World's earliest surviving Christian inscription identified
Owen Jarus ("CBS News," September 30, 2011)
Researchers have identified what is believed to be the world's earliest
surviving Christian inscription, shedding light on an ancient sect that
followed the teachings of a second-century philosopher named Valentinus.
Officially called NCE 156, the inscription is written in Greek and is dated
to the latter half of the second century, a time when the Roman Empire was
at the height of its power.
An inscription is an artifact containing writing that is carved on stone.
The only other written Christian remains that survive from that time period
are fragments of papyri that quote part of the gospels and are written in
ink. Stone inscriptions are more durable than papyri and are easier to
display. NCE 156 also doesn't quote the gospels directly, instead its
inscription alludes to Christian beliefs.
"If it is in fact a second-century inscription, as I think it probably is,
it is about the earliest Christian material object that we possess," study
researcher Gregory Snyder, of Davidson College in North Carolina, told
LiveScience. (See Images of Early Christian Inscriptions and Artifacts)
Snyder, who detailed the finding in the most recent issue of the Journal of
Early Christian Studies, believes it to be a funeral epigram,
incorporating both Christian and pagan elements. His work caps 50 years of
research
done by multiple scholars, much of it in Italian. The inscription is in the
collection of the Capitoline Museums in Rome.
"Assuming that Professor Snyder is right, it's clearly the earliest
identifiable Christian inscription," said Paul McKechnie, a professor of
ancient
history at Macquarie University in Australia, who has also studied the
inscription.
As translated by Snyder, the inscription reads:
To my bath, the brothers of the bridal chamber carry the torches,
[here] in our halls, they hunger for the [true] banquets,
even while praising the Father and glorifying the Son.
There [with the Father and the Son] is the only spring and source of
truth.
Details on the provenance of the inscription are sketchy. It was first
published in 1953 by Luigi Moretti in the "Bullettino della commissione
archeologica comunale di Roma," an Italian archaeological journal published
annually.
The only reference to where it was found is a note scribbled on a squeeze
(a paper impression) of the inscription, Snyder said. According to that
note, it was found in the suburbs of Rome near Tor Fiscale, a medieval tower.
In ancient times, the location of the tower would have been near mile four
of a roadway called the Via Latina.
How was it dated?
Margherita Guarducci, a well-known Italian epigrapher who passed away in
1999, proposed a second-century date for the inscription more than four
decades ago. She argued that the way it was written, with a classical style of
Greek letters, was only used in Rome during the first and second centuries.
After that, the letters change; for instance, the letter omega, ?, changes
into something closer to the letter w. The letter Sigma, ?, changes into a
symbol that resembles the letter c. [Inscription on Roman Gladiator's
Gravestone Reveals Fatal Foul]
Snyder essentially added more evidence to Guarducci's theory. He analyzed a
1968 catalog of more than 1,700 inscriptions from Rome called
"Inscriptiones graecae urbis Romae." He found 53 cases of Greek inscriptions
with
classical letterforms.
"Not one case is to be found in which, in the judgment of the
[catalog]editors, an inscription with the classical letter forms found in NCE
156can be
securely placed in the mid-third or fourth century," Snyder wrote in his
paper.
In addition, Snyder analyzed an inventory of inscriptions from nearby
Naples, published in a series of two volumes in the 1990s called "Iscrizioni
greche d'Italia." He found only two examples that might date into the third
century. "In sum, Guarducci's case for a second-century date for NCE 156 is
stronger than ever," he wrote.
McKechnie said that, after reviewing Snyder's work, he agrees with the
date. "The first time I read his article I was far from sure, but the second
time I read it I was convinced by his argument about the letter shape."
Valentinus
The author of the inscription likely followed the teachings of a man named
Valentinus, an early Christian teacher who would eventually be declared a
heretic, Snyder said. The presence of the inscription suggests that a
community of his followers may have lived on the Via Latina during the second
century.
"We know that Valentinus was a famous Gnostic teacher in the second century
(who) lived in Rome for something like 20 years, and was a very soph
isticated ... poetic, talented, thinker, speaker, writer."
