The metaphorical representation of sexual intercourse

Introduction

A striking difference between ancient Jewish and early Christian inscriptions is that in the former one finds only very few biblical quotations (and allusions), while in the latter they are abundant. It is the purpose of this short contribution to present a survey of the relevant material in the Jewish epigraphical record and then to compare it briefly with the situation in Christian inscriptions.

Let us begin with a demarcation of the material. First, I will not (or only minimally) deal with Jewish inscriptions in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Latin, I will limit myself to those in Greek, which form the vast majority (at least some 75 percent of the material but probably more). Second, I will also limit myself to the almost one thousand years between Alexander the Great and Muhammad;

medieval material remains outside the scope of this article. Third, I have to limit myself to published material, although well aware that there is a signifi-cant amount of evidence that still awaits publication. Fortunately, the situa-tion has dramatically improved as compared to twenty-two years ago, when I published my Ancient Jewish Epitaphs,1 a book in which I still had to rely mainly on the outdated edition of Frey2 and a handful of later publications (mainly in a wide variety of journals). In the decades since Frey, but especially in the two decades since my own book appeared, an impressive series of major publica-tions of Jewish inscription corpora saw the light and they form the basis of the present investigation. These are (in chronological order): the Greek inscrip-tions of Beth Sheʿarim by Schwabe and Lifshitz (cited as BS II);3 those of Egypt by Horbury and Noy (cited as JIGRE);4 those of Western Europe (but Rome

1 P.W. van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs: An Introductory Survey of a Millennium of Jewish Funerary Epigraphy (300 BCE–700 CE), Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991.

2 J.B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum, 2 vols., Rome: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1936–1952; reprint of vol. I with a Prolegomenon by B. Lifshitz, New York: Ktav, 1975).

3 M. Schwabe & B. Lifshitz, Beth Sheʿarim II: The Greek Inscriptions, Jerusalem: Massada Press, and New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1974.

4 W. Horbury & D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

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excluded) by Noy (cited as JIWE I);5 those of the city of Rome by Noy (cited as JIWE II);6 those of Eastern Europe by Noy, Panayotov and Bloedhorn (cited as IJO I);7 those of Asia Minor by Ameling (cited as IJO II);8 those of Syria and Cyprus by Noy and Bloedhorn (cited as IJO III).9 For North-Africa apart from Egypt we have Lüderitz’s edition of the inscriptions of ancient Libya10 and Le Bohec’s edition of the evidence from the rest of North Africa.11 Unfortunately, for Israel itself, apart from the above-mentioned volumes on Beth Sheʿarim and the partial collections of synagogue inscriptions by Roth-Gerson12 and of the ossuaries by Rahmani,13 we still have to rely partly on the outdated Frey until the full results of the new Israeli project Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/

Palaestinae (CIIP) have been published. Recently the first two volumes (out of ten) came out, covering the material from Jerusalem and (mainly) Caesarea.14

We now have at our disposal some 3500 Jewish inscriptions from antiquity, most of them in Greek, but only very few of them containing biblical quota-tions. Let us have a look at the evidence.15

5 D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe I: Italy (excluding the City of Rome), Spain and Gaul, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

6 D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe II: The City of Rome, Cambridge UK:

Cambridge University Press, 1995.

7 D. Noy, A. Panayotov, H. Bloedhorn, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis I: Eastern Europe, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.

8 W. Ameling, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis: Kleinasien, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.

9 D. Noy & H. Bloedhorn, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis: Syria and Cyprus, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.

10 G. Lüderitz, Corpus jüdischer Zeugnisse aus der Cyrenaica, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1983.

11 Y. le Bohec, ‘Inscriptions juives et judaïsantes de l’Afrique Romaine,’ Antiquités Africaines 17 (1981) 165–207.

12 L. Roth-Gerson, The Greek Inscriptions from the Synagogues in Israel, Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, 1987 (in Hebrew). See also F. Hüttenmeister & G. Reeg, Die antiken Synagogen in Israel, 2 vols., Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1977.

13 Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel, Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994.

