Recherche – Detailansicht

Ausgabe:

Juli/August/2014

Spalte:

681–865

Kategorie:

Judaistik

Autor/Hrsg.:

Ed. by H. M. Cotton, L. Di Segni, W. Eck, B. Isaac, A. Kushnir-Stein, H. Misgav, J. Price, I. Roll, A. Yardeni. With the assistance of M. Heimbach, N. Schneider.

Titel/Untertitel:

Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae. A multi-lingual corpus of the inscriptions from Alexander to Muhammad.

Verlag:

Vol. I: Jerusalem. Part 1: 1–704. With contributions by D. Feissel, E. Lupu, M. Stone. Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2010. XXIV, 694 S. m zahlr. Abb. Geb. EUR 159,95. ISBN 978-3-11-022219-7. Part 2: 705–1120. With contributions by R. Daniel, D. Feissel, R. Hoyland, R. Kool, E. Lupu, M. Stone, Y. Tchekhanovets. Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2012. XVI, 572 S. m. zahlr. Abb., Ktn. u. Tab. Geb. EUR 139,95. ISBN 978-3-11-025188-3.

Rezensent:

William Horbury

Neben dem angegebenen Titel in dieser Rezension besprochen:

Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae. A multi-lingual corpus of the inscriptions from Alexander to Muhammad. Ed. by W. Ameling, H. M. Cotton, L. Di Segni, W. Eck, B. Isaac, A. Kushnir-Stein, H. Misgav, J. Price, I. Roll, A. Yardeni. With the assistance of M. Heimbach, N. Schneider. Vol. II: Caesarea and the Middle Coast 1121–2160. With contributions by R. Daniel, A. Ecker, M. Shenkar, C. Sode. Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2011. XXIV, 918 S. m. zahl. Abb. u. Ktn. Geb. EUR 189,95. ISBN 978-3-11-022217-3.


