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Jewish Tuna and Christian Fish: Identifying Religious Affiliation in Epigraphic Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Ross S. Kraemer
Ross S. Kraemer
Affiliation:
Franklin and Marshall College
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Extract

In his collection of Jewish inscriptions, Jean-Baptiste Frey identifies as Jewish a stone fragment that contains no writing, but only depictions of an amphora, several birds, a branch of a plant, numerous circular objects with smaller circles within them, and one drawing of a fish. Frey considers the amphora to be an oil jar; the birds to be doves and a goose; the plant branch to be the lulav associated with the Jewish festival of Sukkoth; the circles to be masot; and the fish to be the tuna that Jews are said to have eaten on Friday nights and on various Jewish festivals. The stone bears no irrefutably Christian symbols, such as a chi rho, but neither does it bear such things as a seven-branched menorah, which virtually all scholars accept as an explicit Jewish symbol. Frey even speculates that were the stone complete, it would probably be found to include a seven-branched menorah.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , April 1991 , pp. 141 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1991

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References

1 CII 653a.

2 On Sabbath fish meals, see Persius, Saturae 5. 179–84Google Scholar . Interestingly, Erwin R. Goodenough agreed with Frey that the stone is likely to have had a menorah. See Goodenough's, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (13 vols.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953-1968) 2. 56Google Scholar.

3 Marucchi, Orazio, Christian Epigraphy: An Elementary Treatise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912)Google Scholar.

4 Kant, Larry H., “Jewish Inscriptions in Greek and Latin,” ANRW II, 20, 2 (1987) 671–713Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., 683.

6 Oehler, Johannes, “Epigraphische Beitrage zur Geschichte des Judentums,” MGWJ 53 (1909) 292–302Google Scholar , 443-52, 525-38.

7 See also Kaufmann, Carl Maria, Handbuch der Altchristlichen Epigraphik (Freiburg: Herdersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1917) 14–51Google Scholar.

8 Kraabel, A. Thomas, “The Roman Diaspora: Six Questionable Assumptions,” JJS 33 (1982) 445–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Kraemer, Ross S., “On the Meaning of the Term ‘Jew’ in Greco-Roman Inscriptions,” HTR 82 (1989) 35–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Gibson, Elsa, The Christians for Christians Inscriptions of Phrygia (HTS 32; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

11 See the discussion by Gibson, (Christians for Christians Inscriptions, 141Google Scholar ) on an inscription from Syria, dated 369 CE, that contains the term Christian and was erected shortly after the death of Julian the Apostate; and also her discussion of inscriptions (ibid.) which follow the Decian and Aurelian persecutions.

12 Quoted in Horsley, G. H. R., ed., New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1976-1989 (5 vols.; North Ryde, Australia: Macquarie University Press, 1981-1989) 3. 43Google Scholar , from Sahin, S., Schwertheim, E., and Wagner, J., Studien zur Religion und Kultur Kleinasiens. Festschrift fur Friedrich Karl Dorner (EPRO 66; Leiden: Brill, 1978) 2. 819 no. 13Google Scholar.

13 The text reads, “All are to obey the president and his servant on matters pertaining to the corporation, and they shall be present at all command occasions prescribed for them and at meetings and assemblies (awayor/dc) and outings.” The papyrus is published in Preisigke, F., ed., Sammelbuch Griechischer Urkunden aus Agypten 5.2 (1938) 7835. 12Google Scholar ; the text is re-printed in Horsley, , New Documents 1Google Scholar . no. 5 and also in Nock, Arthur Darby, “The Gild of Zeus Hypsistos,” HTR 29 (1936) 39–88Google Scholar , reprinted in idem , Essays on Religion and the Ancient World (Stewart, Zeph, ed.; 2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) 1. 414–43Google Scholar.

