Biblical Archaeology Review

Israel Finkelstein, Ze’ev Herzog, Lily Singer-Avitz and David Ussishkin, “Has King David’s Palace in Jerusalem Been Found?” Tel Aviv 34 (2007), pp. 142–164.

Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006).

The Jewish War, VI.431.

The Jewish War, VI.429.

Glen Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), p. 3.

Charlotte Roueché, Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1989), pp. 85–93; Polymnia Athanassiadi, Damascius, the Philosophical History. Text with Translation and Notes (Athens: Apamea, 1999), pp. 202–233, 248–249, 284–285, 348–349.

Mitchell, “The Cult of Theos Hypsistos Between Pagans, Jews, and Christians”; Dietric Alex-Koch, “The God-fearers Between Facts and Fiction: Two Theosebeis-Inscriptions from Aphrodisias and Their Bearing for the New Testament,” Studia Theologica 60 (2006), pp. 62–90.

Perhaps we can narrow the dates even further. The donation of the 55 Jews and 52 theosebeis on Face I probably belongs to the short period of religious tolerance between Galerius’s tolerance decree (311 C.E.) and the more aggressive measures for the establishment of Christianity under Theodosius I (380 C.E.). The more advanced letterforms and the larger number of Biblical names on Face II support the assumption that the second text was inscribed later, probably sometime in the early fifth century. In 418 C.E.

For instance, six names (Acholios, Adolios, Anikios, Heortasios, Oxycholios and Patrikios) appear in the record at least one generation after the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 C.E. Another four names (Amantios, Anysios, Eupeithios and Manikios) are not attested until at least one century after the early date. A few other cases should suffice. In the case of Eusebios, 90 percent of the attestations of this name in inscriptions and papyri are after c. 200. In the case of Eutropios, it is 95 percent. In the case of Gregorios, 97 percent.

Helga Botermann, “Griechisch-jüdische Epigraphik: Zur Datierung der Aphrodisias-Inschriften,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 98 (1993), pp. 187–192; Marianne Palmer Bonz, “The Jewish Donor Inscriptions from Aphrodisias: Are They Both Third-Century, and Who Are the Theosebeis?” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 76 (1994), pp.