The Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora tractive power of Judaism, for which earlier documentary evidence had not
prepared us.
This impression is reinforced by the second inscription, now ‘‘face II,’’ and
all the more so if, as Chaniotis clearly suggests, it dates after the affirma-
tion of Christianity, and of ‘‘Catholic,’’ Trinitarian, belief, by Theodosius I.
For here the contributors to some sort of foundation for the relief of the
people are listed: of eighteen (or nineteen) individuals,^22 eleven have He-
brew names, including all three of those who are described asprosēlytos(e.g.,
line , ‘‘Joseph son of Eusebios, proselyte’’), while two others each appear
astheoseb(ēs). Once again we cannot tell whether either thetheosebeisor the
prosēlytoihave come from paganism or from Christianity. But in this phase full
proselytes do appear, and give themselves Hebrew names, written in Greek,
as they do so. The names (like those of the Jewish group) are written without
Greek endings, as they are in the Greek Old Testament, and are not equipped
with Greek endings, as in Josephus. This choice implicitly expresses a com-
mitment to Hebrew origins, without proving that knowledge of Hebrew
was at all current at Aphrodisias.
Since we do not know where thestēlēwith the two inscriptions was origi-
nally placed, we cannot know how widely it served to advertise the truly
remarkable composition of the Jewish community in Aphrodisias. But it is
at any rate clear that no effort was made to conceal the adherence either of
‘‘God-fearers’’ or of full proselytes. We may note also the brilliant survey by
Chaniotis of the many other public signs of Judaism to be found at Aphro-
disias—inscriptions, graffiti, representations of menorahs, and so forth.^23 To
repeat, the overall effect of the re-dating is to suggest the need for a radi-
cal reconsideration of the place of Judaism in the predominantly Christian
Greek empire.
SardisThe excavations of Sardis in Lydia, as is well known, have revealed that
at some point in the late Empire a large basilical hall in the centre of the
city—considerably larger than any known building originally constructed
as a synagogue—was converted for use by the Jewish community there. The
. The Samouēl,presbeutēs, listed on lines – is presumably, but not certainly, the
same man whose name is added in the margin.
. See A. Chaniotis, ‘‘Zwischen Konfrontation und Interaktion: Christen, Juden und
Heiden im spätantiken Aphrodisias,’’ in A. Ackermann and K. E. Müller, eds.,Patchwork:
Dimensionen multikulturellen Gesellschaften(), .