As Easter weekend begins and this time of being housebound continues, I find myself thinking beyond the confines of my home. I find myself thinking wistfully of some of the places around the world I’ve had the privilege to visit, and some of the Easter-related objects I’ve found there. Here are a couple of objects I discovered in my round-the-world Epic journey that help tell the story of Easter. Pilate Stone Any study of Christian history will show that time and again skeptics have insisted that certain elements of the Bible cannot be true because they have not been corroborated by the historical record. This was exactly the case with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who plays a particularly important and tragic role on Good Friday. For many years skeptics insisted that he was a fabrication of the early Christians, and they backed their claim by showing that no one had found archaeological evidence of his existence. “If he really existed, why haven’t we found any original references to him?” This all changed in 1961 when an Italian archaeologist was excavating ancient Caesarea and found a limestone block that formed part of a staircase. He soon saw that this block had been recycled from an earlier building that had been torn down, for on the back of it was an inscription. Although some characters were missing, it was not difficult to reconstruct the wording: [in honor of] Tiberius[Pon]tius Pilate[Praef]ect of Judea The stone had once dedicated the building, probably a temple, to Tiberius Caesar. This … Continue reading Historical Objects that Help Tell the Story of Easter