When Yeshua came near the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began to rejoice. They praised God with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of Adonai! Shalom in heaven and glory in the highest!”
Some of the Pharisees from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!”
But answering, Yeshua said, “I tell you that if these keep silent, the stones will cry out.”
(Luke 19:37-40)

Divinity of Jesus written in stone!

When Dr. Yotam Tepper of the University of Haifa recently led an archaeological excavation at the site of an ancient Jewish village, Kfar Othnay, he was surprised to come across a mosaic that read, “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial”.[1]

The house of Akeptous had apparently been dedicated as a place of worship dating back to the year 230 AD, and the worshipers believed Yeshua the Messiah to be God himself.

This discovery was surprising for a few reasons. First of all, Kfar Othnay was a Jewish and Samaritan village, known from Jewish sources to have existed between the first and fourth centuries AD, which would indicate that they could have been Jewish believers. Secondly, it seems that the “God-loving Akeptous” was a woman who had dedicated her home to be a house of prayer, and it is one of the earliest examples of such a house of prayer that we have. It was not until about a century later that church buildings began to appear, before which believers would meet in homes.

Thirdly, Akeptous doesn’t seem to have been too worried about a heavy Roman presence close to her home. As well as the prominent mosaic declaring Yeshua’s divinity, there are “Ichthys” fish symbols clearly visible, which were commonly used by the early church to represent the acronym, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour”. It seems she was not in hiding as a Christian, which surprised historians who had thought the Romans were de-facto anti-Christian before Constantine’s conversion in the fourth century. We know from the New Testament, however, that there were Roman centurions and officials who came to faith in Jesus, and it seems that one such centurion “Porophrius, our brother”, had in fact been the one who paid for the mosaic.

“Following Constantine’s conversion, whole Roman legions would kneel and accept Christianity,” writes Ruth Schuster in HaAretz. However, “that was a century after somebody bought a beautiful mosaic for the floor of the early Christian house of worship in Othnay.”[2]

Although we are seeing more and more Israelis coming to faith in Yeshua as the Messiah all the time, the vast majority of Israel’s current population would still squirm very uncomfortably at the statement that Jesus Christ, Yeshua the Messiah, is God. Many would struggle to read such a thing – never mind say it or believe it. But the stones in Israel cry it out anyway!

[1] Christian Today, Ancient mosaic describing Jesus Christ as ‘God’ to be unveiled in Israel, 2nd March 2018
[2] HaAretz, A Jew, an Early Christian and a Roman Meet in Archaeological Park to Be Built on Evacuated Prison. ‘God Jesus Christ’ mosaic, ancient Jewish-Samaritan village of Othnay, Ruth Schuster, March 8th 2018 

Photo by Yotam Tepper