Abstract
A new series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, aims to present systematically all the inscriptions of Judaea/Palestine. The first two volumes, covering Jerusalem and Caesarea, are briefly reviewed here, and some implications for aspects of New Testament study are noted.
Keywords
This ambitious project, the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, aims to collect in multiple volumes all ancient inscriptions from—to borrow the diplomatic language of the title—Iudaea/Palaestina. The first two volumes have now appeared, in three ‘books’; the first volume is published in two parts. These two volumes cover Jerusalem and Caesarea (with the Middle Coast), and each contains over a thousand inscriptions. It is interesting that as recently as 2005/2006, Pieter van der Horst (it seems, following information from Jonathan Price and Hannah Cotton, two of the editors of CII/P) projected that the corpus of inscriptions from the land of Israel in toto would amount to ‘1800 or more’ (2006: 86). The first two volumes alone run from 1 to 2160, however, and according to the publisher, there are four more volumes planned: volume III on the South Coast, volume IV on Judaea/Idumea, volume V on the Negev and volume VI covering Galilee, with the publication of the whole corpus intended to be completed by 2018.
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The inscriptions published so far range from the fourth century
As far as format is concerned, the volumes so far each contain introductions to the geographical locations: the introduction to Jerusalem is an extremely helpful essay collecting together and analysing literary and archaeological evidence within the period; the Caesarea volume also contains briefer introductory essays on Apollonia-Arsuf, Castra Samaritanorum, Dora/Dor, Mikhmoret and Sycamina. Thereafter, the first Jerusalem volume is divided (slightly artificially) into ‘A. Inscriptions of a religious and public character’, ‘B. Funerary inscriptions’, ‘C. Instrumentum domesticum’ and ‘D. Varia’. 2 The Caesarea volume has a rather more complex arrangement, with 12 subdivisions (labelled A–M, without J!). Each inscription is given a date and carefully introduced (with details about the relevant object’s decoration and dimensions), with text (and apparatus detailing where relevant other editors’ transcriptions), photograph, transliteration and translation, followed by commentary and bibliography. The volumes conclude with indices of personal names and well-designed maps. There are some inscriptions hitherto unpublished (e.g., the ossuary §532).
By comparison with similar publications, the method of presentation in these CII/P volumes compares very favourably. Probably the greatest benefit lies in having photographs accompanying almost every item, rather than at the end of a volume or selectively or not at all. On the other hand, it is a little frustrating that there are not more indices. By comparison with, for example, the Cambridge Hebrew inscriptions project (Davies 1991, 2004), there is no word-in-context concordance in CII/P. The Horbury/Noy collection of Jewish inscriptions of Western Europe and Graeco-Roman Egypt (Horbury and Noy 1992; Noy 1993, 1995) contains a great number of indices of notable features, offices held by those mentioned and other religious and formulaic items of vocabulary. The same extensive range of indices appears in volumes I (Eastern Europe) and III (Syria and Cyprus) of the Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis series, as one might expect given Noy’s participation (Noy, Panyatov and Bloedhom 2004; Noy and Bloedhom 2004); volume II covering Asia Minor, by Walter Ameling (one of the CII/P editors), has a more modest set of indices covering Personennamen, Datierungen, Geographica und Ethnica, Verba, Grabmult (a reference to the fine incurred by someone tampering with a grave), Latein and Hebräisch. One therefore cannot find, for example, all the references to ‘qorban’ or to priests in CII/P (though Roman emperors and other kings are separated in the index of names). On the other hand, extensive indices in the cases of Jerusalem and Caesarea under discussion here would have required not merely longer books but additional volumes. The editors do express regret for this absence, and indicate a plan to produce a general index for all the volumes, with an index promised on the Internet in the meantime (I/1.viii). An additional difference between these volumes and other corpora of Jewish inscriptions is that the CII/P volumes are organized geographically, rather than on ethnic or religious grounds, and so one sees side by side clearly Jewish inscriptions alongside those of the Roman occupiers—this is not a corpus inscriptionum iudaicarum, even if, in combination with collections of Jewish inscriptions already published, this series will render Frey (1936/1952) obsolete (van der Horst 2006). (The CII/P editors are therefore able to avoid the knotty question of what constitutes a ‘Jewish inscription’.) As noted, the presence of the photographs of every inscription, alongside the text and discussion, is a distinct advantage of CII/P over parallel projects.
