20. The belief that Jesus was entombed in France was widespread in the first and second century
The resurrection of Jesus was not widely accepted among the early followers of his teachings, whom in the first century were generally referred to as Nazarenes, rather than as Christians. The symbol with which they identified themselves was less that of the cross, and more widely that of a fish. Sects of the Nazarenes believed that the body of Jesus was removed from the tomb in which it had lain and transported elsewhere. One explanation of this belief, which is widely reported in apocryphal texts, is that Mary Magdalene had the body removed from the tomb and carried to an underground crypt prepared through the approval of Tiberius (the Roman Emperor), in the south of France.
The Avenging of the Savior is an eighth-century apocryphal text which recounts Mary Magdalene’s journey to Rome, under the name of Veronica, where she obtained the permission and support of the emperor to have Jesus interred in a crypt near today’s village of St. Thibery (itself a reference to the name Tiberius, rendered Thibere). The document, and others which describe the location of another tomb, to which the body of Jesus was later moved, are held by the French National Library in Paris.