Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

2) The involvement of the papal archeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi, even at arm's length, rings all sorts of warning bells for me. 3) The involvement of Pope Pius IX who "moved beyond collecting [Christian relics] by appointing a commission - "Commissione de archaelogia sacra" -...

I have read Ehrman's Forgery and Counter Forgery , as well as Candida Moss' Myth of Persecution , both of which deal with forgery in a limited scope. But are there are good studies that document the full scope of Christian forgery from the earliest documents up through the modern era? I'd like to g...

(1) “a figment of pious imagination” (2) 'accusations of fraud - the original eyewitnesses invented the graffito and that “in fact, probably no one ever saw it!” The above isn't critical and rational; it's a statement of prejudices. The prejudice is directed against efforts to masquerade a pious fr...

A separate thread to discuss the earliest purported Christian inscription. I have added two links to papers on the "Christianos Graffito" found at Pompeii (buried in 79 CE) in the 19th century. The discussion of the inscription has always been marred by association with far-fetched specula...

2. The earliest example of contracted nomina sacra on inscriptions Currently, I don't know whether this is true for Greek inscriptions. When I went through the Greek inscriptions, I skipped over the ones that were abbreviated, so I don't have a record of them. I also don't know anything directly ab...

2. The earliest example of contracted nomina sacra on inscriptions are the Dura-Europos graffiti in the chapel, dated A.D. 232-3 (EDE 1931/2, p.241) It should be pointed out that "contracted nomina sacra" is not a redundancy. All "nomina sacra" are abbreviated. Not all of them a...

"The use of abbreviations is, on the whole, as foreign to the Greeks as it is congenial to the Romans and Byzantines.” Do you agree with this, and if so, what do you believe that it means in concrete terms? The claim was made by Avi-Yona c.1940, a professional epigraphist, so I would tend to g...

Michael Avi-Yonah, Abbreviations in Greek Inscriptions Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine (Jerusalem: Government of Palestine, 1940) As reprinted in Abbreviations in Greek Inscriptions Al. N. Oikonomides Professor of Classics Loyola University Chicargo. Illinois ARES Publishing...

The following is from the Jewish scholar Michael Avi-Yonah (1904-74) - Professor of Archaeology and History of Art at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It seems to indicate that to his knowledge (c.1940) that the "system as described by Traube was not adopted for inscriptions before the 4th c...

Another abbreviation by suspension with the first four letters: https://inscriptions.packhum.org/text/313548?hs=26-34 CIL III 10189(12) Epeiros, Illyria, and Dalmatia : Dalmatia Χρισ(τός). And another one. https://inscriptions.packhum.org/text/262348?hs=334-342 IK Rhod. Peraia 222 ... Κ(ύρι)ε Ἰε(σο...