His teachings are believed to be preserved, to some degree, in the Gospel
of Philip, a third-century anthology that was discovered in 1945 in the town
of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. That gospel is a collection of gnostic beliefs,
some of which were probably composed in the second century, that are written
in a cryptic manner. However, like the inscription, it also refers
prominently to a "bridal chamber."
One example, near the end of the gospel, reads in part:
The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. The bridal
chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the Holy in the Holy. The veil at
first concealed how God controlled the creation, but when the veil is rent
and the things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or
rather will be destroyed. And the whole (inferior) godhead will flee from
here,
but not into the holies of the holies, for it will not be able to mix with
the unmixed light and the flawless fullness, but will be under the wings
of the cross and under its arms...
(Translation by Wesley Isenberg)
"It's not quite clear what it [the bridal chamber] is, it's explained to
some degree, but explained in cryptic terms in the Gospel of Philip, it's a
ritual involving freedom and purification and union with the deity,"
McKechnie said.
Perhaps rather than an actual ritual, the bridal chamber is a metaphor.
"It may be a metaphor for something that happens in death -- maybe it's a
kind of ritual that happens when people are still alive. That you achieve a
new kind of existence or spiritual status based on this kind of wedding
with your spiritual ideal counterpart," Snyder said. [Top 10 Weird Ways We
Deal With the Dead]
"Some groups may have celebrated it as a concrete ritual, others perhaps
sawit in metaphorical terms. I like the idea that it is connected with the
death of the believer, who has cast off the mortal coil and enjoys a new life
in the spirit," he added in a follow-up email.
But there were some important differences between Valentinians and other
early Christians. "Valentinians in particular, and gnostics more generally,
most of them wouldn't, for example, get martyred," McKechnie said. "They
wouldn't think it was wrong or unlawful to do the things that Christian
martyrs refused to do, like take an oath in the name of Caesar or offer
incense
to a statue or that kind of thing."
The reason for their lack of bias has to do with the Valentinians' beliefs
about all things physical. "They believed that not only matter and the
physical world was evil, but also that matter and the physical world was
unimportant," McKechnie said. "Therefore, it was unimportant what you or what
your body did in the physical world."
"It's mostly about the world of the mind."
Valentinians were also likely influenced by earlier Greek philosophers such
as Plato, Snyder has found, though he doesn't think they would have
interpreted the story of the resurrection of Jesus in a literal way.
"It's certainly not the case that they would have considered that to be a
physical resurrection," he said. "Christians of this particular variety (who
incorporated Plato's philosophy) generally speaking saw the material body
as something not so desirable, not so good."
Christian and pagan
When analyzing the inscription, Snyder also noticed some similarities with
funeral epigrams composed for non-Christians. In those inscriptions, the
wedding imagery is used in a tragic way. [After Death: 8 Burial Alternatives
Going Mainstream]
One example, written about 2,100 years ago, reads in part:
I am Theophila, short-lived daughter of Hecateus. The ghosts of the
unmarried dead were courting me, a young maiden, for marriage, Hades
outstripped
the others and seized me, for he desired me, looking upon me as a Persephone
more desirable than Persephone. And when he carved the letters on her
tombstone, he wept for the girl Theophila from Sinope, her father Hecateus,
who
composed the wedding torches not for marriage but for Hades...
(Translation by Gregory Snyder)
"Typically, that wedding imagery is tragic," said Snyder. "Here's the
promising young person entering into the prime of life, suddenly snatched away,
and betrothed, married to Hades."
What the second-century Christian inscription does is turn this convention
on its head. "They're playing with that... it's not decline, it's looking
forward to a new life."
Snyder said that the mix of Christian and pagan traditions in the
inscription is striking. He told LiveScience that he's studied early Christian
paintings on the Via Latina that mix biblical themes, such as the story of
Samson or the raising of Lazarus, along with figures from classical mythology,
like that of Hercules.
"Those kinds of things I find particularly interesting, because they seem
to suggest a period of time in which a Christian identity is flexible,"
Snyder said. "Is it just a simple either/or between pagan and Christian?" he
asked. "Or is there really something rather like a spectrum? Or are you
really sort of both in certain respects?"
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