14 H.M. Cotton, L. di Segni, W. Eck, B. Isaac, A. Kushnir-Stein, H. Misgav, J. Price, I. Roll, A. Yardeni (eds.), Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, vol. I: Jerusalem, Part 1, Berlin:

W. de Gruyter, 2010; Jerusalem, Part 2, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2011; W. Ameling, W. Eck et al., CIIP, vol. 2: Caesarea and the Middle Coast, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2011. It has to be borne in mind that the CIIP project includes all epigraphic material, not only Jewish but also pagan and Christian evidence.

15 My survey in Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 37–39, is now, after more than 20 years, partly outdated. The title of the essay by S. Cappelletti, “Biblical Quotations in the Greek Jewish Inscriptions of the Diaspora,” in N. de Lange, J.G. Krivoruchko and C. Boyd-Taylor eds.,

The Evidence16

JIGRE no. 119 (Antinoopolis in Egypt; second cent. ce or later) has a free ren-dering of 1 Sam 25:29 in Hebrew. Although it is not in Greek, I do mention it here because this is the earliest instance of a quotation of one of the two most often cited biblical texts (the other being Prov 10:7; see below). The MT version has, ‘(If anyone sets out to pursue you [i.e., David] and seeks your life,) the life of my lord will be bound up in the bundle of life17 in the care of the Lord.’

Here Abigail (the speaker) is using a metaphor denoting God’s protection and a long life on earth, but in postbiblical Judaism the expression came to signify eternal life in the next world.18 Hence our inscription is a wish for the deceased Egyptian Jew Lazarus, ‘May his soul rest in the bundle of life.’19 This expression will, with slight variations, become a standard formula on gravestones in the Middle Ages (usually in an abbreviated form). Here we have the earliest attes-tation of this usage.20 As we will now see, it soon turns up in Greek as well.

BS II no. 130 is a third century ce inscription from the famous catacombs of Beth Sheʿarim (Galilee) with a very free rendering of 1 Sam 25:29 in Greek.

It begins with the wish of the son or daughter (or both), ‘May your portion be good,21 my lord father and my lady mother,’ but then it continues with the words, ἔσηται ἡ ψυχὴ ὑμῶν ἐχομένη ἀθανάτου βίου. Schwabe and Lifshitz trans-late, ‘May your soul(s) be bound (in the bundle) of immortal life.’ But one may wonder whether this is correct; is this really a free quotation of or an allusion

Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions: Studies in Their Use in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism 23), Tübingen:

Mohr Siebeck, 2009, 128–141, is misleading since she deals only with Prov. 10:7.

16 I will not bother the reader unduly with the wide orthographic variety (spelling ‘errors’) in the inscriptions since they are irrelevant for my purposes. Hence I will present the inscriptions in their ‘correct’ form, except when matters of orthography have implications for the interpretation. For orthographical problems see the treatment in my Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 22–37.

17 Hebr. we-hayetah nephesh ’adoni tserurah bitsror ha-chayim.

18 This can be seen, for instance, in the Targum to 1 Samuel where ‘life’ is translated as

‘eternal life.’ For rabbinic references see U. Fischer, Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung im hellenistischen Diasporajudentum, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978, 232 n. 64.

19 Nuach naphsho bitsror ha-chayim. Exactly the same Hebrew variant is found in a bilingual Greek-Hebrew epitaph from Taranto of uncertain date (fourth–sixth cent.

ce?); see JIWE I 118.

20 See O. Eißfeldt, Der Beutel der Lebendigen, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960, 28–40; K. Berger, Die Weisheitsschrift aus der Kairoer Geniza, Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 1989, 179–180.

