Надпись из Назарета: греческий указ о защите гробниц I века н.э.

Marble tablet inscribed in Greek

The Nazareth Inscription or Nazareth decree is a marble tablet inscribed in Greek with an edict from an unnamed Caesar ordering capital punishment for anyone caught disturbing graves or tombs. It is dated on the basis of epigraphy to the first half of the 1st century AD. Its provenance is unknown, but a French collector acquired the stone from Nazareth. It is now in the collections of the Louvre. The text is read by scholars in the context of Roman law pertaining to exhumation and reburial, mentioned also by Pliny. The inscription is of interest to some authors for its indirect relationship to the historicity of Jesus, even though the text contains no reference to Jesus of Nazareth. A 2020 study of the marble's isotopes showed that the tablet came from a quarry in the Greek island of Kos, casting much doubt on the theory that it has any relationship to Jesus, and it may instead have been inscribed as a reaction to the desecration of the grave of the Kos tyrant Nikias circa 20 BCE.

Violatio sepulchri ('tomb violation') was a crime under Roman law, as noted by Cicero (d. 43 BC). The Nazareth Inscription prescribes the death penalty for the offense. A tomb at which funeral rites had been duly performed became a locus religiosus, belonging to the divine rather than to the human realm. As the text uses the plural form "gods", Zulueta concluded it most likely came from the Hellenized district of the Decapolis. Like Zulueta, J. Spencer Kennard, Jr. noted that the reference to "Caesar" indicated that "the inscription must have been derived from somewhere in Samaria or Decapolis; Galilee was ruled by a client prince until the reign of Claudius". Some authors, citing the inscription's supposed Galilean origin, interpreted it as Imperial Rome's clear reaction to the empty tomb of Jesus If the inscription was originally set up in Galilee, it can date no earlier than 44, the year Roman rule was imposed there. The scientists took a sample from the back of the tablet, and used laser ablation to help determine the isotope ratio of the stone. There is no mention at all made in the Nazareth Inscription of abusing a corpse but only of moving corpses to other locations with wicked intent. It also mentions multiple bodies being taken from tombs, not just one. Kyle Harper, one of the authors of the 2020 study, said that the theory that the Nazareth Inscription was written by Augustus because of the abuse of Nikias' corpse, “has not yet been proven”. Israel has no marble, so any marble would necessarily have to come from elsewhere — most likely from a location on the route from Rome to Judaea —, and the poor Greek makes it unlikely that the inscription was made in a Greek speaking area.