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  • From: "Tsalampouni Ekaterini" <etsalampouni AT hotmail.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re:Why were Gentiles attracted to Christianity?
  • Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 20:02:14 +0300


Dave Hindley wrote:
....your Thessalonican case (no date
> given, some sort of dedication with what appears to be an
> attempt to transliterate the Tetragrammaton, IOUES),

Dear Sir,

thank you for your remarks. First of all I would like to add regarding the
reference to the above quotation from your mail, that in the case of
Thessalonica we are not dealing with one insciption but with about 7 (9 to
be precise since two more are going to be published in the new corpus of
Thessalonian inscriptions). The above mentioned which contains the letters
IOUES is a dedication to the deity but the letters are not regarded as a
transliteration of the Tetragrammaton but rather the beginnings of a name
IOU(lios) ES....? This is the opinion of Louis Robert and some other
epigraphists. Besides no such transliteration of Tetragrammaton is attested
anywhere.
The 7 inscriptions from Thessalonica are all dated in the mid of the 1st
century, a very interesting date in my opinion since it coincides with the
presence of Paul in the town. What is interesting about these inscriptions
is the fact that most of them are related to a thiasos (a cult association)
of the deity. Three of them mention the name of the association, its members
were called synklitai, which means that their typical way of worshipping was
a common meal. Interesting indeed! You mention in your mail that the members
of such associations were humble artisans or slaves. Well this is not the
case in Thessalonica. Most of the members of the association and the other
worshippers are Roman citizens or free citizens of the city. Some of the
Roman citizens must have been freedmen of Roman families which established
business agencies in the Roman East and used their freedmen as agents to
promote their interests. These persons belong to a middle city class with
high geographical and social mobility. This is an interesting aspect, too. I
believe that such persons were highly useful to Christianity. There is no
evidence in these inscriptions that the worshippers were of Jewish origin.
I must admit that the case of Bosporus is quite different. We have got
manumissions in the Jewish synagogue and dedications to the Most High God.
However when searching the epigraphical material of the Theos Hypsistos cult
I found only a few cases where the deity should be connected with the Jewish
god. There are some bizzare dedications to Theos Hypsistos, the Angels and
the Sacred Refuge but one cannot be quite sure that one has a Jewish cult
here. There are also some dedications made to Theos Hypsistos together with
other deities, which indicates that the boundaries are not so clear-cut. I
would prefer to be a little bit cautious in these cases. This is why I am
saying that the identification of Jews, God-fearers and worhippers of Theos
Hypsistos is too easy. It cannot be proven since in most cases the
worshippers behave like normal Gentile worhippers. My theory is that the
Theos Hypsistos cult is the product of a certain era when Judaism (but not
only Judaism) had an important influence and when the population of the
eastern part of the empire felt an extreme need to put an order in the
divine system of gods and put one of them above all the others and name it
Theos Hypsistos. This could mean that this Theos Hypsistos cult had many
monotheistic trends, but the deity should not always be equated with the God
of Jews. It is possible that some of the worhippers of the deity were also
God fearers who frequented to the local synagogue. Their attraction to
Judaism did not prevent them from being worhippers of other deities as well.
It could also be possible that some of them also became members of the
Pauline communities, but we cannot state that they could be equated. I must
mention here the case of the Hypsistarians in Early Byzantine Cappadocia who
according to Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianze worshipped a
transcendent deity on mountains and called him Hypsistos. No reference is
made here to a Jewish origin of the deity.
Well, this long e-mail could be regarded as a first answer to your remarks.
I hope they give you some clues.

Regards
Dr. Ekaterini Tsalampouni





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