After writing my previous post on Pergamon (Pergamum), I’ve been thinking that I should make comments regarding online resources for epigraphy and inscriptions (especially from Asia Minor) an ongoing segment of this blog. Although the likes of G.H.R. Horsley’s New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity have thankfully increased the interest in, and use of, inscriptional evidence by scholars of the New Testament and early Christianity, more of this needs to be done. And I believe some scholars of Christian origins remain somewhat hestitant (or even intimidated) by the whole sub-specialty of epigraphy when they don’t need to be.I hope my ongoing comments on epigraphy will help both other scholars (of early Christianity and Judaism) and the interested Joe and Jane to make better sense of inscriptions and the resources (especially online) to study them. Inscriptions provide important glimpses, albeit momentary glimpses, into social and religious realities of life for those living in the world of early Christians and Jews. Inscriptions and the monuments on which they were inscribed often provide an alternative picture of life in the ancient world to that offered by literary evidence produced by the elites.

The supplement to Pergamon inscriptions which I commented on in the previous post required that you know Greek to use it, but there is another resource that will appeal to a broader audience. Some of you may be familiar with the important “God-fearers” inscription (now often dated to the fourth or fifth century) which was discovered at Aphrodisias and revolutionized study of gentiles who were attracted to Judaism in antiquity. But there are many other interesting and important inscriptions which have been discovered in this same city in Asia Minor (Turkey).

Photo of sarcophagi (graves) in the yard of the Aphrodisias Museum (photo by Phil).

The website of the “Inscriptions of Aphrodisias Project” is very promising in providing excellent resources for studying inscriptions. At present, it provides free access to the second (2004) edition of Charlotte Roueché’s Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity: The Late Roman and Byzantine Inscriptions, which includes 250 Greek inscriptions with English translations and extensive commentary. There are plans to continue electronically publishing new finds from Aphrodisias as well. The extensive bibliography section includes links to online articles, including the recent (free access) article by Angelos Chaniotis, “New inscriptions from Aphrodisias (1995-2001),” American Journal of Archaeology 108 (2004), 377-416 (with English translations of the new finds). Also quite interesting are the photographs of notebooks (with documented Greek inscriptions) by early explorers of Aphrodisias, including the notebook of John Gandy Deering (written c. 1811-1813).

If you would like to do a quick photographic tour of the museum at Aphrodisias, including some of its monuments with inscriptions, go to my website here and click on the picture of Apollo at the top-right.

Update: Juan Garcés who is at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College, London, makes several further comments about this entry (see comments), including the fact that the plan is ultimately to have all of the inscriptions from Aphrodisias online. I just realized that this is the same person who reviewed my book for BMCR (he was very generous).

(My apologies for mispelling Angelos Chaniotis’ name, which is now corrected).

For those of you who can work with Greek inscriptions, I have just discovered that the German Archeological Institute (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut = DAI) now has (free!) online what they are calling the Supplement zum Corpus der Inschriften von Pergamon (prepared by Helmut Müller). Essentially, the “Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy” is republishing and updating all inscriptions published by the DAI between 1896-1913, including those published in MDAI(A) (aka, AM) and Max Fränkel’s Inschriften von Pergamon (Altertümer von Pergamon VIII 1/2). So far they have sections for honourary inscriptions, dedication inscriptions, and gymnastic ephebe (”youth”) lists. They have arranged these by the original publication and inscription number (not supplying new numbers, e.g. AM 24, 1899, Nr. 31). You can view each individually (though not all together) in pdf.Thus, for example, you could take a look at a detailed description, an updated bibliography, and the Greek text for the honourary inscription set up by the association of Dionysiac “dancing cowherds” for A. Julius Quadratus, the Roman governor (proconsul) of Asia in 109/110 CE.

I really could have used this a few years back when I was hunting down each of the inscriptions individually and trying to find any more recent discussions of them through mental telepathy. But I’m happy it’s there now nonetheless! Perhaps other archeological institutes will follow the German Archeological Institute’s good example in providing ready and free access to hard-to-find inscriptions.

Welcome to Ben Witherington, who now has a blog. In a recent entry he discusses the plight of the ancient city of Colossae in Turkey, and calls for some action in saving this unexcavated site. That reminded me that about a year ago a student in Australia happened on my website and e-mailed me to say that the university where she attended was in the midst of plans to excavate precisely Colossae. At that point, they had a website (dead link: http://wwwehlt.flinders.edu.au/colossae). Doing a search now, all I can find is a reference to an article on the Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia) site from 2002 by Michael Trainor, “Unearthing Ancient Colossae in Southern Turkey: Theology and Archaeology in Dialogue,” Compass: Review of Topical Theology 36 (2002): 40-46. I wonder what happened to that project? Does anyone know.