21 On this εὐμοίρει formula see my Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 120.

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to 1 Sam 25:29? Let us first see what the LXX rendering of this text is (unfortu-nately, Aquila and the other versions of ‘the Three’ are lost): καὶ ἔσται ἡ ψυχὴ κυρίου μου ἐνδεδεμένη ἐν δεσμῷ τῆς ζωῆς.22 The rendition of this verse in our epitaph has only one word in common with the biblical text, ψυχή, but βίος may naturally be taken to be the equivalent of ζωή. And the strange ἔσηται is no doubt an error for ἔσται.23 When we realize that the adjective ‘immortal,’

like the added ‘eternal’ in the Targum, represents a common Jewish interpreta-tion of this biblical text, the only thing left to be explained is the form ἐχομένη, here in combination with a noun in the genitive. The medial verb ἔχεσθαι has a very wide semantic range, and combined with a noun in the genitive, it can mean: ‘to cling to, to lay hold on, to clasp one’s hand on, to border on’ (LSJ s.v.

C1–2). Schwabe and Lifshitz (ad loc.) refer to Euripides, Ion 491, where the cho-rus sings that they would prefer to cling to a happy life with children (βιοτᾶς εὔπαιδος ἔχοιμαν). And in the NT, we have Hebr 6:9 where the author says he is confident of better things ἐχόμενα σωτηρίας, things that belong to salvation.24 There can be little doubt that ‘holding fast to immortal life’ is here the same as

‘being bound in the bundle of (eternal) life.’25 So we may reasonably conclude that the author of our epitaph indeed freely quotes, or alludes to (the dividing line between these is often opaque), the text of 1 Sam 25:29. We cannot but con-cur with Schwabe and Lifshitz when they say, ‘It is evident that we have here, in Greek guise, an early form of the benediction for the dead, implying a prayer for the eternal life of the soul’ (116).26 Even though in the Middle Ages and later 1 Sam 25:29 will become the favourite biblical quotation on Jewish tombstones, we see that this popularity had a very modest start in late antiquity.27

22 There are no significant variants in the manuscripts. The Vulgate has: erit anima domini mei custodita quasi in fasciculo viventium.

23 It could be taken as a scribal variant for ἔσσειται, which had a similar pronunciation, but that is a dialect form only used in poetry. See for the many variants of forms of the verb εἶναι also F.T. Gignac, A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods 2: Morphology, Milano: Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1981, 400–408.

24 BAGD s.v. 11a gives several more instances and states that ‘the “to” of belonging and the

“with” of association are expressed by the genitive’ (422b).

25 Contra van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 119 n. 19.

26 That 1 Sam 25:29 was seen as referring to eternal life can also be deduced from JIWE I no. 129 (Taranto, seventh–eighth cent. ce), where the Hebrew text has a significant expansion: ‘May his soul rest in the bundle of life and his spirit be for eternal life.’ Soul and spirit are identical here.

27 Noy includes in IJO I a Latin epitaph with the formula abligatus in ligatorium vit[a]e (no. 197 from Merida), but it is from the Middle Ages (ninth cent.?).

We now turn to Prov 10:7, the other biblical verse that will gain a great popu-larity in the Middle Ages and modern times, and that was also beginning to be popular in late antiquity.28 I leave aside the five instances of this quota-tion in Hebrew on tombstones from Southern Italy (four from Taranto, one from Oria, all from the fifth to eighth cent.)29 and turn to the Greek instances.

The Hebrew text of Prov 10:9 runs: zekher tsaddiq livrakha. The LXX has: μνήμη δικαίων μετ´ ἐγκωμίων. And Aquila renders more literally: μνεία δικαίου εἰς εὐλογίαν.30 We have three instances from Rome, all from the third-fourth cent.

ce. Interestingly, none is identical to any of the others. JIWE II no. 307 follows the LXX but with two subtle corrections: μνήμη δικαίου σὺν ἐγκωμίῳ. The LXX has two plurals, against the Hebrew text, and the engraver seems to have cor-rected the LXX here so as to make it more in agreement with the Hebrew,31 although it should not be excluded that the change may be due to the fact that it is the epitaph for one man, a teacher of the Law (νομοδιδάσκαλος) whose name is lost. It is to be noted that we have here (as elsewhere) a clear case of the use of the LXX by Jews long after the translation of Aquila had been brought into circulation. In recent years it has gradually become clear that the still current idea that the Jews abandoned the Septuagint after the first century ce and lost interest in ‘the Three’ in later centuries (in order to return to the use of the Hebrew text only) is badly in need of revision.32 Even though Aquila

28 Note that in the late antique rabbinic midrash Genesis Rabbah 49.1, Rabbi Isaac says about Prov 10:7, ‘If one makes mention of a righteous man and does not bless him, he violates a positive command. What is the proof? “The memory of the righteous shall be for a bless-ing” (Prov 10:7).’