Publication of early volumes of this corpus (designated CIIP) has been a great event for all students of Hellenistic and Roman Judaea, its history and religions. The period covered runs from Alexander the Great up to the Arab conquest. Nine volumes in all are planned. The first appeared in two parts, and is reviewed here together with the second volume. The third volume, on the southern coastline with its hinterland, is announced for May 2014.
CIIP embraces in principle all Judaean inscriptions of its period, whatever language or community they represent. This generous scope recalls the work of epigraphists like C. Clermont-Ganneau, who ranged indifferently over Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic discoveries in Palestine. In their preface to the first part of volume I H. M. Cotton and W. Eck, on behalf of all the editors, state that their aim is ›a comprehensive multilingual corpus of all inscriptions, both published and (so far as possible) unpublished‹, encompassing Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic (including Nabataean and Syriac), Thamudic and Safaitic, Armenian and Georgian.
The editors draw a contrast between current sensitivity to ›native‹ as well as ›imperial‹ languages, and the predominance of the ›im-perial‹ Greek and Latin in the great epigraphic corpora of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The sharpness of this contrast could perhaps have been tempered a little. Thus the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin, 1863 onwards) was followed by a Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (Paris, 1881 onwards), with an accompanying Répertoire d’épigraphie sémitique (1900 onwards) which includes many Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions now entered in CIIP. At the same time an historian like E. Schürer was drawing attention to Judaean inscriptions in ›native‹ as well as ›imperial‹ languages.
Other collections which prepared the way for CIIP sorted their material on both linguistic and communal lines, but within the limits of concentration on Greek, Latin or Jewish inscriptions still aimed at breadth. Thus, Jewish and Christian as well as what for convenience may be called ›pagan‹ inscriptions appeared in the regional surveys of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum and in two forerunners of CIIP volumes I and II, respectively: P. Thomsen, Die lateinischen und griechischen Inschriften der Stadt Jerusalem und ihrer nächsten Umgebung (Leipzig 1922), with its 1941 supplement (ZDPV 64, 203–56), and C. M. Lehmann & K. G. Holum, The Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Caesarea Maritima (Boston, Massachusetts, 2000). On the other hand, collections restricted to Jewish inscriptions were wide-ranging in respect of languages, as seen in other predecessors of CIIP like S. Klein, Jüdisch-palästinisches Corpus Inscriptionum (Berlin 1920), the presentation of Jewish inscriptions in his Sepher ha-Yishuv (2 vols., Jerusalem 1939, 1944), the Palestinian section of the second volume of J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum (CIJ: Rome 1952), and L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Is-rael (Jerusalem 1994).
Now in CIIP, however, it is as if the separate enterprises represent­ed in the 1920s by Thomsen and Klein, respectively, have fruitfully come together. Historians and exegetes who study Greek and Roman Judaea can here gratefully consult one corpus which spans linguistic and communal divisions. Scattered published material is gathered in, and many inscriptions are now published for the first time. – The editors state that their brief has been ›the collection of all the material known so far and its presentation in commonly ac-cepted scientific form‹. Each inscription has wherever possible been reviewed by autopsy. An entry typically includes a photograph or drawing, transcription and English translation, bibliography, and a helpful commentary, full where necessary. Initials indicate the editor(s) responsible for each entry.
Personal names in the inscriptions are indexed at the end of the first and the second volume. A general index is planned, but in these volumes there is no further indexing, and no concordance of CIIP numbers with those of entries in other large corpora. CIIP follows such corpora in the arrangement of entries. Religious, governmental, funerary, and building inscriptions, and instrumentum domesticum, form separate classes; but under these headings an attempt is made to keep inscriptions found at a given site together. Concise and informative essays by B. Isaac introduce the history and topography of Jerusalem and Aelia Capitolina, Caesarea, and other places treated in Volume II: Apollonia/Arsuf, Castra Samaritanorum, Dora, Sycamina, and the modern Mikhmoret, the find-spot of an inscribed lead token on the coast south of Caesarea (the name of an ancient settlement excavated here is unknown).