14 IG Rom. 1.782.

15 CII 682.

16 Ludolf Stephani thought it was Jewish, reading the last line as απο τον øε(νελι)οννεσþι, but Basilius Latyschev disagreed, reading the line instead as απο τον øν üεσþι which, he claimed, could only refer to a pagan divinity. On this basis, he argued that πþοøενσν was sometimes used in a pagan context, and therefore (presumably) could not be the sole evidence for considering an inscription Jewish. Frey sided with Stephani on the Jewish identification, on the basis that there were no other non-Jewish attestations of πþοσενσν For references, see Baruch Lifshitz, CII prolegomenon, 1. 89-90; and CII 1.495-96. More recently, Lifshitz offered a reconstruction that strengthens the evidence for a Jewish identification, but which is nevertheless not as unambiguous as he suggests. See Lifshitz, , Donateurs et Fondateurs dans les synagogues juives: repertoire des dedicates grecques relatives a la construction et a la refection des synagogues (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1967) 19Google Scholar , where he reconstructs ['H οντοσοσ πι πεþι οινταλωλον—]. Again some circularity is introduced: the reconstruction of ονταλωλον supposedly strengthens the argument that the inscription is Jewish. Yet we have just discussed several instances of non-Jewish usage of awayoyYTJ that make this less compelling than Lifshitz claimed. The term αþσων does not resolve the matter, for it, too, occurs in demonstrably non-Jewish contexts.

17 CII 690 = Struve, V. V. et al., Corpus lnscriptionum regni Bosporani [=CIRB] (Moscow/Leningrad: Nauka, 1965) 1123Google Scholar (revised by A.I. Boltunova).

18 See Lifshitz, , CII prolegomenon 1. 67Google Scholar.

19 Frey, , CII 1. 500–501Google Scholar.

20 Lifshitz, , CII prolegomenon 1. 67Google Scholar.

21 CII 69Oa = CIRB 1126.

22 Horsley, , New Documents, 1. 27Google Scholar.

23 Just as this article went to press, I received the new Packard Humanities Institute CDROM 6, containing inscriptions and papyri. A global search of παντοκþατωþ turned up two pagan examples: IG 5.2.472 and Guarducci, M., Inscriptions Creticae (4 vols.; Rome: Libreria dello stato, 1935-1950)Google Scholar 2.28.2. A global search of ενλοΛντοσ yielded numerous of examples from Christian inscriptions. Of these a few might conceivably be Jewish, but many display numerous other indications of Christianity, including explicit references to Christ. Interestingly, the compilers categorized all three inscriptions from Gorgippia as Jewish, and add a fourth: SEG 32.790. However, even the new disk is not exhaustive.

24 CII 78* = IG Rom. 1.911. Latyschev, B., Inscriptions antiquae orae septentionalis Ponti Euxini Graecae et Latini (3 vols.; St. Petersburg: Archaeologicae Imperii Russici, 1885-1901) 2. 401Google Scholar.

25 Text initially in Maxwell, JamesCormack, Ross, Mélanges helleniques offertes d Georges Daux (Paris: Boccard, 1974) 51–55Google Scholar ; also in Horsley, , New Documents, 1. 26–27Google Scholar.

26 Horsley, , New Documents, 4 no. 113Google Scholar . Horsley suggests that πþοσεüσν first acquires this specialized usage in the Hellenistic period (see, e.g., the various inscriptions from Egypt), which accounts for the lack of attestation of αþσισνταλοσ in the Hellenistic period, but that by the first centuries BCE/CE the synagogue gained popularity to the extent that its usage in non-Jewish instances diminishes considerably. Horsley concludes, however, that the occasional late attestion of αþσιοντλωλοσ in non-Jewish contexts (as in the inscription from Pydna just mentioned) may be attributed to “the survival of a term already in use in non-Jewish circles before the latter specially appropriated it” (p. 220). Here he differs with Bernadette Brooten (Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogues: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues [BJS 36; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982] 5, 23Google Scholar , 228 n.81), who suggests that pagan associations borrow the terminology from Jews. See also Horsley's reference (p. 220) to Christian usage but by Jewish Christians, namely, the Ebionites, which complicates matters further.

27 See Brooten, , Women Leaders, 52–53Google Scholar.

28 IG Rom. 1. 1231 presents a puzzling example. In fact, the methodological pitfalls this creates may be demonstrated in the discussion over an inscription from Samos which A. M. Schneider originally considered Christian (on the basis of the term πþεοβντεþοι [“Samos im frühchristlicher und byzantinischer Zeit,” Mitteilungen des deutschen archaologischen Instituts 54 (1929) 137Google Scholar n.2]), and which Louis Robert judged pagan (reading “the πþεsβντεþοι of the λοννασιν” Hellenica 4 [1948] 71Google Scholar n.3) but which Dunst subsequently demonstrated to be Jewish on the basis of a new fragment which actually reads [τω]ν ιονσαιων. See Dunst, Gtlnter, “Eine judische Inschrift aus Samos,” Klio 52 (1970) 73–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 SEG 1.327