29 JIWE I, nos. 120, 122, 131, 133, 137. No. 120 is bilingual and adds the Latin version: memoria iustorum ad benedictionem. Note that the Vulgate has: memoria iusti cum laudibus; on this difference see below. In a sixth-century trilingual epitaph for Meliosa from Tortosa in Spain (JIWE I no. 183), the Hebrew has the feminine form of ‘the righteous one’ and the Latin and Greek translations render the verse respectively with benememoria and πάμμνηστος.

30 On Aquila see briefly but instructively J.M. Dines, The Septuagint, London – New York:

Clark, 2004, 87–89.

31 The change of μετά to σύν is a change for the better because σύν more clearly expresses the idea of accompaniment, at least in classical or classicizing Greek. See also Cappelletti,

“Biblical Quotations” 136–137.

32 See esp. the various contributions in the volume edited by N. de Lange, J.G. Krivoruchko and C. Boyd-Taylor, Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions: Studies in Their Use in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism 23), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Also T. Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, esp. ch. 9.

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gained a certain currency, his translation certainly did not oust the LXX from all Jewish communities.33

JIWE II no. 112 has the text in its Aquilan form: μνεία δικαίου εἰς εὐλογίαν. It is the epitaph of ‘Macedonius, the Hebrew from Caesarea in Palestine,’ as the text says. His provenance from this city, a center of rabbinic activity, may help to understand why he, or rather his relatives, used the Bible translation pre-ferred by the rabbis. Interestingly enough, the third instance, JIWE II no. 276, has a mixture of the LXX and Aquila’s translation, with a contribution from the author of the epitaph himself: μνήμη δικαίου εἰς εὐλογίαν οὗ ἀληθῆ τὰ ἐγκώμια (‘the memory of the just man is for a blessing, whose laudations are true’). Here μνήμη is taken from the LXX, δικαίου from Aquila, εἰς εὐλογίαν also from Aquila, οὗ ἀληθῆ is an invention of the composer of the epitaph, and τὰ ἐγκώμια is based upon μετʼ ἐγκωμίων of the LXX.34 Whether this is a conscious harmoniz-ing of both versions or that the engraver knew both versions and mixed them up when quoting from memory, is very hard to say. Be that as it may, it would seem to indicate that in the fourth century in the Jewish community of Rome both the LXX and Aquila were in use side by side.35

The final instance is from Crete. It is the epitaph of a remarkable woman, Sophia from Gortyn, here called ‘leader of the synagogue’ in Kastelli Kissamou where she was buried (in the western part of the island) in the fourth or fifth century ce (IJO I Cre3).36 It is a free rendering of Prov 10:7: μνήμη δικαίας εἰς αἰῶνα (spelled as μνήμη δικέας ἰς ἐῶνα). The words μνήμη δικαίας suffice to iden-tify this phrase as an adapted quotation of Prov 10:7 in its LXX, not Aquilan, version. If, however, one were to take the words εἰς αἰῶνα to be a variation upon the Aquilan εἰς εὐλογίαν, we would again have a mixed quotation of LXX and Aquila, just as in the case of JIWE II no. 276 above, but that must remain

33 It is striking that in a Hebrew epitaph from Beth Sheʿarim, BS III 25, and in IJO no. 133 we have zekher tsaddiqim livrakha, possibly influenced by the plural δικαίων in the LXX.

34 See my Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 37–38. Cappelletti, “Biblical Quotations” 131, points out that in LXX Esther 2:23 ἐγκώμιον stands for berakhah.