In Part 1 of the first volume, on Jerusalem down to its fall in the year 70, Jewish texts from the late Hasmonaean period onwards predominate. They include the multitude of ossuary inscriptions. Contacts between common Jewish names on these ossuaries and New Testament names help to document the Jewish onomasticon, but have from time to time brought over-optimistic identifica-tions, an approach treated with sane dissent for example on CIIP 473–8, the subjects of the ›Jesus family tomb controversy‹, and CIIP 479–80, E. L. Sukenik’s ›earliest records of Christianity‹. Another aspect of these inscriptions with significance for New Testament study was brought out in a review of their attestation of the use of Greek, on the basis of Rahmani’s work, by M. Hengel, with C. Markschies, in Hengel, Judaica et Hellenistica. Kleine Schriften I (Tübingen 1996), 17–20.
Instrumentum domesticum in this Part includes many Aramaic or Hebrew ostraca and jar fragments (A. Yardeni and J. J. Price), and weights, including many of Agrippa I (Alla Kushnir-Stein). A par-tic­ularly substantial contribution to the entire Part comes from Price, who is solely or jointly responsible for most of the entries, often in the case of Semitic-language material collaborating with H. Misgav. Many inscriptions are considered further in the chapter by Price and Misgav in S. Safrai et al. (eds.), The Literature of the Sages, Part 2 (Assen 2006), and in J. J. Price, ›The Jewish Population of Jerusalem from the First Century B. C. E. to the early Second Century C. E.: the Epigraphic Record‹, in M. Popovi (ed.), The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Leiden/Boston 2011), 399–417.
Jerusalem after 70, including Aelia, is treated in Part 2 of VolumeI. Here non-Jewish inscriptions predominate, with much Latin as well as Greek. The poorly-documented local history from Vespasian to Bar Kokhba is illustrated by material related to Legio X Fretensis, including clay stamps and funerary inscriptions, and then, at the time of Trajan’s Parthian war and possible unrest in Judaea under his governor Quietus, by a celebrated dedication to Serapis from a unit of Legio III Cyrenaica; but a dedication to the Genius of Africa, sometimes also related to the Mauretanian Quietus, is judged to be linked more probably with Septimius Severus (Eck on CIIP 706). Fragmentary building inscriptions from Aelia constitute a small but important group. The second and longer section of this Part deals with material from Constantine to the Arab conquest, including many church building inscriptions and Christian epitaphs. At the end addenda to Volume I, Part 1 constitute entries 1088– 1120, and an appendix of fifty-four further entries, by L. Di Segni, gathers other inscriptions not already included, from the period covered by both Parts of Volume I. W. Eck, who contributes extensively on Latin inscriptions here and in Volume II, has treated many of them historically in publications including Rom und Judaea (Tübingen 2007).
Volume II, for which W. Ameling joins the editors, is mainly occupied by the chapter on Caesarea and its immediate surround­ings (entries 1128–2107). Latin and Greek inscriptions illustrate Caesarean and Roman history from the first to the third century. They attest for example legionary units involved in aqueduct construction under Hadrian, and governors including Cossonius Gallus, c. 120, and Tineius Rufus, at the time of Bar Kokhba. Weights present the names of Tiberius, Agrippa I and Claudius. The Jewish community of Caesarea is epigraphically represented from about the third century onwards, both in Greek and in Aramaic or Hebrew. A much-discussed Hebrew text of the fourth or fifth century survives in marble fragments of a list, also exemplified elsewhere, of the twenty-four priestly courses and their Galilaean towns of residence (CIIP 1145); notable for gospel interpreters as a rare surviving Jewish reference to Nazareth, it forms as a whole an epigraphic link with synagogue poetry (piyyut). Greek Christian inscriptions are numerous from the fourth century onwards.
Comment on some entries of biblical and historical interest may help to indicate the riches and potential of the two volumes. Among famous texts from pre-70 Jerusalem is the ossuary inscription of Nicanor ›who made the gates‹ (CIIP 98 = CIJ 1256, Price and Misgav). Here the Greek lettering is boldly and to the reviewer convincingly divided, as suggested by R. A. S. Macalister, to give the otherwise unattested noun ostatôn and the sense ›ossuary of Nicanor‹ (paralleled elsewhere with other words meaning ›ossuary‹) rather than ›bones of those of Nicanor‹. The rich bibliography might have included D. Noy’s treatment found (because Nicanor was probably from Alexandria) in Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt (Cambridge 1992), no. 153.
The Greek Theodotus inscription (CIIP 9 = CIJ 1404) from the area of the ›city of David‹, south of the temple mount, attests a built synagogue and guest-house; Price here notes arguments for a se­cond-century or later date, but prefers ›the late 1 c. BCE or early 1 c. CE‹, with J. S. Kloppenborg and others, on the grounds of pa-laeography and archaeological context. This inscription then forms ›the only physical trace of a synagogue in Jerusalem in the 1. c.‹, but the interpretation is in general accord, as Price justly adds, with the depiction of synagogues in Jerusalem in literary texts including Acts.
