We are in the midst of a global crisis. COVID-19 has spread to 195 countries, including our own, the US. The numbers of Americans infected and those who have died from their symptoms continue to climb. As of 2:36 PM on March 23, 2020, 41,424 Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and 498 have died. According to the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, this week, March 22-28, “it’s going to get bad.” Our federal and state governments have issued guidelines asking us to practice social distancing, telling us to stay home and to leave our houses only for groceries or emergencies. Why? Because we can save lives.

Despite these warnings, many Americans, some of whom are Christians, are failing to heed the advice and, in some cases, orders of federal and local governments. We all have that family member or friend who thinks that they are invincible, that this crisis is a hoax, or that there is no chance that they will get the virus. This situation gave me pause to stop and to consider: what would the apostle Paul say to such individuals who fail to practice social distancing? The answer is simple: he would tell them to stop being selfish and to look out for the interest of others, especially the vulnerable, and thus follow Jesus’s example.

In the mid-50s CE, Paul wrote a letter to his converts in Philippi (a city in northwest Greece: see the map below) to address the selfish attitudes of some Christians that were causing problems within the Philippian Church.

Paul tries to accomplish this task by reminding the Philippian Christians of Jesus’s example in what Michael Gorman rightly calls Paul’s “master story,” Phil 2:6-11 (see Michael Gorman, Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019], 33-34). Philippians 2:6-11 may be an early Christian hymn or poem and Paul prefaces it with an admonition for his converts to fulfill his joy by being focused on the same thing (Phil 2:2). The apostle goes on to define what this same thing is. It involves adopting an attitude of humility, regarding other people as more superior than yourself, and being concerned about the affairs of others (Phil 2:3-4). Paul wants his converts to consider how their actions affect others.

To drive this point home, he appeals to Jesus’s self-sacrificing example (Phil 2:5) and then quotes this likely hymn or poem, saying of Jesus

who existed in the form of God and did not regard equality with God as something to exploit. Rather, he emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave. He was made in the likeness of humans and he was found in form like a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient unto death, even death produced by a cross. Therefore, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at Jesus’s name every knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow and every tongue might confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to God the Father’s glory (Phil 2:6-11; my translation).

Paul uses Jesus as the self-sacrificing example par excellence. Before the incarnation, he lived in heaven where he existed in the form of God. The English verb that I have translated “existed” is a translation of the Greek participle ὑπάρχων (hyparchōn). I have rendered this participle as literal as possible as the KJV and the NIV do:

Who, being (ὑπάρχων) in the form of God . . . (KJV)

Who, being (ὑπάρχων) in very nature God . . . (NIV)

However, the participle must be interpreted. One of the most common interpretations of ὑπάρχων (hyparchōn) is that it is concessive:

Who, though (ὑπάρχων) he was in the form of God . . . (RSV)

Who, though (ὑπάρχων) he was in the form of God . . . (NRSV)

Who, though (ὑπάρχων) he was in the form of God . . . (ESV)

There is, however, another, and I would argue, better translation of ὑπάρχων. The participle is causal. Thus, ὑπάρχων should be rendered as follows:

because he was in the form of God . . .

In his recent book Participation in Christ, Gorman argues for this translation and concludes that for Paul:

“. . . Christ did what he did not merely in spite of being in the form of God and equal with God but also precisely because he was in the form of God and equal to God” (Gorman, Participation in Christ, 37).

Thus, it was because of Jesus’s pre-incarnate status that he emptied himself, took on the form of a slave, and died a cruel death on the cross. In short, it was because Jesus had power and status that he used that power and status to help others, thereby making him the perfect example of someone who “paid attention not to his own affairs but to the affairs of others” (Phil 2:4). In the process, he left us this wonderful example to follow.

What does all this have to do with social distancing during the COVID-19 crisis? Because we have the ability and freedom not to practice social distancing, we should follow Jesus’s example, forgo that ability and freedom, and consider the health and safety of the vulnerable in our society. In short, Paul would say to all those not practicing social distancing to stop being selfish, to get over themselves, and to be like Jesus: pay attention to those with less power than you and serve them.

Who knows? Your actions might result in the most Christ-like act of all, saving the lives of others.