UPDATE: Ben Witherington now knows: Government red tape (see comments).

For a brief discussion and photos of the cities of the Lycos (or Lycus) valley, including Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae, go here.

As an aside, I am happy to find that another scholar of ancient religions (Witherington) still likes to endulge his Marvel comic book past from time to time. I also found that the negative reviews of Fantastic Four were overstated. But the acting could have been far better in the sense that, when these four discover they have been genetically altered and now have strange powers, they don’t seem too surprised or upset (with the exception of The Thing). “Hmmm, now I can stretch my body like rubber and squeeze under doors . . . interesting. So as I was saying . . .”

Until recently, the suggestion that members of the early Christian congregations may have simultaneously been members in other associations and guilds remained under-explored. In my book, I dealt with the question of multiple memberships in connection with the Christians at Corinth (addressed by Paul in 1 Cor 8 and 10) who were attending banquets alongside non-Christians (”pagans”). I also considered the possibility that the opponents addressed by John’s Apocalypse, especially those accused of eating idol-food (or idol-meat) with “Jezebel”, may have been encountering sacrificial food as members in the guilds of Thyatira (something that William Ramsay suggested, but did not explore, long ago). For all this, see pp. 205-10, 259-63 of Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations.

In a more recent article dealing with Sardis and Smyrna, which you can read on my site, I looked at the implications of multiple memberships for questions of rivalries and competition among different groups.

I have now just read a very interesting article on associations on the island of Rhodes by Vincent Gabrielson, which drew my attention to another interesting case of multiple memberships in associations (dealing with IG XII[1] 155). A man named Dionysodoros, who was an immigrant from Alexandria (in Egypt), was honoured by a number of associations (koina) at Rhodes in the second century BCE, including the “Haliasts and Haliads,” the “Paniasts,” and the “Dionysiasts” (devoted to the god Dionysos). A closer look at this lengthy inscription shows that he was not only honoured by these groups, but was also a member in at least four associations at Rhodes! (See Vincent Gabrielson, “The Rhodian Associations Honouring Dionysodoros from Alexandria, ” Classica et mediaevalia 45 [1994] 137-60.)

And these memberships were not fleeting. Dionysodoros was a member of the “Haliasts and Haliads” for 35 years, and he acted as their chief-of-banquets (archeranistas) for 23 years. Simultaneously he was a faithful member and benefactor of other associations, including the “Paniasts” whom he served as chief-of-banquets for at least 18 years. This is the sort of atmosphere of multiple affiliations and interactions in which the early Christians and diaspora Jews found themselves. So we should not be too surprised if we find some Jews or Christians going to synagogue or church one day, and hanging out with friends in the guild or association the next.

I’m a bit behind the times, but last night I saw (in repeat) the Simpsons’ episode called “Left Below,” which spoofs the very popular American fundamentalist “Left Behind” phenomenon (Tim LaHaye’s massive money-maker). Homer gets caught up in the expectation of the “rapture” while watching a movie and eventually gets a good following among other Springfieldites. He accurately predicts that “stars” will fall from the sky, which is fulfilled when a blimp carrying hollywood stars crashes and dumps its load of stars. He, like many other modern apocalyptic thinkers or “prophecy students”, calculates the time of the end based on his own unique formula. As in other cases, the calculated time of the end comes and goes — followed by the “great disappointment” of Springfield — only to be recalculated after recognizing the faulty number in the calculation, which again comes and goes. Nelson chimes in at the appropriate point with his “Ha, ha, life goes on”.

For those of you who happen not to be familiar with the origins of such modern American apocalyptic notions, things are very complicated but I’ll oversimplify them here in short form. In the 1800s, a Protestant Irish guy named John Nelson Darby developed the doctrine of the rapture in reference to the belief that just before the end-times and the terrible things listed in John’s Apocalypse, all believing Christians would be taken away from the earth by Jesus. Basically, the doctrine combines a variety of passages in the New Testament (including some from John’s Apocalypse / Revelation), but it is especially related to the reference to Jesus coming in the clouds in Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Thessalonica (written c. 50 CE):

According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.
(1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 [NIV]).

