The three foot tall tablet is believed to have been written just decades before the birth of Jesus and seems to speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. For some scholars, this contributes to a developing argument that the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus is not unique and was just a story from Jewish culture that Christians borrowed. Others are more skeptical because much of the tablet is unclear or indiscernible.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” said Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley.

The tablet is a rare example of stone with ink instead of engravings. However, the tablet is broken and much of the ink has faded away.

Although interpretations of the writings are under debate, the authenticity of the stone is not. Ada Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.

A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone’s authenticity.

Oddly enough, the stone is not a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Because of the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all artifacts and writings having to do with Jesus, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, it will probably be some time before the tablet’s contribution is fully assessed.

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