30 Cohen, Shaye, “Epigraphical Rabbis,” JQR 72 (1981) 1–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Piraino, Maria Teresa Manni, Iscrizioni greche lapidarei del Museo di Palermo (Palermo: Flaccovio, 1973)Google Scholar no. 13 (=L'Annee Epigraphique [1975] 454): ɛνøασειτε καλν πþε (σ)β(ντπσ) σνσ(ασ)σ ετν ν αüε(ü)πτωσ τον βιον τελ (εντα) τν πþο ιø κ(αλα)ν(σων) οκτωβþþιων.

32 Frey himself (CII 1. 579) expressed doubts about the reliability of this information.

33 CII 80.

34 CII 3.

35 Ferrua, Anton, Epigraphica 3 (1941) 30–46Google Scholar , esp. 32.

36 E.g., CII 314; 335; 380; 450; 539; 59*; SEG 29.1039.

37 Frey classifies CIL 5.7380 (= CII 59*), actually a bilingual inscription from Tortona, Italy, as probably pagan—this is an inscription on a sarcophagus “qui porte une foule de sujets paiens, mais rien de juif” (CII 1. 564)—and comments that the text of the inscription conforms to the terminology of pagan inscriptions in general. Johannes Oehler considered it clearly Jewish, perhaps on the basis of this phrase itself, but Frey disagreed strongly. The text reads: P. Aelio qui vixit annos XXIII Antonia Tisipho mater filio pientissimo. Øαþοει. εüλεενει, οσσεισ αøανατοσ.

38 IG Rom. 1. 1026.

39 Robert, Louis, Hellenica 11-12 (1960) 404Google Scholar.

40 Ibid, 394; Lifshitz, , CII prolegomenon 1. 70Google Scholar.

41 CII 693b; reported by Pelekanides, S., “Ξþονικ Μεοαιωνια Μακεσονιασ,” Archaiologikon Deltion 17 (1961-1962) 257 plates 314a and bGoogle Scholar.

42 E.g., Jalabert, Louis and Mouterde, Reng, Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie (Paris: Geuthner, 1929-1959) 1453, 1559, 1705Google Scholar.

43 Lifshitz, , CII prolegomenon 1. 75Google Scholar.

44 Kant, , “Jewish Inscriptions,” 685Google Scholar , esp. n. 82. See also Simon, Marcel, “Le chandelier a sept branches—symbole chrétien?” Revue archéologique 6th ser., 31-32 (1948) 971–80Google Scholar.

45 CII 1. 582.

46 Frey, himself (CII 1. 64Google Scholar ) provides some examples.

47 Leon, Harry J., The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1960) 97Google Scholar.

48 For a more detailed description, with black and white plates, see Leon, , The Jews of Ancient Rome, 60–61Google Scholar , 203-20; 204 n. 1 contains further references. Also Goodenough, , Jewish Symbols, 2. 15–33Google Scholar (on the catacomb itself); 2. 17-20 (on the painted rooms); 3. 737-56, 762 (photographs).

49 CII 149.

50 For references, see Leon, , The Jews of Ancient Rome, 61 n. 2Google Scholar.

51 For the refutation of these interpretations see Leon, , The Jews of Ancient Rome, 60–61Google Scholar , 203-204; and Goodenough, , Jewish Symbols, 2. 30–33Google Scholar.

52 Leon, , The Jews of Ancient Rome, 61 n. 2Google Scholar.

53 CII l. lxi.

54 Frey accounted in this way for the lid of a child's sarcophagus depicting a boy reclining on a couch, holding a bunch of grapes, and caressing a small dog, found in the Monteverde catacomb (CII 1. cxxxv-vi); see also Leon, , The Jews of Ancient Rome, 210–11Google Scholar ; and Goodenough, , Jewish Symbols, 2. 11–12Google Scholar . Leon, himself (The Jews of Ancient Rome, 214Google Scholar ) took a different stance regarding certain sarcophagus fragments now in the catacomb, but which could not be shown definitively to have originated in the catacomb. Some of these he considered Christian, and others pagan on the grounds that they were un-Jewish, and he shifted the burden of proof to those who thought they were Jewish.

