ARAM, 15 (2003), 247-267 247

CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

LEAH DI SEGNI

Exploration and excavation of ancient sites in recent years have brought to

light a considerable number of remains attesting to Christian life in the Holy Land
in the early Byzantine period. Not only have religious buildings – churches and
monasteries – been uncovered, but also houses and farms once inhabited by
Christians, tombs and cemeteries where Christian communities buried their dead.
It is impracticable to give a complete survey of the new finds within the pre-
sent framework. Therefore, I shall focus on one facet of the complex picture of
Christian life in the region, which is becoming more and more evident in
recent years: namely, the persistence of Christianity after the Muslim conquest
and the change in the dominant culture and religion brought about by an Arab
Muslim élite superseding the former Greek-speaking Christian leading class.
Despite the shattering of the old order, the severance of the links with the cen-
tres of Roman-Byzantine culture, and the interruption of the flow of money
and patronage from the Byzantine court and aristocracy, Christian life went on
on both sides of the Jordan, not as an ebbing survival, but as the expression of
a flourishing, self-assured and self-organized community. The exploration of
churches and the study of the epigraphical production of the seventh and
eighth centuries have made this picture abundantly clear as far as it concerns
the Transjordanian region, but it was still a matter of speculation whether this
can be truly affirmed also for the region west of the Jordan. Now evidence is
accumulating in favour of this surmise.
Even in the recent past, the discovery of ecclesiastical inscriptions dated by
a creation era at Ramot and Beit Safafa, in the Jerusalem area, indicated that
building was going on in religious foundations in the eighth century. The
Ramot inscription (Fig. 1), dated June or July 762, attested to the erection of a
church of St. George, possibly belonging to a monastery;1 the Beit Safafa
inscription commemorates the building of a chapel of the Holy Martyrs, appar-
ently belonging to a private family or institution, above an earlier burial vault:
there is some uncertainty as to which creation era is used, but the most likely
interpretation gives us a date in June 701.2

1
R. Arav, L. Di Segni and A. Kloner, “An Eighth-Century Monastery near Jerusalem”, Liber
Annuus 40 (1990), pp. 313-320; D. Feissel, “Bulletin épigraphique”, REG 105 (1992), p. 546,
no. 650.
2
L. Di Segni, “The Beth Safafa Inscription Reconsidered and the Question of a Local Era in
Jerusalem”, Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993), pp. 157-168; ead., “The Date of the Beit
248 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

The two inscriptions mentioned above, now located in neighbourhoods of

modern Jerusalem, were not even at the city outskirts in the eighth century;
nevertheless, they were included in a peripheral area at an easy distance from
the metropolis, which no doubt enjoyed the support of the religious establish-
ment of the Holy City. This is indicated also by the mention of the patriarch,
Theodorus, and a chorepiscopus, also called Theodorus, in the foundation
inscription in Ramot. Though the Jerusalem Church went through a severe cri-
sis in the seventh century, even remaining shepherdless for a time, in the
eighth century the mother of all churches had recovered and reorganized.3 A
sample of the building activity at that time is the Cathisma Church, on the
Jerusalem-Bethlehem road, on the site where according to tradition Mary
rested on her way to Bethlehem.4 It is an octagonal structure, having at its cen-
tre the rock on which the Mother of God had sat, and encircled by two
octangonal rings, the inner one continuous and serving as an ambulatorium,
and the outer one divided into service rooms and chapels. The excavators
could identify three building phases: the foundation phase, dated by written
sources to ca. 450,5 a renovation in the sixth century, and another in the early
Muslim period, in which a new mosaic pavement was laid and the southern
part of the church was adapted for the use of Muslims by the addition of a
mihrab, while the rest of the building apparently continued to function as a
church. The third and last pavement is dated by the excavators to the eighth
century, both on stylistical grounds and through the discovery of Umayyad
coins under it and Abbasid pottery over it.6
In one of the outer rooms on the southern side of the church, two mosaic
pavements were uncovered, the upper one of which is on the same level, and

