70 years ago — December 17, 1945
Christmas leads us to the cross – to the sepulcher. In 1945, a tomb from the first century was found in Jerusalem. It was a tomb like others, yet not like others.
“It is a regular square chamber, hewn in soft limestone rock with apertures cut longwise into the wall to receive individual burials and closed with large stones. There were eleven apertures in all, each containing an ossuary of soft stone, on which the bones of the deceased were deposited after the decomposition of the bodies. A number of these ossuaries were inscribed in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, with the names of the deceased. …[What] distinguished this from other tombs … was that one of the ossuaries bore on each of its four sides a cross drawn in charcoal, so it seems that the family was a Christian one … we have the earliest Christian tomb which has come to light in modern times.”
Inscribed in Greek on one side of the ossuary was a common Jewish name, Jesus.
From the article “Facts and fiction about a tomb near Jerusalem”