35 See M.H. Williams, The Jews among the Greeks and Romans: A Diasporan Sourcebook, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, 121. At p. 43 Williams surmises that in JIWE II no. 253 (Rome, third-fourth cent. ce) the words μνεία τοῦ μελλονυμφίου could be taken to be both a variant and an incomplete citation of Prov 10:7: ‘The memory of the bridegroom-to-be (is for a blessing).’ It seems more natural, however, to take μνεία here in the sense of ‘tomb’ (memorial).

36 See the discussion of this inscription in my “The Jews of Ancient Crete,” in P.W. van der Horst, Jews and Christians in Their Graeco-Roman Context: Selected Essays on Early Judaism, Samaritanism, Hellenism, and Christianity (WUNT 196), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006, 24–26.

uncertain. However that may be, it should be noted that here, too, as in the case of the bundle of life in 1 Sam 25:29, the element of eternity seems to be imported into the OT text in which it originally had no place, a phenomenon that can be observed in many a rendition or explanation of biblical texts in postbiblical Judaism. But that is not certain. As Joseph Park says, ‘It is possible to take this formula as simply declaring or wishing that the deceased is never to be forgotten.’37 However, he, too, suggests that ‘the meaning of the words εἰς αἰῶνα does not seem to be exhausted by a merely thisworldly remembrance.’38

We now turn to less common quotations. First there are the famous epitaphs of two young girls on Rheneia (the small burial island of Delos) with prayers for vengeance, IJO I Ach 70–71 (second–first cent. BCE). The text of the two stones is identical except for the name of the girls (Heraclea and Martina).39 In the opening lines the composer of the epitaph calls upon God Most High (ὁ θεὸς ὁ ὕψιστος), ‘the Lord of the spirits and of all flesh,’ to take action against the murderers of the innocent girl concerned. The phrase ὁ Κύριος τῶν πνευμάτων καὶ πάσης σαρκός is an almost literal quotation of Num 16:22 and 27:16, both of which have ὁ θεὸς τῶν πνευμάτων καὶ πάσης σαρκός. The minor change of θεός to κύριος̨ was probably caused by the fact that θεός had already been used in the immediately preceding words of the invocation and the writer wanted to avoid repetition. The ‘spirits’ in the quotation undoubtedly are angels here, since a few lines further on it is not only the Lord himself but also ‘the angels of God’

(10) who are called upon to revenge the child. In Jewish epigraphy this is a unique quotation.40

Another unique case is IJO I Mac13 from Thessalonica (fourth cent. ce).

It runs: Κύριος μεθ’ ἡμῶν, which the most recent editors claim to be ‘a para-phrase of the LXX text of Ps 45:8 and 12.’41 The text of these identical Psalm verses is: Κύριος τῶν δυνάμεων μεθ’ ἡμῶν, ‘The Lord of hosts be/is with us.’ I find this a dubious case. The stone was found in an ancient Christian cemetery, and the sheer fact that a menorah has been painted in red on the wall of the

37 J.S. Park, Conceptions of Afterlife in Jewish Inscriptions, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000, 142.

38 Park, Conceptions, 142.

39 Still a good discussion is A. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, Tübingen: Mohr, 1923 (4th ed.), 351–362; see also my Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 149. The most recent treatments are IJO I, 235–242, and my commentary in P.W. van der Horst & J.H. Newman, Early Jewish Prayers in Greek (CEJL), Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008, 135–143.

40 Interestingly enough, the same quotation functions also in a number of medieval Christian epitaphs from Nubia; see A. Lajtar and J. van der Vliet, Qasr Ibrim: The Greek and Coptic Inscriptions (Journal of Juristic Papyrology Supplement XIII), Warsaw: University of Warsaw Press, 2010, nos. 18, 19, 22 etc.

41 IJO I, 94.

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tomb does not make the inscription Jewish. Moreover, the formula has not been attested elsewhere on Jewish monuments, but ‘it is frequently found in Christian inscriptions,’ as the editors admit. The phrase ‘the Lord be with us’

tomb does not make the inscription Jewish. Moreover, the formula has not been attested elsewhere on Jewish monuments, but ‘it is frequently found in Christian inscriptions,’ as the editors admit. The phrase ‘the Lord be with us’