The much-discussed ›Caiaphas‹ ossuary found south of Jerusalem in the Peace Forest at the head of the Wadi Yasul, near the Haas promenade (CIIP 461), presents in an Aramaic context a relatively rare name. The inscriptions naming Joseph bar Qepha, Qayapha or Qopha (this name appears both as the triliteral QP’ and in a quadriliteral form that can be read either QYP’ or QWP’) are judiciously interpreted, again by Price, to show that identification of Joseph with the high priest Joseph Caiaphas is a real possibility, against the background of New Testament, Josephan and rabbinic attestations of a priestly family name of this kind, but not a near-certainty. Fresh discussion has since followed the publication of another Aramaic ›Caiaphas‹ ossuary inscription, of uncertain provenance but judged after testing to be ancient, stated to come from a burial cave in the valley of Elah, near Beth Shemesh. Here the name is quadriliteral, read by the editors as QYP’; to judge by their photograph and facsimile, once again, given the indistinguishability of yodh and waw, QWP’ could also be read. This inscription, on the assumption that it is genuine, does not settle the question whether the name in CIIP 461 is that of the high priest; but it does further attest the currency of Qayapha and the like as the name of a priestly family. See B. Zissu and Y. Goren, »The Ossuary of ›Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests [of] Ma’aziah from Beth ‘Imri‹«, IEJ 61 (2011), 74–95; D. M. Jacobson, »Mariam daughter of Yeshua, Son of Caiaphas, Priest of Ma’aziah from Beth Imri«, PEQ 144 (2012), 1–3; R. Bauckham, »The Caiaphas Family«, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 10 (2012), 3–31; C. A. Rollston, »Epigraphic Notes on the Ossuary of Mariam, Daughter of Yeshua’: Limning the Broad Tableau«, IEJ 62 (2012), 233–43.
Among less well-known texts, the comments on the ossuary in-scription of Mnaso, a female name, found south of Silwan (CIIP 328 = Rahmani no. 101), note attestation of the male name Mnason among Jews in Egypt, but might also have referred to its occurrence in Acts 21:16 as the name of a Cypriot, probably Jewish and resident in or near Jerusalem. Ossuaries from near Shuafat (CIIP 416–440 = CIJ 1215–1239, with a different order) published in 1913 by F.-M. Abel are reconsidered; attesting a family from northern Syria (the comment notes the probable burial of queen Helen of Adiabene not far away, in the ›Tomb of the Kings‹), they can now, as Price notes with caution in ›The Jewish Population of Jerusalem‹, also possibly be viewed together with more recently published non-epigraphic remains, found in Shuafat, of a settlement identified as Jewish from between the years 70 and 135.
The Heis Theos formula, which spans religious divides, occurs at Apollonia (CIIP 1123 = Klein, Corpus, no. 157) and in Caesarean in-scriptions including CIIP 1177, 1183–4, 1342, 1682–3 — all of uncertain sponsorship — 1342 (probably Christian), 1684 (probably pagan), 1685 (pagan or Samaritan), and 2080 (Jewish, as shown by a menorah, shofar and lulab; here two different suggested readings of a genitive after boethi, ›help‹, a usage attested as part of later Greek disuse of the dative where in classical Greek it would be expected, are surprisingly criticized by Price as in ›the wrong case‹, although epigraphic parallels were cited in the literature on the inscription). E. Peterson had assessed the Heis Theos formula as mainly Chris-tian, but Di Segni in a survey of Palestinian material emphasized the importance of Samaritan use. Ameling on CIIP 1177, 1342, and 1685 fully accepts the range of use, but is cautious on Samaritan connections (notably on 1685, and also on 1681, Heis Zeus Sarapis) and, like Di Segni, on Jewish attribution (rejected in the case of 1123); he adds that among those inscriptions in Di Segni’s survey where the communal context is clear, Christian examples predominate.
Lastly, perhaps the single most famous item in Volume II is the Caesarean Pilate inscription mentioning a Tiberieum (CIIP 1277 = Lehmann & Holum no. 43). Eck, following G. Alföldy’s attractive restorations and argument, reads it as attesting that ›for sailors‹ (nautis) Pilate repaired (Eck finds traces of three letters of the word refecit) a lighthouse tower, like the Drusion tower by the harbour mentioned by Josephus, B. J. i 412; Ant. xv 336. The editor’s comment that the inscription has nothing to do with the emperor-cult in Judaea might perhaps be qualified to allow for the probable association of this Tiberieum tower, like Drusion, with the harbour, and for the importance at Caesarea of ›Caesar’s temple‹ opposite the harbour-mouth (Josephus, B. J. i 414; Ant. xv 339); Virgil had asked if Augustus might become the sole sea-god venerated by sailors, an »tua nautae numina sola colant« (Georg. i 29–30).
These volumes drive a reviewer to use the vocabulary of progress— so important is the advance they mark for study of ancient Judaea — and even of teleiosis — so earnest are the good wishes which the volumes evoke for completion of this indispensable work. Meanwhile, for all that is already here, warm thanks and congratulations are due to the editors.