Some of the inscriptions in the corpus will be of greater interest to readers of JSNT than will others. The material of most direct relevance to New Testament study comes from the first part-volume (Volume I, Part 1, covering Jerusalem up to c. 70
The editors naturally include the inscriptions (§§473-78) from the East Talpiot burial cave which has occasioned some excitement. 4 The combination of an inscription on one of the ossuaries in the cave about ‘Yeshu‘a(?) son of Yehosef’ (§474) with others such as ‘Maria’ (§476) has led to the cave being christened ‘the Jesus family tomb’. The editors are wisely cautious here, however, remarking that a connection with Jesus of Nazareth is ‘highly questionable’ (I/1: 496). 5 The names are extremely common, and indeed there is another inscription in the volume with a ‘Jesus son of Joseph’ (§547). The editors apply the same reserve in their assessment of the James ossuary, 6 with its inscription ‘Ya‘akov son of Yosef brother of Yeshu‘a’ (§531). This reserve extends both to the authenticity of the ossuary’s inscription, and to its reference to Jesus of Nazareth: ‘if the box is genuine, attribution to the brother of the historical Jesus is groundless’ (I/1.548).
The CII/P inscriptions shed some light on priests in the NT period. The so-called ‘Caiaphas cave’ (§§461-65) contained approximately 63 sets of bones, but only five individuals are identified on the ossuaries. That mentioning a certain Yehosef son of Qyp’ (אפיק, or possibly אפוק), on an ossuary containing the remains of a man about 60 years old (§461), has prompted the question of whether this is the Caiaphas of the Gospels. He is never called Joseph in the NT, but is called Ιώσηπος ὁ Καϊάφας and Ιώσηπος ὁ Καϊάφας ἐπικαλούμενος by Josephus (AJ 18.35; 18.95).
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Identifying the Yehosef on this ossuary with Caiaphas is risky, however: the editors take particularly seriously the problems of the ‘careless and amateurish’ inscription (though the ossuary design itself is very ornate), and of the coin in the skull of the Miriam in the same cave (§462). A more certain reference to someone at least connected with ‘our’ Caiaphas appears in an ossuary which was presumably made known too late to be included in CII/P: that of ‘Mariam daughter of Yeshua bar Qayafa, priest from Maaziah from Bet Imri’ (see Bauckham 2012). Another ossuary (§534) mentions Caiaphas’s successor, Theophilus (High Priest 37–41
The word qorban (חברק) appears on several of the Jerusalem ossuary inscriptions in a formulaic manner:
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Whatever benefit a man may derive from this ossuary (is a) qorban to God from him who is in it. (§287) Any man who derives benefit from it (= the ossuary)—qorban! Any man (who derives benefit from the ossuary)—qorban! Q(orban)! Q(orban)! Q(orban)! (§466) Ḥananiya and Shalom. Ḥananiya. Any man (who) benefits (from this ossuary)—Qorban! Ḥananiya and Shalom. (§528)
The same applies on the less sensitive matter of the contents of jars. Two instances of this, again from Jerusalem, are supplied in the corpus: one is a handle of a limestone vessel on which is inscribed חברק (§8), and another on a fragment of a jar inscribed ‘Son of Jason, qorban. Q(orban)’ (§643). The abbreviation ‘Q’ here, as well as in §466 (tris) above is explained by the statement in the Mishnah: ‘If a man found a vessel and on it was inscribed a Qof, this is Qorban’ (m. Ma’aser Sheni 4.12). As in the Gospels parallels, the ossuaries are marked by a vow, such that they cannot be used for any purpose except for the burial of the ‘author’ of the qorban. According to the editors (following Benovitz), the vow would only come into effect on the violation of the instruction, i.e. the ossuary—insofar as it is used by a violator of the vow—becomes a qorban. Similarly, the editors take the reference in Mk 7 (and parallels) to refer to any property under the qorban vow which parents may receive from the son’s property to become devoted to the temple at the moment of that alien usage (I/1.308). This is not clear-cut, however: it is difficult to decide between this view and the idea that the item marked qorban really is thought to be (at least technically) consecrated to God. 12
According to some scholars, a historical problem arises in the ‘Render unto Caesar’ episode because of the lack of evidence for denarii in circulation in Judaea in the time of Jesus.
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Among the various coins found in Jerusalem from the period, there are few if any denarii, although there is a hoard of coins from near Isfiya on Mount Carmel which does contain denarii both of Augustus and (to a lesser extent) Tiberius.
