Studying the New Testament through Inscriptions: An Introduction

By Burnett and D. Clint

Studying the New Testament through Inscriptions is an intuitive introduction to inscriptions from the Greco-Roman world. Inscriptions can help contextualize certain events associated with the New Testament in a way that many widely circulated literary texts do not. This book both introduces inscriptions and demonstrates sound methodological use of them in the study of the New Testament. Through five case studies, it highlights the largely unrecognized ability of inscriptions to shed light on early Christian history, practice, and the leadership structure of early Christian churches, as well as to solve certain New Testament exegetical impasses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers
• Release date: Apr 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781683073222

Book preview

Clint Burnett has written a necessary introduction to inscriptions for New Testament students that has been lacking for some time. The opening chapter offers a very useful and appropriately detailed survey of the topic, and the following chapters offer helpful studies of various sorts. Each of these studies is directly relevant to the study of the New Testament and not only offers insights into these particular issues but suggests how inscriptions may be used for interpreting other passages and topics. I warmly recommend this work.

Stanley E. Porter

President, Dean, and Professor of New Testament

Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview

McMaster Divinity College

Anyone interested in the civic life and religions of first-century CE Greco-Roman cities will treasure this book. It provides fascinating snapshots of that vast world of letters that were not confined in books and libraries but written on buildings, monuments, gravestones, coins, and even graffiti. Burnett has chosen some special examples in which this evidence sheds important new light on the New Testament. To encourage others in studying this underused resource, the appendices provide guides to the published collections of inscriptions as well as the extensive system of Latin abbreviations.

Pheme Perkins

Joseph Professor of Catholic Spirituality

Theology Department, Boston College

With this book, Clint Burnett builds a bridge between two disciplines that have long ignored each other, epigraphy and New Testament studies. Inscriptions are and, with hundreds of new finds every year, will continue to be a crucial source for illuminating our understanding of many aspects of antiquity. Through five case studies ranging from lexicography, to onomastics, and to social history, Burnett demonstrates the relevance of considering epigraphic evidence for the language and social realities of the New Testament. As such, this book is a must-have for any student dealing with the study of early Christianity within its social, cultural, and political context.

Cédric Brélaz

Professor of Ancient History

University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Clint Burnett’s remarkable book, Studying the New Testament through Inscriptions, explains how inscriptional evidence sheds fresh light on the values, thoughts, and beliefs of early Christians. In a variety of examples, he deftly demonstrates how this heretofore neglected evidence helps to solve real—philological, historical, and theological—problems. This book demonstrates not only the underappreciated role of inscriptions in the study of the New Testament, but also how they can enlarge our understanding of the life and witness of early Christianity.

B. H. McLean

Professor of New Testament Language and Literature

Knox College, University of Toronto

Dr. Burnett’s work fills an important void left by many contemporary studies. This book on inscriptions stands in contrast to those more dominated by anachronistic, theoretical models as well as those that toss around artifactual references with little hope of readers understanding the nature and function of the particular artifact. Dr. Burnett’s work is truly a vade mecum for inscriptions, primarily Greek and Latin. In this work the author both teaches about the nature, types, functions, etc. of inscriptions relevant for NT studies and also includes specific chapters with the application of inscriptions to NT topics and texts. The indices are extremely valuable both for those wishing to whet their appetite for this topic and also for those wanting to broaden their present skills.

This important work provides a major foundation stone in an approach to Scripture that believes the NT was not given birth in the empyreal realms of Christian doctrine, but rather in the workaday situations, experiences, and life of congregations of God and their leaders. These churches were filled with old and young, women and men, slave and free, ill and healthy, loyal and seditious, faithful believers as well as the faint of heart. Dr. Burnett’s point, and his instinct is correct, is that many of the beliefs and experiences of the NT authors and the audiences written to and written about in the NT are far better understood by means of epigraphical resources and studies.

Inscriptions provide an indispensable and clearer lens through which we can view the larger world of these churches. Greek and Latin epigraphy provides the quintessential primary resources for an improved appreciation and understanding of the religious, political, and social contours of Greco-Roman civilization, without which one is doomed to view the NT through a besmudged lens.

Richard E. Oster

Professor of New Testament

Harding School of Theology

Studying the New Testament through Inscriptions: An Introduction (ebook edition)

© 2020 D. Clint Burnett

Published by Hendrickson Academic

an imprint of Hendrickson Publishing Group

Hendrickson Publishers, LLC

P. O. Box 3473

Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473

www.hendricksonpublishinggroup.com

ebook ISBN 978-1-68307-322-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Due to technical issues, this eBook may not contain all of the images or diagrams in the original print edition of the work. In addition, adapting the print edition to the eBook format may require some other layout and feature changes to be made.

