The Paving Stone That Proved the Bible: Paul and the Treasurer of Cori

Pictured above: the Erastus inscription beside the theater of ancient Corinth. Photo: Rduncan2, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

If you read the final chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it mostly looks like a long, somewhat tedious list of personal greetings. He says hello to Priscilla, Aquila, Andronicus, and a dozen other friends.

But tucked away at the very end of this list is a single sentence that caused an absolute earthquake in the archaeological world in 1929.

In Romans 16:23, Paul writes: "Erastus, the city treasurer, greets you."

The Erastus Inscription

We know Paul wrote the Book of Romans while staying in the wealthy, pagan, bustling port city of Corinth, around 57 CE. So, he is sending greetings from the civic treasurer of Corinth.

For centuries, scholars assumed these names were just lost to the sands of time. But in 1929, an archaeological team excavating a paved square near the great theater in ancient Corinth literally tripped over history.

They uncovered a massive limestone paving block with a deeply carved Latin inscription that had once been filled with bronze letters.

The inscription read: ERASTVS PRO AEDILIT[AT]E S[VA] P[ECVNIA] STRAVIT, "Erastus, in return for his aedileship, laid this pavement at his own expense."

Finding a matching name in the exact right city during the exact right time period is staggering on its own. But the title of Aedile is what makes this discovery so massive.

In the Roman world, an aedile, translated to oikonomos in Paul's Greek, wasn't just a low-level accountant. An aedile was a high-ranking civic magistrate. They were in charge of the city's financial administration, the public works, the markets, and the funding of the gladiatorial games. To get the job, you had to be incredibly wealthy, as you were expected to fund public infrastructure out of your own pocket, which is exactly what the paving stone says Erastus did.

This single paving stone shatters a massive misconception about the early Church.

There is a popular narrative that the 1st-century Jesus movement was exclusively a religion of poor, uneducated peasants and slaves. And while it absolutely offered profound dignity and hope to the lowest classes of Roman society, the Erastus Inscription proves that the Gospel was simultaneously penetrating the absolute highest echelons of Roman civic government.

A high-ranking, incredibly wealthy Roman magistrate in one of the most powerful cities in the Empire was actively fellowshipping with a traveling Jewish tentmaker and sending greetings to the underground church in Rome.

The Takeaway

As archaeologists, we spend our lives digging in the dirt hoping to find the smallest connection to the past. The Erastus Inscription is one of those rare, breathtaking moments where the biblical text and the physical earth align perfectly. When we read the Epistles, we aren't reading mythological fairy tales; we are reading the mail of real people, who held real jobs, and walked on real stones that we can still touch today.

"Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings. Erastus, who is the city’s director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings." (Romans 16:23)

Until tomorrow,
The Temple Mount Soil Team

Keepsakes from the same soil

Each piece carries authenticated soil recovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project, sealed in Israel and matched to its own numbered Certificate of Authenticity.