This doctrine was taken on by a number of American pastors, particularly those associated with the rise of fundamentalism in the twentieth century (beginning about 1919, but especially with the growth of fundamentalism post World War II). But it was not to become extremely popular until Hal Lindsey wrote his best-seller, The Late, Great Planet Earth in the 1970s. There Lindsey, as a “prophecy student”, interprets various current political and cultural events as the fulfillment of prophecies in the Bible (especially Daniel and John’s Apocalypse / Revelation). The book had a quite explicit proselytizing function, as it concludes with a call to accept Jesus and be saved from the coming wrath of God, to be among those that are Raptured and not “left behind” for the torturous tribulations to come. Many Lindsey like prophecy books that interpreted current events followed, including those that plugged the Hussein/Iraq situation into the end-time equation in the 1980s and 90s. As you are aware, there has been somewhat of a renaissance of the rapture notion in its American fundamentalist form with the extremely popular novels by Tim LaHaye (especially leading up to and since the turn of the millenium). There you go: the history of modern American fundamentalist apocalypticism in three paragraphs (not).

If you want to read more about apocalypticism generally, go to that PBS Apocalypse! site I mentioned before in connection with Aliens, Fallen Angels, and Heaven’s Gate. For more detail on the origins of the American form of apocalypticism, read Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1992).

UPDATE: A friend of mine who has cable (I have those old-fashioned rabbit ears you may have heard of in history books–very fuzzy) recorded the Simpson’s episode for me, and I watched it again. Quite humorous is Homer’s preaching, which captures the tensions in apocalyptic discourse: “God loves you . . . HE’S GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!”

The official title of the episode is “Thank God It’s Doomsday” (originally aired May 8, 2005).

In preparations for a graduate course, I just came across the Apocryphal Acts Homepage of István Czachesz, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Groningen. So far, he provides useful bibliographies and links to online resources. Also available there are several of his own articles. His dissertation, which is forthcoming in revised form, is currently available online at the University of Groningen website (Apostolic commission narratives in the canonical and apocryphal Acts of the Apostles).

In the future, I will have more entries on Apocryphal Gospels and Acts in connection with the graduate course I’m teaching in the Fall on the “Diversity of Early Christianity”, which is focusing on the above this time around.

There is a review by Julia Lougovaya-Ast at BMCR of a recent collection of funerary epigrams (poetic grave inscriptions) from the south of Asia Minor which illustrates well how much fun and how intriguing inscriptions can be, even grave-inscriptions (Reinhold Merkelbach, Josef Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten. Band 4: Die Südküste Kleinasiens, Syrien und Palaestina. München/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2002).

Among the inscriptions there is one for a dog, named Stephanos, who was mourned and buried like a human. Another echoes the paraphrased title of this post (which comes from a satirical epitaph).

Others are a bit less fun, even sad, but nonetheless give us glimpses into the social realities of life in the ancient world. Among them is the grave of a woman who died giving birth to triplets. As the reviewer points out, this is one of the few references to multiple births beyond twins in antiquity.

Check out the full review, which provides some English translations of several graves (including the above). Of course, the book itself provides the Greek texts and German translations.

Two recent studies challenge L. Michael White’s suggestion that many synagogue buildings developed from earlier domestic buildings (that is, houses). In the case of the Greek island of Delos, Monika Trümper argues that the building variously identified as either a Samaritan or a Judean synagogue (known as GD80) shows no signs of having been a domestic dwelling. Furthermore, she also challenges those (such as Donald Binder, who also has a very good website) who suggest that the building was previously used by a “pagan” association and only later acquired by the Samaritans. Instead, her interpretation of the remains suggests that the building was used by the Judeans/Jews (or Samaritans) from as early as the second century B.C.E. If this is true, then this would represent the earliest known synagogue building in the dispersion. See the extensive article by Monika Trümper, “The Oldest Original Synagogue Building in the Diaspora: The Delos Synagogue Reconsidered,” Hesperia 73 (2004) 513-598. UPDATE: Article available free online (without original page numbers and without photos and figures) at find articles.

In the case of the port city of Rome, Ostia, Anders Runesson convincingly shows that the archeological evidence previously used to support the notion that the building was originally a house is incorrect. Instead, he argues that “the original edifice was public and monumental, containing a triclinium for common meals, and dated to the late Julio-Claudian period” (first century CE) (p. 171). See Anders Runesson, “A Monumental Synagogue from the First Century: The Case of Ostia,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 33 (2002) 171-220.

The photo to the right shows a menorah (seven-branched candle-holder) on the capital of a column of the Ostia synagogue. For a photographic tour of the various guild-buildings at Ostia, as well as more photos of the synagogue, go to another section of my website here.

It will be interesting to watch the debate develop now as these common notions (at least since the 1990s) concerning the origins of the synagogue are challenged.

Runesson’s excellent survey of research on the The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study (2001) is among the recent works that convincingly argues that, both socially and architecturally, synagogues have much in common with associations or collegia in the Greco-Roman world. There is an interesting online article by Runesson, which summarizes some of his work, here.