The world’s finest collection of early Christian sarcophagi is in the Museo Pio Cristiano, inside the Vatican Museums complex. This guided tour will introduce participants to this collection first hand, focusing on the development of the vocabulary (symbolic and biblical scenes) and syntax (design and iconography) of these manifestations of third- and fourth-century art and faith. For a preview of some of the sarcophagi, go to this site. (For the best virtual tour: Click on the numeral 1 [page 1, at the bottom left] first, then on first photo [the "Via Saleria"] to initiate the identification of individual scenes in automatically translated English, then click on next to continue.)

Early Kassite history, that of the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries BCE is still shrouded in obscurity, due to the lack of clear and trustworthy contemporary sources. The reconstruction of its chronology and political history heavily relies on later evidence from kinglists and chronicles. This dearth of material for the early Kassite period has rightfully led to labelling it the "Dark Ages" of Babylonian history. A tablet in the private collection of Shlomo Moussaieff contains an inscription by Kaštiliaš, son of Burnaburiaš, descendant/grandson (dumu dumu) of Agum. It recounts the king's digging of the Sumundar Canal in order to bring water to Nippur. Although hard to establish beyond doubt, the inscription does not appear to be a late copy. The present paper aims to identify the Kaštiliaš mentioned in the new inscription, and to evaluate the implications of this identification for early Kassite history.

There have been number of scholars who have attempted to determine the type of language used by Luke in the writing of his Gospel and Acts, with a number suggesting that there might be parallels with the Atticism movement. This article begins with an in-depth analysis of the nature of Atticism and its affect on the literary world particularly in the second century AD. Following this, the perspectives of Albert Wifstrand and Loveday Alexander will be evaluated which confirm that the label of “Atticism” and attempting to find its literary features within Luke-Acts is anachronistic and should be discussed in terms of “classicisms”. In light of this, Alexander has attempted to view Luke-Acts through the concepts of dialect and register, which is a positive step for understanding the motivations for language choice. This article pushes Alexander’s linguistic understanding and attempts to refine it by further developing the linguistic idea of register and including the concept of genre as a cultural construct that influences the choice of register, which in turn dictates the selection of dialect within a piece of writing.

The Kuntillet Ajrud Hebrew inscriptions of ca. 800 BCE, has much to contribute to many aspects of ancient Israel. Now that our study of the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions is completed, and will be soon published, it is a proper time to bring to the public the results of our study. It became quite clear that all the inscriptions were written in Hebrew, although in two different scripts: Hebrew and Phoenician. The inscriptions in Hebrew script were written in the northern dialect, as spoken and written by the people inhabiting the kingdom of Israel, but those in Phoenician script represent the Judean dialect. The fluency of the writing, the style and fixed epistolary formulas and blessings, and the high quality of the poetic texts, in such a small peripheral site like Kuntillet Ajrud, testify to the level of literacy in Israel and Judah in ca. 800 BCE. As to religion, it seems that the people who composed the texts, whether from Israel or from Judah, shared a common religion, and adhered to the worship of YHWH. Onomastics, as well as the blessing formulas and the poetic texts allude to the monotheistic tendency of the composers of the texts. As expected, special treatment is dedicated to the place of the asherah in the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions, as well as in the inscriptions from Makkedah (Khirbet el Qom), in the light of biblical texts.

kuriakon deipnon is a Hapaxlegomena of extraordinary significance for New Testament studies. Scholars usually affrim the kuriakon deipnon as the Eucharist in 1Corinthians 11. This paper will show that kuriakon deipnon is not to be understood as a terminus technicus for the Eucharist but rather for a ritual – the Hellenistic meal. The paper looks at the structure of Hellenistic meals to show that the ritual, described by Paul matches the overall social practice. M.Klinghardt, D.Smith and H.Taussig understand the ritual as a semi-private social act which allowed the participants to experiment with social variables so that they could put new social alternatives into practice. In 1Corinthians 11 Paul names this experimentation idion deipnon and criticizes their emphasis for it. Instead he is expecting the practice of the kuriakon deipnon. Knowing that the ritual expresses problematic social realities makes us understand that by giving the ritual another name Paul deals as much with the audience as he does with the given social reality of the audience. Paul expresses an individual and a social critique. The connection between utopian and experienced social realities is best described by discussing the role of the symposiarch, the leader of the meal, who had a limited role within the meal practice, because the course of the meal was defined by the common culture and was not directed through individual leadership. 1Corinthinas 11 is the only text which describes Jesus as the symposiarch. Paul is making his social critique: Jesus, not the Roman Emperor, is the leader of the ritual and his individual critique: it is the responsibility to the community to make the ritual work. The paper puts exegetical work into socio-historical practice and shows that the kuriakon deipnon became a Pauline topoi for the utopian Hellenistic meal.

During the past ten years a shift has occurred in the study of the weekly gatherings of the early Christians. The essence of this new approach can be formulated as follows: the local early Christian community, looked at sociologically, functioned as a voluntary religious association. In the Greco-Roman world of the first century CE, such associations were numerous. The main expression of all religious voluntary associations was a periodical gathering, which had a bipartite structure: a supper and a contiguous drinking party. This applies also to the early Christian congregations. Although the early Christian gathering had the same twofold structure, the emphasis in current scholarship has been predominantly on the study of the first part, that is, on the supper, also called the Eucharist. Less attention has been given to the study of the second part, which corresponds to the symposium of the Greco-Roman banquet. Before the paradigm shift in the nineties of the last century, much work was done on what was called “the service of the Word,” that is, the Christian gathering consisting of prayer, reading and preaching but without the Eucharist. Scholars, who studied the origins of the different components of the Christian gatherings (reading, preaching and singing), traced them back to Jewish gatherings in the synagogue. However, as appears from the descriptions of communal gatherings of early Christians, reading, preaching and singing were parts of the whole “package” that consisted of a supper plus a symposium. Consequently, the elements of the non-eucharistic part of the Christian gathering, such as reading, preaching and singing, have to be studied anew, and against the background of the Graeco-Roman banquet. This paper seeks to argue that the reading of Scripture, preaching and singing in the early Christian gatherings have their historical background in the reading of texts, preaching and singing during the Graeco-Roman symposium.

In this paper I'll try to show a different approach to the story of Judah and Tamar. According to my reading this story presents a pro-Judahite position, favoring an open attitude toward the integration of the local populace as a way of strengthening and consolidating the people, while depicting the superiority of Judah as a source of future political hope (Perez-David). The depiction of positive relationship between Judah and the Canaanite teaches me that the story was composed by a member of the universalist movement, which sought to bring in the strangers and opposed the isolationism that characterized the Deuteronomistic movement, whose position would later be favored by Ezra and Nehemiah. This story became an integral part of was inserted in the story of Joseph, because it harmonized with the aim of promoting the figure of Judah vis-a-vis the northerners, the people of Samaria, who regarded themselves as the descendants of the House of Joseph, and vis-à-vis the Benjamites, depicted in the Joseph story as the youngest and best-loved brother, as well as with the desire for demographic expansion involving the full integration of all interested elements. These aims correspond with the early years of the Second Temple and also express the world-view of the school of Holiness, which was established as a reaction to the Deuteronomistic and Priestly schools, i.e., in the Babylonian exile, and was effective in the beginning of the Second Temple period.