Archaeologists from Goethe University (Frankfurt, Germany) announced this week the discovery of a small silver amulet, 3.5 cm, outside Frankfurt. The artifact contains an 18-line Latin inscription indicating that its wearer was a third century AD Christian. The amulet, along with an incense burner and a clay jug, was found in the grave of a man dating between AD 230 and 270 and specifically under his chin. Therefore, the object must have worn around the man’s neck, at least for his burial but probably during his life, too. The inscription contains references to St. Titus, the Trisagion, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and a reference to St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians 2:10-11a.
All pictures taken from https://arkeonews.net/frankfurt-silver-inscription-archaeologists-unearth-oldest-christian-artifact-north-of-the-alps/.
The significance of the find is that it provides the earliest concrete evidence to date for Christianity in Northern Europe (for more, see Goethe University’s press release by clicking here). What interests me is the inscription’s references to Philippians 2:10-11a–“so that a Jesus’s name every knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow and every knee might confess” (my translation)–and to St Titus.
According to the announcement, the epigraph reads:
(In the name?) of St. Titus. Holy, holy, holy! In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God! The lord of the world resists to the best of his [ability?] all seizures(?)/setbacks(?). The god(?) grants well-being Admission. This rescue device(?) protects the person who surrenders to the will of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, since before Jesus Christ bend all knees: the heavenly ones, the earthly and the subterranean, and every tongue confess (to Jesus Christ)” (translation from Dr. Markus Scholz, see here).
The announcement did not contain the epigraph’s Latin text so it is unclear if this is a direct quotation or an allusion to the verses from Philippians. Nevertheless, this exciting discovery is evidence for the use of this letter of St. Paul’s as well as at least knowledge of one or more of the following letters, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 2 Timothy, and Titus, which mention St. Titus (2 Cor 2:13; 7:6, 13, 14; 8:6, 16; 12:18; Gal 2:1, 3; 2 Tim 4:10; Tit 1:4, in an early Christian community outside modern-day in Frankfurt!
In 1895, the German epigrapher Ludwig Bürchner visited the Greek island of Samos to record inscriptions, which he placed in a notebook that currently is in the archive of the Inscriptiones Graecae at the Berlin Academy (Germany). One epigraph that Bürchner noted was a Latin epitaph that may refer to Lucius Sergius Paullus; the most probable candidate for the Cypriot proconsul whom Paul and Barnabas encountered on Cyprus (Acts 13:7).
This funerary inscription remained unknown to most of the scholarly world until 1964, when another German epigrapher, Günter Dunst published all known Latin epigraphs from Samos, which were known at that time.[1] In the process, he pointed out the existence of a certain first century AD “grave inscription” (Grabinschrift), which refers to “a slave of L(ucius) Ṣẹrgius Paullus” (eines Skiaven des L(ucius) ṢẹrgiusPaullus) named “Gemellus” (Gemellus).
Some historians have accepted Dunst’s identification. Professor Werner Eck (Cologne University, Germany) comments on the epitaph:
Vermutlich ist dies der in der Apostelgeschichte bezeugte Sergius Paulus; sein Sklave war vielleicht auf der Fahrt nach dem Osten auf Samos gestorben. Er erhielt ein eigenes Grab und der volle Name des Herrn sagte, dass der Verstorbene kein Niemand gewesen ist.
Presumably, this is the Sergius Paulus attested in the Acts of the Apostles; perhaps his slave died on Samos on his journey to the East. He received his own tomb and his master’s full name testified that the deceased was not a nobody.[2]
In 2003, Prof. Klaus Hallof (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany) edited all the Samian inscriptions and revisited the epigraph in question. After consulting Bürchner’s notebook, he reproduced the following text, restoring the name Lucius Sergius Paulinus, not Lucius Sergius Paullus:
“For Gemellus, the slave of L(ucius) Sergius Paulinus, who made this . . . Dro . . .”[3]
I have been unable to examine the epigraph or see a picture of it. Presumably, the inscription is lost and Prof. Hallof informs me that the squeeze that Bürchner made is of poor quality. Therefore, it remains debatable whether or not the stone refers to the member of the Sergii Paulli whom Paul and Barnabas probably met.
Nevertheless, Alexander Weiß proposes that even if the epitaph refers to Lucius Sergius Paulinus, he still may be associated with Lucius Sergius Paullus:
denn Paulinus wäre wohl ein Freigelassener oder ein Nachkomme eines Freigelassenen dieser Familie.
For Paulinus is probably a freedman or a descendant of a freedman of this family.[4]
Weiß may be correct. Hopefully, future epigraphic discoveries will shed light on this epigraph and the presence of Lucius Sergius Paullus or Lucius Sergius Paulinus on Samos and his possible connection to early Christianity.
