Saturday, May 30, 2009

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 1

This mosaic was discovered near the Cardo market street in Caesarea:
Can anyone tell me which New Testament passage it is from?

(I'll buy a coffee for the winner next time they visit Caronport.)

14 comments:

John Ottens said...

Romans 13.3

Ryan and Pamela said...

It's Rom. 13:3, roughly translated, " Do you wish you have no fear of authority? Do good."

Isaac Gross said...

Ok, so why am I seeing a C shape where the sigma is? That was my guess, for theis and the sthai ending, but where is the epsilon in phobeisthai?

I claim a later editor. Proof? Irrelevant. My hypothesis is backed up by other tentative, though of course, highly probable proposals.

You should do more of these. This was fun.

Isaac Gross said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Isaac Gross said...

*theleis

Anonymous said...

Shoot, I was beat.

θέλεις μὴ φοβεῖσθαι τὴν ἐξουσίαν· τὸ ἀγαθὸν ποίει

(Rom 13:3)

What a fascinating quote to engrave on the ground! What else do we know about this?

Pastor David Vandervelde said...

I guess my Greek is not as rusty as I thought. Of course, I'm too late.

Blessings,

David

Brian Small said...

Isaac, ancient sigmas did look like C's. The missing epsilon in phobeisthai looks like an error.

Anonymous said...

Quite an interesting find!

Isaac Gross said...

That's kind of cool. So does this version of the capital sigma help date the inscription? And when does the capital sigma come in that we use now?

Randall Buth said...

FOBEISQAI φοβεισθαι was
spelled φοβισθαι because both EI and I, that is ει and ι , were pronounced as [i] (like English 'ee' in feet) in the post Alexander the Great era and throught the christian millenia.
for more on the spelling, see www.biblicalulpan.org and the PDF under 'greek materials'.

Why the quote? It was in the government office for public accounts and taxes and was an encouragement to pay in full. :-).

Anonymous said...

Where can we find out more info about this mosaic?

d. miller said...

That was fast! John and Ryan, coffee's on me.

I've posted a follow-up with more information on the inscription here.

Brian Small said...

Isaac, I don't know the answer to your question about the sigma. All I know is that it often looks like a C in ancient inscriptions. Mr. Buth's explanation of the missing epsilon makes sense to me. He is describing a process called itacism.