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This lack of evidence may be partially mitigated by the epigraphic evidence, if the CII/P editors are correct in their evaluation of it. One long account on a first-century
One of the most striking features of the inscriptions is the quantity of Greek in Jerusalem, which serves as a constant reminder to resist the logic of statements such as: ‘Since the author wrote in Greek, he may well have resided in a Jewish community outside of Palestine’. 15 To take the ossuaries as a sample, there are 590 inscribed ossuaries, 16 and of these approximately 125 (over one quarter) are basically Greek inscriptions with Greek names; roughly 70 are in Greek with Hebrew names; about 40 are bilingual (or ‘bi-alphabetical’); 20 or so contain Greek names in Hebrew script. Thus about 40 percent of the ossuaries contain Greek script or Greek names. There are also interesting combinations. In the ossuary of the grand-daughter of Theophilos the high priest (§534), the inscription is in Aramaic, with Theophilus’s Greek name written as םולפת; moreover, ‘it is noteworthy that while the inscription is in Aramaic, the title “high priest” remains in Hebrew’ (I/1.551). Latin names also appear, written in Greek (e.g., Gaius, in §20; Secunda, in §171; Rufus, in §385, and various others), but one also finds a Gaius as םואג in §60, and conversely a Iohana, הנחוי, in Latin script (§40). There is overall very little Latin in the Jerusalem inscriptions from around the time of Jesus. Many of the Greek names are those which one might regard as conventionally pious, such as Dositheos (§332, 375-76) and Theodoros (§436), but there also appear those with more ‘pagan’ associations such as Eros (§294) and Psyche (§584): given that the names appear on ossuaries of typically Jewish design, they are almost certainly Jewish names, although these last two are unique here in the Jewish onomasticon (I/1.318).
In conclusion, these volumes are, and the series as a whole will be, the definitive collection of inscriptions from Israel/Palestine for years to come. The first two volumes alone are a magnificent achievement, and will prove even more useful if a comprehensive index is later published. This collection should be the first port of call for a sober verdict on any inscription which may be of relevance to NT study. In fact, every NT scholar would benefit greatly from idling away a morning or an afternoon going through the texts of these inscriptions. 17
Footnotes
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Hannah M. Cotton, Leah Di Segni, Werner Eck, Benjamin Isaac, Alla Kushnir-Stein, Haggai Misgav, Jonathan Price and Ada Yardeni (eds.), Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. I. Jerusalem (in two parts). 1-1120 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010). Walter Ameling, Hannah M. Cotton, Werner Eck, Benjamin Isaac, Alla Kushnir-Stein, Haggai Misgav, Jonathan Price and Ada Yardeni (eds.), Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. II. Caesarea and the Middle Coast. 1121-2160 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010).
2.
Only occasionally does the artificiality prove a difficulty: it is odd, for example, that one fragmentary vessel inscribed with ‘qorban’ is included under ‘A’ whereas another comes under ‘C’. See further the discussion of these below.
3.
Some of these may be of interest to readers, however: §§1334-35 contain quotations of Rom. 13.3 in a revenue office.
4.
I refer to the cave discovered in the early 1980s, not the more recently discovered ‘Patio’ or Talpiot B tomb. See, e.g., Meyers et al. 2006. A sensationalizing account can be found in 
.
5.
Cf. ‘There is no sound reason to connect any ossuary in this tomb to any known historical figure’ (I/1.497).
7.
For the debate, see Horbury 1994 and .
8.
The reference to the ‘pen’ is presumably to their oppressive laws.
9.
‘Woe is me because of the House of Kathros, woe is me because of their pens… For they are the High Priests, and their sons are treasurers, and their sons-in-law are trustees, and their servants beat the people with staves’ (b. Pes. 57a).
10.
Other examples at least as late as this also appear in Galilee.
11.
Cf. §605: ‘Closed. By the (daily) lamb (offering, it is forbidden) to change/harm (this ossuary) and to bury any other main with him (the deceased) in this ossuary. Closed. Closed.’
12.
The editors may well be right, however, that a third view, the idea that the object under the qorban vow ‘held the status of an offering but was not really one, is a later rabbinic development’ (I/1.308, following Benovitz).
15.
16.
See §§18-608 (574 is ‘cancelled’, and has no inscription corresponding to it).
17.
I am grateful to Professor Richard Bauckham and Dr James Aitken for reading an earlier draft of this review, and for their insightful comments on a number of inscriptions.