For example, in Rome and her colonies, imperial divine honors tended to be given to deceased Julio-Claudians whom the Roman Senate deified and provided a temple, cultic statue, altar, priests, sacrifices, festivals, and the official title Divus (for a male Julio-Claudian) and Diva (for a female Julio-Claudian). Because this deification tended to be reserved for Julio-Claudians who advanced the interests of Rome and her empire, not every emperor or Julio-Claudian was hailed as a Divus. For a list of these divi (the Latin plural of divus), see p. 43 of my book.
In Greek provinces, a group of provincials most often worked with the Roman provincial administration, the Roman Senate, and the reigning emperor to determine which Julio-Claudian would be given divine honors, where they would be located, and of what the honors in question would consist. These provincial honors were usually bestowed on living Julio-Claudians, but official documents associated with them tended to avoid calling the honored a “god” (theos in Greek). Moreover, the reason for their establishment was typically to be show gratitude for imperial benefaction and to court such future munificence.
Greek cities most often provided imperial divine honors to living Julio-Claudians to render appropriate gratitude for a specific beneficence and to court more acts of charity. Once the Julio-Claudian divinely honored died and thus could no longer benefit Greek cities concretely, they tended to lump that imperial into a growing number of divine imperials known as Augustan gods, θεοὶ Σεβαστοί (with the emperor Augustus being the chief exception). The traditions by which cities honored divinely the Julio-Claudians were local and some of them stretched back to Hellenistic period of Greek history and even beyond. Therefore, such honors were diverse. Given that there was no Roman oversight of these grants of divine honors, denizens of cities were free to call living or deceased Julio-Claudians “gods” or manifestations of the Olympians.
Finally, ancient Greeks and Romans divinely honored Julio-Claudians, both dead and alive, in their own homes, to varying degrees, and for varying reasons. For example, archaeologists working in Ephesus found a domestic imperial shrine in an elite apartment (insula) in a house in a block of such apartments (insulae) known as Terrace House 2. The shrine dates between AD 14 and 37 and consists of busts of Tiberius and Livia that had been set in a domestic shrine in a niche in the wall.
For the shrine, see Elisabeth Rathmayr, “New Evidence for Imperial Cult in Dwelling Unit 7 in Terrace House 2 in Ephesos,” in Ephesos as a Religious Center under the Principate, ed. Allen Black, Christine M. Thomas, and Trevor W. Thompson, WUNT 488 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 9–35. Often, scholarly works reference a bronze snake that was found with Tiberius’s and Livia’s busts. However, Rathmayr demonstrates that this is not the case and that the snake was placed in front of the niche much later.
In short, to quote Nijay Gupta’s excellent blurb about my book, “imperial divine honors were everywhere . . . [but] they were not everywhere the same.” This means that the early Christian interactions with them were not uniform and must have varied from city-to-city and province-to-province. For more on these interactions, check out my new book!
I am thrilled that my new book, Paul & Imperial Divine Honors, is out in print! In this work, I introduce imperial divine honors, more commonly called imperial cult in New Testament circles, to a more general audience and then provide contextual reconstructions of imperial divine honors in first century AD Corinth, Philippi, and Thessalonica with the goal of adjudicating with precision what relationship, if any, these honors had to early Christianity in these cities.
This book is one on which I have been working since Spring 2010 when I took my first class on imperial divine honors at Harding School of Theology (Memphis, TN) and it is much more than words on a page. I have procured (and in some cases paid for) the rights to publish 43 images and maps from and associated with ancient Corinth, Philippi, and Thessalonica and, in an appendix, I provide 60 Latin and Greek inscriptions associated with Corinthian, Philippian, and Thessalonian imperial divine honors along with fresh translations of them.
I hope this work will be of use not only to scholars but also to clergy as they reconstruct the gospel in its original imperial context and exegete what it means for the Church in our modern context.
This work contains eighteen essays by seventeen different scholars ranging from specialists on second millennium BC Egypt to historians of early Christianity, Greco-Roman epigraphers, and Greco-Roman archaeologists. The scope of this volume is immense, as it examines villages and aspects of village life in Pharaonic and Roman Egypt, ancient Israel, Roman Palestine, Roman Galatia, Roman Asia, Roman Macedonia, Roman Achaea, and Roman Italy. The overall thesis of The Village in Antiquity is that the scholarly consensus that early Christianity was a largely urban phenomenon is fundamentally flawed and in need of revision. Those interested in ancient villages in general and the spread of early Christianity in them in particular will benefit from this great collection of essays. Thanks to Alan, Jim, Angela, and Larry for their hard work in producing it and for including me among its contributors!