I am delighted to announce that I have signed a contract with the Berlin publishing house de Gruyter to publish a revised version of my dissertation in its Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft series. This work is tentatively entitled Christ’s Enthronement at God’s Right Hand & Its Greco-Roman Cultural Context. In this book, I probe the reason why one particular verse from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Psalm 110:1 (“The LORD said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’”) became the Christian text par excellence for articulating Jesus Christ’s exaltation to heaven. The answer, I argue, lies in the fact that the concept of a sovereign sitting next to a god is a Greco-Roman cross-cultural reward for a beneficent, pious, and divinely appointed monarch, which explicates widespread early Christian use of Psalm 110:1. This book is expected to appear late in 2020 or early 2021, just in time for Christmas 2020!

(Disclaimer: this post contains an ancient artistic depiction of a sexual act)

By and large, research into earliest Christianity and its historical and social context is often based on ancient literary sources. In some sense, this focus on written texts is understandable. The earliest Christians were people of the book (what we call the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible) and scholars of earliest Christianity, many of whom are Christians or used to be, are indebted to that legacy. In addition, modern historical methods came to fruition in the nineteenth and early twentieth century either before the development of or during the infancy of the sciences of archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, and art history. However, there are a plethora of non-literary sources from the world of earliest Christianity such as archaeological artifacts, which can supplement, challenge, and nuance the testimony from ancient literature and our historical reconstructions based on that testimony. In this post, my purpose is to demonstrate how one artifact can illuminate an aspect of the world of Paul’s letter to the Romans, female same-sex acts.

In Romans 1:18-3:20, Paul’s rhetorical aim is to demonstrate that all, both Jews and non-Jews, have sinned, fallen short of God’s glory, and are in need of the cosmic restorative righteousness that God offers in the gospel that Paul preaches (Rom 1:2-4). In the process, he lists what he calls examples of ungodliness and wickedness that Jews and non-Jews are guilty of and against which God’s anger is being revealed from heaven. The main sin of non-Jews in Rom 1:18-32 is their refusal to glorify and honor the God of Israel who is their creator (Rom 1:19-22), which led to idolatry (Rom 1:23). In addition, God handed over non-Jews to their own desires, one of which gives historians reason to pause, same-sex female activity:

“Their women exchange the natural use [of men] for what is contrary to nature” (Rom 1:26)

Most discussions of this reference to female same-sex activity in Romans mention the paucity of ancient Jewish and pagan sources that refer to it. For example, in his full length treatment of homosexuality and the New Testament, Robin Scroggs notes in an appendix on female same-sex activity, “One of the most surprising things a researcher in this area learns is that there is virtually nothing in the texts [of the Greco-Roman world] about female homosexuality” (Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983], 140).

The problem of a lack of sources that Scroggs points out relates to his dataset. He focuses solely on Greco-Roman literature. To return to his words, “there is virtually nothing in the texts . . .” If, however, one looks outside Greco-Roman texts, one sees that there are ancient artifacts that provide more Greco-Roman references to female same-sex acts, albeit visual references. To provide one example, a first century CE terra-cotta lamp from Asia Minor that is currently in the British Museum visually depicts a female same-sex act.

(Museum # 2005,0921.1; © Trustees of the British Museum)

The lamp pictures one nude woman performing cunnilingus (or oral sex) on another nude woman. It is clear that this lamp was made to be used and that someone used it, for soot is still visible on its neck and spout. What is more, this lamp is made from a mold, which indicates that it, along with this visual depiction of a female same-sex act, was mass produced. There is no way to know how many lamps were made from this mold or who acquired them. Nevertheless, this is one of numerous concrete artifacts that are available for the study of female same-sex activity in the Greco-Roman world. In short, this one lamp suggests that same-sex female activity was more prevalent than surviving Greco-Roman literature evinces. Such visual information as well as other artifacts have the potential for a better contextualization of Paul’s reference to same-sex female activity in Romans.

While many Biblical scholars and laypersons know about the ossuaries of Caiaphas (the high priest mentioned in connection with Jesus’s crucifixion: Matt 26:3, 57; John 11:49; 18:13, 14, 24, 28) and of James the brother of Jesus, which is probably a forgery, there is a third ossuary with connections to earliest Christianity that has not received the attention that it deserves, that of a descendant of David.