55 Avi-Yonah, Michael, “The Mosaics of Mopsuestia—Church or Synagogue” in Levine, Lee I., ed., Ancient Synagogues Revealed (Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society, 1981) 186–90Google Scholar.

56 Leon, , The Jews of Ancient Rome, 332Google Scholar.

57 Other stones used for filler, or inscribed on both sides: CII 17*, 19*, 20-21*, 26*, 27*, 28*, 37*, 38*—all of these read DM or K 8 (17*): the“manibus” from 28* is not abbreviated, and could conceivably be reconstructed differently. There are others that do not contain the invocation. In any case, I find the social dynamics of such a reuse of stones rather puzzling. Conceivably, such stones came from the stone cutters, since it seems hard to imagine that Jews found the stones and then took them to be reused. Presumably, such stones were cheaper, but how they came to be reused is interesting in itself. I would appreciate any additional information that others may have on the evidence for such a practice and its social implications.

58 CII 678: D(is) M(anibus) Septim(i)ae Mariae Iudeae quae vixit Annis xviii Actia Sabinilla mater. This inscription is also published in Alexander (Sandor) Scheiber , Jewish Inscriptions in Hungary (Leiden: Brill, 1983)Google Scholar no. 7. See also Kraemer, , “On the Meaning of the Term ‘Jew,’” 41–42Google Scholar.

59 Scheiber, , Jewish Inscriptions in Hungary, 45Google Scholar ; Kraemer, , “On the Meaning of the Term ‘Jew,’” 41Google Scholar.

60 Leon, , The Jews of Ancient Rome, 332Google Scholar.

61 CII 60*.

62 For Goodenough (Jewish Symbols, 2. 137-40), the presence of these inscriptions, which otherwise closely resemble Jewish inscriptions from the same catacombs, could equally, if not more so, be taken as evidence that some Jews did use the phrase dis manibus on their inscriptions. The explanations suggested by Goodenough and others are not implausible, ranging from the possibility that some Jews actually liked these phrases and were not offended by them, to the possibility that the initials were routinely inscribed on stones before they were purchased, and that some Jews saw no problem in buying these stones and using them.

63 See Blant, Edmond Frédéric Le, Inscriptions Chretiennes de la Gaule anterieures au VlHe siécle (2 vols.; Paris: L'lmprimerie impgriale, 1856-1865) 1. 264Google Scholar ; 2. 406 ; Bas, Philippe Le and Waddington, William Henry, Inscriptions grecques et latines (1870; reprinted Hildesheim/New York: Olms, 1972) nos. 2145, 2419Google Scholar.

64 CII 77*.

65 CIII CPI 1537: øεον ενλολτια øενοσοτσ αωþιωνοσ 'ιονσαιοσ οωøεισ εκ πελ (αλ)ονσ(“Blessing to God. Theudotos, son of Dorion, Ioudaios, saved from the sea.”)

66 CII/CPI1538: εüλολει τον øεον πτοεüαιοσ αιοννσιον 'ιονσααιοσ (“Ptolemaios son of Dionysios, Ioudaios, praises (the) God”).

67 Kaufmann, , Handbuch der Altchristlichen Epigraphik, 53Google Scholar ; Marucchi, , Christian Epigraphy, 56–57Google Scholar.

68 Many Egyptian Jewish inscriptions include a date: e.g., CIIICP1 1459, 1460, 1464, 1466, 1471, 1480 and many others.

69 E.g. CII 559, 606, 608, 614, 616, 619, 631, 644, and 646. CII 606-46 are all from the Italian city of Venosa, from a catacomb identified as Jewish; many of these bear the symbol of the menorah, the Hebrew word “Shalom,” references to synagogue officials, etc. Several of the Venosa inscriptions have a Hebrew text more substantial than the common “Shalom” found in the Roman inscriptions.

70 See above, p. 151.

71 Kaufmann, , Handbuch der Altchristlichen Epigraphik, 55 n.lGoogle Scholar.

72 CIL 8.20354

73 CII 661, discussed in Goodenough, , Jewish Symbols, 2. 58Google Scholar.

74 Goodenough, , Jewish Symbols, 2. 58Google Scholar.

75 Ibid.

76 Saltman, Ellen, “The Jews of Asia Minor in the Greco-Roman Period: A Religious and Social Study” (M.A. diss., Smith College, 1971) 81ffGoogle Scholar.