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INSCRIPTIONS, GREEK

Written materials preserved upon durable media such as stone and metals. While the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean basin produced inscriptions in numerous languages, Greek inscriptions are by far the most important for the study of the NT.

The systematic efforts to correlate the epigraphical discoveries of the classical world with the content of the NT began in earnest in the latter decades of the 19th century and continue, with a major hiatus in the decades following World War I, until the present. Scholars such as G. Adolph Deissman, William M. Ramsay, James H. Moulton, George Milligan, Frederick W. Danker, G. H. R. Horsley, and Ceslas Spicq have been lodestars in this academic undertaking and have made major contributions through their publications.

One of the initial and enduring results of the investigation of Greek inscriptions for NT studies was to expel older misconceptions about the uniqueness of the vocabulary of the Greek NT. Many terms which had been hitherto regarded as “Christian words” were now seen to be part of the general Greek vocabulary.

The hundreds of extant Greek Jewish inscriptions have also shed significant light on facets of Second Temple Judaism. In light of these Greek inscriptions NT scholarship clearly knows more about the date and origin of the synagogue building, the synagogue’s male and female officers, the Jewish community’s interaction with its pagan urban environment, and life within the larger Jewish fellowship of antiquity.

The significance of the emperor cult and general political piety in the early Roman Empire is extremely important for a proper understanding of parts of the Gospels, Acts, the General Epistles, and the Apocalypse of John. Accordingly, those Greek inscriptions which bear testimony to the local devotion to the Roman emperor, to divine epithets used of the imperial Roman family, or which highlight the divine benefits which stem from the emperor’s reign provide salient insight into the ideology as well as patriotic devotion of the Roman civilization in which Christianity spread.

There are a number of political and status-based officials mentioned in the NT. Since in some instances these official positions and institutions are only adumbrated in ancient literature, Greek inscriptions are very helpful in establishing greater clarity about their significance and characteristics. This would include asiárchēs (Acts 19:31), politárchēs (17:6, 8), the city’s grammateús (“town clerk,” 19:35), the members of the Areopagus court (17:34), and the oikonómos (“city treasurer”) of Corinth (Rom.16:23).

Since the majority of Christians who were contemporary with the writing of the books of the NT were of gentile heritage, it is crucial to understand the contours of pagan piety at that time. Greek inscriptions not only inform us about specific pagan religions mentioned in the NT such as the Ephesian Artemis, but also about many widespread facets of pagan religiosity. Pagan belief in healing miracles is widely attested in temple testimonial epigraphy and in votive inscriptions. Epigraphy attests the pagan assurance that various deities communicated to their devotees through divine dreams, visions, voices, prophecies, and written revelations. There is a collection of “confession” inscriptions found primarily in Roman Asia which bears witness to numerous individuals who became aware of their need to repent and confess violation of a deity’s statute or law. One impressive inscription from the city of Philadelphia in Roman Asia focuses on the high moral standards of a cult of Zeus, violation of which standards would bring forth the wrath of the gods. In particular, the members of this cult, “men and women, slave and free,” regarded abortion, pedophilia, murder, and sexual infidelity as violations of expressed divine revelation.

The social organization and characteristics of the early Church were not without parallel in the social and religious guilds and collegia of the Greco-Roman world. Many of these guilds are uniquely documented by inscriptional evidence. The activities, the specific office holders, the procedures for holding regular worship services and corporate meals, and the place of corporate discipline are all mentioned in one extensive Greek inscription of the Iobacchi, a group of worshippers of Bacchus at Athens.

Slavery was a ubiquitous phenomenon in the Roman world. Since this ancient phenomenon has often been anachronistically viewed through the experience of Black slavery in modern American history, Greek inscriptions have provided helpful information about the manumission of slaves in antiquity, the interaction between ancient religions and slaves, the legal obligations of slaves to their former owners, and the participation of slaves and freedmen in Greco-Roman society at large.

The last few decades have seen a burgeoning interest in “women in antiquity” studies. As a direct result of information preserved in Greek inscriptions, we are now better able to reconstruct women’s life and contributions in the Roman world, particularly in religious and civic roles. Women’s place in family and society as well as what their survivors, typically husbands and children, expressed about them in sepulchral epigraphy have been illumined by numerous epigraphical discoveries. At many junctures, the new evidence of Greek epigraphy has toppled older stereotypical understandings about women in the world contemporary with nascent Christianity.

There is no single corpus of Greek inscriptions. Rather, one must look to several corpora as well as technical journals to locate Greek inscriptions germane to the study of the NT. In addition to the fact that there exists no single work which contains all the relevant evidence, most of the major corpora do not contain English translations. Accordingly, the typical scholar — not to mention student — is unable to pursue his or her own studies. The best point on entry into this important, but largely inaccessible, area of study is the works by scholars such as Deissmann and Spicq as well as the more recently discovered materials assembled, translated, and interpreted by various scholars in the series New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 1-5, ed. G. H. R. Horsley (Marrickville, New South Wales and Grand Rapids, 1981-1989); 6–, ed. S. R. Llewelyn (1992–).

Bibliography. G. A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (1927, repr. Grand Rapids, 1978); F. Millar, “Epigraphy,” in Sources for History, ed. M. Crawford (Cambridge, 1983), 80-136; C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, 3 vols. (Peabody, 1994); Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, ed. H. W. Pleket, R. S. Stroud, J. H. M. Strubbe, 1 (Leiden, 1923), 42 (1995); A. G. Woodhead, The Study of Greek Inscriptions, 2nd ed. (1981, repr. Norman, 1992).

Richard E. Oster, Jr.

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

INSCRIPTIONS, GREEK

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)