(An ossuary is a receptacle in which the bones of a deceased Second Temple Jew were placed after the decomposition of their body)[1]

Between November 1971 and May 1972, Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner found a limestone ossuary in a burial cave in Jerusalem. The cave itself dates to the Second Temple period (516 BC-AD 70) and more specifically to the turn of the Christian era. Pottery finds in the cave dated the earliest use of it to the first century BC. The latest date for use of the cave is AD 70, the year that the Romans destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem.[2]

The ossuary contains two Aramaic inscriptions by two different hands. The first is on the top right corner of one of the ossuary’s longer sides. It is written in what the editors of Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae call a “crude” script that says “Shalom Hillel (?)” (שלם הלל) (The name Hillel is uncertain because the first two letters, הל, are not entirely clear). The second inscription is written in an unusual place, on the rim of the ossuary in a nice “formal” script that says “of David’s house” (שלבידוד).

Much about this ossuary’s inscriptions remains opaque. The first one is difficult to read so the bones of the person interned is unclear. In addition, it is unclear if Shalom is a greeting or the name of a person, probably a woman, whose bones may also have been in the ossuary. In the second inscription, the text could mean “son of David” or “house of David.” The latter reading appears to be the most probable.[3] The final uncertainty about these inscriptions revolves around what I have translated David, דוד. The word has two possible meanings, either uncle or David. David Flusser has made a persuasive case for the latter reading, which the editors of Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae follow.[4]

Provided that this interpretation is correct, then whoever engraved the second inscription was making the claim that the occupant of the ossuary was a descendant of the Biblical David. In support, to date we know of no Second Temple Jews named David, from which one could have traced their ancestry. A number of later Jewish and Christian texts such as the church historian Eusebius and the Talmud claim that descendants of the Biblical David were alive and well in the first century AD (in the former text the emperor Domitian even questioned them!). It is of import that the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, Revelation, and Paul the apostle refer to Jesus’s Davidic ancestry in some way. One of the earliest of these chronological references is in Romans, which Paul wrote about AD 57. The apostle begins the letter by introducing himself and the gospel that he preaches to the Roman Christians. As he does so, he highlights Jesus’s Davidic descent:

Paul, slave of the Messiah Jesus, called apostle set apart for God’s gospel that he proclaimed beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures about his Son who was descended from the seed of David according to the flesh and who was decreed God’s Son in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus the Messiah our Lord (Rom 1:1-4; my translation).[5]

There is general agreement among scholars that Paul’s reference to Jesus’s descent from David and declaration as God’s Son at his resurrection in Rom 1:3-4 is an early Christian tradition and/or proclamation that predates Paul’s conversion.[6] What is more, the apostle appears to expect that the Roman Christians, who belong to a church that he did not establish, are aware of Jesus’s Davidic heritage. This means that from the earliest traceable period of earliest Christianity Jesus’s Davidic and thus royal messianic heritage was a fundamental part of the movement. Recently, Matthew Novenson has pointed out that there are no recorded ancient challenges either by Jews or Christians to Jesus’s Davidic ancestry. He notes that some ancient Jews denied Jesus’s identity as the Messiah “but not on genealogical grounds.”[7]

In sum, this small inscription on an ossuary illuminates a lost piece of Second Temple Jewish history in which Jews of the period boasted of their familial heritage and provides a reason why Jesus’s Davidic ancestry went unquestioned.

[1] Ossuary is the singular English form of the noun, which derives from the Latin ossuarium, meaning “a receptacle for bones.”

[2] David Flusser, “‘The House of David’ on an Ossuary,” The Israel Museum Journal 5 (1986): 37-40.

[3] Ibid.; CIIP 1.1.45.

[4] Flusser, “‘The House of David’,” 37-40; CIIP 1.1.45.

[5] Παῦλος δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, κλητὸς ἀπόστολος ἀφωρισμένος εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ, ὃ προεπηγγείλατο διὰ τῶν προφητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐν γραφαῖς ἁγίαις περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα, τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν, Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν.

[6] Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans, AB 33 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 227-30.

[7 ]Matthew V. Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 89.

Bryn Mawr has just published my review of Philippes, de la Préhistoire à Byzance: études d’archéologie et d’histoire, which is the latest up-to-date discussion of the material remains and history of the city of Philippi from the Prehistoric to the Byzantine Period.