First eBook edition — April 2020

To my beloved Gerilyn, who is to me as I am to her,

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Engraved for All Time: An Introduction to Inscriptions

2. Jesus, the Royal Lord: Inscriptions and Local Customs

3. Devour or Go Ahead with the Lord’s Banquet? Inscriptions and Philology

4. Imperial Loyalty Oaths, Caesar’s Decrees, and Early Christianity in Thessalonica: Contextualizing Inscriptions

5. Benefactresses, Deaconesses, and Overseers in the Philippian Church: Inscriptions and Their Insights into the Religious Lives of Women in the Roman World

6. Calculating Numbers with Wisdom: Inscriptions and Exegetical Impasses

Conclusion

Appendix 1. Important Printed Collections of Inscriptions

Appendix 2. Online Search Engines and Collections of Inscriptions

Appendix 3. Abbreviations in Inscriptions

Glossary

Bibliography

Index of Modern Authors

Index of Subjects

Index of Ancient Sources

Illustrations

1.1. Warning inscription from the temple of God in Jerusalem from the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, Turkey (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.2. Altar dedicated to the subterranean god from the Archaeological Museum of Philippi, Greece (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.3. Sketch of a Greek graffito from Rome’s Palatine Hill depicting a Christian worshiping Jesus drawn as a crucified donkey (© Wikimedia Commons: Public Domain)

1.4. Statues on top of Mount Nermut on the backs of which Antiochus the Great of Commagene placed an inscription (© Wikimedia Commons: Klearchos Kapoutsis)

1.5. Greek inscription (Corinth 8.3 534) (267–668 CE) with guidelines still visible from the Archaeological Museum of Ancient Corinth, Greece (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.6. Sketch of late first century CE funerary altar of Cossutia Arescusa and Cnaeus Cossutius Cladus depicting the tools that stonecutters used to make inscriptions from the Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy (sketch by Robert Singler and used by permission)

1.7. Inscription from the architrave on the Baths of Caracalla (212 CE) in Sardis, Turkey (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.8. Copy of Table Number 9 from the bronze tablet containing the municipal law of Taranto (89–62 BCE) from Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Taranto, Italy (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.9. Archive wall from the theater at Aphrodisias, Turkey (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.10. Pantheon, Rome, Italy (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.11. Statue of the Pompeian benefactress Eumachia from a niche in Eumachia’s building, Pompeii, Italy (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.12. Latin inscription from Eumachia’s statue base, Pompeii, Italy (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.13. Boundary marker set up to solve a territory dispute between the city of Sagalassus and the village of Tymbrianassus from the Burdur Museum, Burdur, Turkey (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.14. Boundary marker establishing the extension of Capua’s pomerium from Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, Italy (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.15. Agricultural calendar (first century CE) from Rome depicting the months of July, August, and September from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, Italy (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.16. Architrave inscription from the temple of Athena and Augustus, Priene, Turkey (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.17. Tomb of Titus Flavius Zeuxis, Hierapolis, Turkey (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.18. Inscription from the tomb of Titus Flavius Zeuxis, Hierapolis, Turkey (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.19. Gate of Mazaeus and Mithradates at Ephesus, Turkey, with a dedicatory inscription to the imperial family (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.20. Mosaic from the vestibule of the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii, Italy, with a dog and the message Beware of the dog! (cave canem) (CIL 10.877) (© Wikimedia Commons: Public Domain)

1.21. Scratched graffito from Ephesus, Turkey, warning against public urination (© D. Clint Burnett)

1.22. Curse tablet from London, England (© Wikimedia Commons: Marie-Lan Nguyen)

3.1. Drawing of a Pompeiian dining room from Henry Thédenat, Pompéi (Paris: Renouard, 1906, 77: Public Domain)

3.2. Fresco from Pompeii, Italy, dating 50 CE from the north wall of the dining room of House 2, Room 4 in Regio V (© D. Clint Burnett)

4.1. Golden Gate of Thessalonica (© Wikimedia Commons: Public Domain)

6.1. Leonteus’s votive with an iron sickle containing three sets of equal calculations (© Wikimedia Commons: Public Domain)

Preface

This book is an attempt to introduce mainly Greek but also Latin and Semitic inscriptions from the Hellenistic and Roman periods to graduate students, seminarians, and pastors for the purpose of using these sources to interpret the documents of the NT and to reconstruct the history of early Christianity. It is divided into two parts. The first part consists of the first chapter, which introduces inscriptions and the methodologically appropriate way to approach them, treating inscriptions as archaeological artifacts. The second part consists of five case studies in which I demonstrate this approach to inscriptions and the underappreciated benefits that await the interpreter of the NT who uses them. This book’s thesis is twofold. First, inscriptions allow for a fuller portrait of life in the early Roman Empire because, unlike Greco-Roman literary texts, inscriptions provide windows into the values, thoughts, and beliefs of individuals who are not elite men, such as artisans, slaves, women, etc. Second, inscriptions are contextual data, representing localized religion, politics, culture, and ideologies, so they help contextualize certain NT texts and events in early Christianity in ways that literary texts cannot. My hope for the reader is that this book will unlock a world of incalculable historical, philological, and theological potential for the study of the NT.

