Not just Pilate

Thirty real people, and the right names.

Lawrence Mykytiuk, a researcher at Purdue University, counted the New Testament people confirmed outside the Bible by inscriptions, coins, and non-Christian historians. He found 30. Emperors and kings prove little; anyone could name those. The telling ones are the minor people the writers mention in passing, because only someone who knew that world would get them right:

The high priest who put Jesus on trial. The Gospels just call him Caiaphas, but the Jewish historian Josephus gives his full name: “Joseph, who was called Caiaphas.” In 1990, workers in Jerusalem broke into a family tomb and found an ornate bone box inscribed “Joseph son of Caiaphas,” holding the bones of a man about 60. Most scholars think it's him.

An ornately carved limestone bone box with a rounded lid, a name scratched into its side. — The bone box inscribed “Joseph son of Caiaphas,” found in a Jerusalem family tomb in 1990. The name is scratched on the side, at left. Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Photo: Gary Todd · CC0

The Caiaphas ossuary

The Roman governor who threw out a case against Paul in Corinth. He appears in just one scene. A letter from Emperor Claudius, carved in stone at Delphi, names him as proconsul. It lets historians date Paul's time in Corinth to about AD 51.

A broken stone slab carved with Greek capital letters, with a box drawn around one word. — A fragment of Emperor Claudius's letter at Delphi. The boxed letters spell Gallio's name in Greek. Delphi Archaeological Museum. Photo: Gérard · CC BY-SA 4.0

The Gallio inscription

Paul mentions him once, at the end of a letter: “Erastus, who is the city's director of public works.” In 1929, excavators at Corinth found a paving stone carved with “Erastus, in return for his aedileship, laid this pavement at his own expense.” An aedile was the Roman official in charge of streets and public buildings.

Large Latin letters carved into a weathered paving stone on the ground. — The Erastus inscription, still in the pavement near the theater at Corinth: “…[Er]astus pro aedilitate s(ua) p(ecunia) stravit.” Photo: Rduncan2 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Scholars debate whether it's the same man, but it's the right name, the right city, the right era, and the right kind of job.

Erastus of Corinth

Luke lists him as ruler of Abilene when John the Baptist began preaching. Critics called it a mistake: the only Lysanias they knew had been executed some 60 years earlier. Then an inscription turned up at Abila, set up by “Nymphaeus… freedman of Lysanias the tetrarch” for “the lords Augusti,” meaning Emperor Tiberius and his mother Livia. That dates it to AD 14–29.

It points to a second, later Lysanias, just as Luke has it.

Lysanias

In Judea at the time, about 1 in 6 Jewish men was named Simon or Joseph (15.6%). In the Gospels and Acts, it's 18.2%. A 2024 statistical study found the Gospels' names fit their time and place as well as the Jewish historian Josephus does, and better than ancient novels or modern historical fiction.

That's what you'd expect from writers who knew Judea firsthand.

Van de Weghe and Wilson, 2024

Check it yourself:30 people in the New Testament confirmed (Mykytiuk)Josephus, Antiquities 18.35 The Caiaphas ossuary The Gallio inscription Erastus of Corinth The Abila inscription (Lysanias)Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses Van de Weghe, “Name Recall in the Synoptic Gospels” (NTS, 2023)

Go deeperLawrence Mykytiuk, “30 People in the New Testament Confirmed” (Biblical Archaeology Society)Up nextThe best-copied book of the ancient world.