:19.

Jesus Spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek

The New Testament is written in Greek, the common language of the Roman Empire at the time.  It was the Greek language which helped spread the gospel across the then known world. Some, myself included, believe that God arranged events so that at the arrival of Jesus there was one essentially global empire with one universally understood language. Communications across the Empire were much faster across great distances than we today would imagine.

The languages of the subjugated peoples were still in use and the Jews spoke Aramaic among themselves. The sacred language in use in their synagogues was Hebrew and they considered it to be a great honor to speak and read before the congregation.  Jesus would have been conversant in both languages and he also read before the congregation. The Samaritan Woman at the Well would have been speaking Hebrew. (Luke 2: 39-52; John 4:4-26: Luke 4:16-21)  Some of Jesus' sayings  in the New Testament are presented in untranslated Aramaic. ("Talitha cumi" and "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!")

Many Jews probably spoke only Aramaic and Hebrew, but to function in the Roman environment it was very helpful to also speak and understand Greek. Jesus was able to talk to Pilate (John 18: 28-38) and the Roman soldiers  (Matthew 8: 5-13 ), answering them in Greek It is unlikely that Pilate or the centurions understood a single word of Aramaic.

Messianic Prophecies from the Bible: He Will Be Buried With a Rich Man

“And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.” Isaiah 53:9

“When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple:  He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.  And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,   And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” Matthew 27:57-60.

The Acrostic in the Sign on Jesus' Cross

"And Pilate wrote a title, and put [it] on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, [and] Greek, [and] Latin. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written." John 19:19-22

Acrostics in the Bible are not the same thing as the Bible Codes which some believe that God has embedded into the Tanakh (Old Testament) and especially in the Talmud, the first five books. The Bible Codes are considered to be predictive of future events which would have been unknowable to the writers of the original texts. The Bible Codes would be, by their very nature, supernatural.

An acrostic is a poetic form in which the first, and sometimes the last, letters of a line in the poem form a word, a name, and sometimes a sentence. They are an intentional poetic form and occur in many places in the Old Testament. In "The Epitaph on the Cross of Yeshua," Chuck Missler suggests that the Hebrew line on the sign which Pilate wrote contained the acrostic YHWH, the Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, The Name of God. This would be an otherwise unknown ocurrance of the Hebrew poetic practice in the New Testament. http://xwalk.ca/yhwh.html

Pilate obviously meant to insult the Jewish leaders by what he wrote. Thinking that he understood the complexities of Hebrew poetry might be a stretch.

In "Acrostic Code Failure," Joel Stienke shows how the supposed acrostic in the sign could not be correct because it violates common Hebrew practice in the use of the letter "waw." The article is a highly technical explanation of Hebrew grammatical usage which shows that the words could not have spelled out YHWH, but instead probably YHHH or, more likely YHMH. There was probably no acrostic involved. http://xwalk.ca/acrostic.html

Joel Steinke holds a Masters of Divinity degree from Concordia Seminary and is a conservative Lutheran.