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the giants on whose shoulders I stand: Richard E. Oster, James C. Walters, Laura S. Nasrallah, and Pheme Perkins. Each of these erudite scholars not only demonstrated how to use inscriptions in interpreting the NT, but also interacted with, engaged with, and influenced my own work with inscriptions and the NT during my graduate work. Richard Oster introduced me to inscriptions by graciously offering an elective course on Greek epigraphy during my graduate coursework at Harding School of Theology. In addition, he read and provided insightful feedback on every chapter of this book (any errors the reader may find are my own fault and not his). While I was a graduate student at Boston University School of Theology, James Walters introduced me to the concept of inscriptions as archaeological artifacts, facilitated and led an on-site archaeology and NT class in Turkey, and even paid for my trip to Turkey from his personal funds. Some pictures in this book are from that trip. Laura Nasrallah honed my work with inscriptions and allowed me to join her on-site archaeology and NT class in Greece and Turkey under the auspices of Harvard Divinity School. Some pictures in this book are from that trip as well. Pheme Perkins, my doctoral mother at Boston College, refined my approach of using inscriptions in the interpretation of the NT, pushing me to consider the limitations and possibilities that inscriptions can have for the NT.

My beloved wife, Gerilyn Burnett, has graciously given up large parts of our family vacations to allow me to peruse museums and archaeological sites in Europe in addition to giving me to the time and space to write this book. The interlibrary loan staff at Boston College’s O’Neill library is one of this book’s unsung heroes. They have hunted down many of the inscriptions, some of which are obscure, that I use in this book, regardless of the time, cost, and energy. Their tireless efforts are appreciated. A wonderful and unexpected outcome of writing this book was my acquaintance with Cédric Brélaz, Professor of Ancient History, University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Cédric generously read my manuscript and with his immense firsthand knowledge of epigraphy, most notably from Philippi, enhanced and improved my discussion of inscriptions, especially that of Philippian epigraphy. Finally, I would like to thank my wise editors at Hendrickson Publishers, Carl Nellis, Jonathan Kline, Patricia Anders, and Tirzah Frank. Carl, Jonathan, and Patricia allowed me to undertake this project, Tirzah and Patricia provided helpful and valuable feedback on my manuscript, and Tirzah piloted this project all the way to publication. Carl, Jonathan, Patricia, and Tirzah: thank you for all your hard work!

D. Clint Burnett

Knoxville, Tennessee

Advent 2019

Abbreviations

General Abbreviations

Ancient Sources

Ancient Near East

Deuterocanonical Works

Pseudepigrapha

Josephus

Philo

Dead Sea Scrolls

Apostolic Writings

Church Fathers

Irenaeus, Haer. Irenaeus, Against Heresies

Pagan Works

Aristotle

Artemidorus Daldianus

Cicero

Lucian

Pliny the Elder

Strabo

Suetonius

Tacitus

Inscriptions, Papyri, and Coins

Journals, Series, and Reference Works

Introduction

Inscriptions play an important but underappreciated role in the NT from beginning to end. Each of the Gospels note that an inscription was placed on Jesus’ cross advertising the reason for his execution: The King of the Jews (Matt 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:19).¹ The author of Acts of the Apostles, Luke, records that Paul the apostle used an inscription on an altar in Athens that said to an unknown god as an illustration that provided the impetus for a sermon (Acts 17:23) about the nature of the one true God and the day of judgment (Acts 17:24–31). Paul references an inscription in his letters. To highlight the greater glory of the new covenant of which he was a minister, Paul equates the old covenant with the ministry engraved on stones. He says that if that ministry had glory, then how much more glory must the new covenant infused with God’s Spirit have (2 Cor 3:7–11)?² In the last book of our canonical NT, the author of Revelation, John the prophet, uses inscriptions in his description of the new age and the new Jerusalem. The risen Jesus promises the faithful in the church in Pergamum that they will receive a white stone on which a new name is written that no one knows except the one who receives it (Rev 2:17). Jesus will make the resilient in the church in Philadelphia pillars in the temple of God, and the name of God and the new Jerusalem will be written on them (Rev 3:12). John concludes his prophecy with a description of this new Jerusalem. He says that it has twelve gates and twelve foundation stones. The names of the twelve tribes of Israel are inscribed on the twelve gates (Rev 21:12) and the names of the twelve