Safafa Inscription Again”, Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997), pp. 248-254. The chapel and its
inscription were known since the Fifties of the last century (J. Landau and M. Avi-Yonah,
“Excavation of a Family Vault near Beth Safafa”, 'Alon 5-6 [1957], pp. 40-43 [Hebrew]), but the
digits of the date were incorrectly interpreted and therefore the chapel was dated to June 490,
supposedly by the era of Diocletian or era of the Martyrs: see also Y.E. Meimaris, Chronologi-
cal Systems in Roman-Byzantine Palestine and Arabia (MELETHMATA 17, Athens, 1992),
p. 317, no. 1.
3
M. Levy-Rubin, “The Role of the Judaean Desert Monasteries in the Monothelite Contro-
versy in 7th Century Palestine”, in J. Patrich (ed.), The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church
from the Fifth Century to the Present: Monastic Life, Liturgy, Theology, Literature, Art, Archae-
ology (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, Louvain, 2001, pp. 283-300); ead., “The Reorganization
of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem during the Early Muslim Period”, in this volume.
4
On the site, the tradition and the church, see Y. Tsafrir, L. Di Segni and J. Green, Tabula
Imperii Romani – Judaea-Palaestina (Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 101-102, s.v. Cathisma.
5
Theodorus of Petra, Vita Theodosii, ed. H. Usener, Der heilige Theodosius (Leipzig, 1890),
pp. 13-14; Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Theodosii (ed. E. Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis, Texte
und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 49 ii, Leipzig 1939), p. 236.
6
R. Avner, “Jerusalem, Mar Elias – the Kathisma Chruch”, Excavations and Surveys in
Israel 20 (1998), pp. 101*-103*; ead., “The Kathisma Church”, in G.C. Bottini, L. Di Segni and
D. Chrupcala (eds.), One Land – Many Cultures. Archaeological studies in honour of Fr S. Lof-
freda (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Maior 42, Jerusalem, 2003, in press).
 L. DI SEGNI 249

associated to the same pottery, as the third-phase pavement in the adjacent

rooms. A Greek inscription (Fig. 2) was set within a round medallion in the
mosaic. Only about a third of the medallion survived, with part of two lines,
separated by rows of red tesserae and surmounted by a monogram, flanked by
two sprigs. The monogram is formed of the letters BACILIOU, with the diph-
thong OU in ligature, as elsewhere in the inscription. The inscription reads:
Basilíou
2 [P]ronoíaç k(aì) spoud±Ç
[ˆIw]ánnou ên[kleistoÕ?]
------------------
7
Of Basilius. By the provision and effort of John the recluse (?) - - -

It must not be viewed as odd that a recluse could have initiated the paving
or the restoration of part of the church. The Cathisma Church had a large
monastery attached to it since its foundation, so that the presence of a recluse
is perfectly normal. Moreover, recluses and even stylites are known to have
played an active role in church leadership: one was abbot of the Kyra Maria
Monastery in Beth Shean in the sixth century, another was head of a nunnery
on the Mount of Olives in the early eighth century.8
Who is the Basilius whose name is prominently placed at the top of the
medallion? He must have been a well-known figure, who needed no identifi-
cation, and he must have fulfilled a role in the building phase commemorated
in the inscription – one no less important than John's ‘provision and effort',
since his name heads the inscription. A personage who meets these conditions,
and whose name would indeed appear before any other in the building inscrip-
tion of a church, is the patriarch of Jerusalem. The list of the patriarchs of
Jerusalem in the eighth century is not without gaps: after John V (705-735)
there is a lack of information for some years, until Theodorus occupied the
throne (certainly from ca. 752 to 767 and possibly for some time after that),
and again until Elias II (ca. 787-797) and George, the date of whose accession
is uncertain, and who died in 807. A short patriarchate of a Basilius might
have intervened in one of these gaps. On the other hand, a Basilius did hold
the throne of Jerusalem for eighteen years in the ninth century, from 821 to
839.9 His patriarchate partly coincided with the caliphate of al-Ma'mun who,
unlike his predecessors, showed benevolence to the Christians: according to
7
After the name, one might restore a verb, but the surviving letters, EN or EM, do not sug-
gest any likely one. Moreover, the name John would remain without a title or identification of
any kind, which seems unacceptable.
8
On the first, see G.M. FitzGerald, A Sixth Century Monastery at Beth Shan (Scythopolis),
Beth-shan Excavations IV (Philadelphia 1939), pp. 14-15, no. 4; SEG VIII, no. 39; and on the
second, see Epiphanius monachus, Enarratio Syriae VIII, 19-21, ed. H. Donner, “Die Palästin-
abeschreibung des Epiphanius Monachus Hagiopolita”, ZDPV 87 (1971), p. 77.
9
V. Grumel, La Chronologie (Paris 1958), pp. 451-452.
250 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

Eutychius, al-Ma'mun let them rebuild the dome of the Anastasis Church in
Jerusalem, gave them permission to build churches and even appointed a
Christian governor to one of his provinces.10 Therefore, one is tempted to date
the pavement of this room – and possibly the entire renovation of the church –
not to the eighth but to the ninth century.
Another example of building activity in the Jerusalem periphery during
the early Muslim period can be observed in the monastery recently exca-
vated on the eastern slope of Mount Scopus, along the ancient road leading
from Jerusalem to Jericho and to the Jordan River.11 It is a huge complex (at
least 1.125 acres), whose main body, according to the ceramic and numis-
matic finds, was erected in the Byzantine period, possibly as early as the
fifth century. Already in this first phase the complex seems to have included
a hostelry. In a later stage, in the late seventh or in the eighth century, two
wings were attached to the original building, enlarging its area by more than
50%: a southern wing containing a bathhouse, and a western one, apparently
functioning as a guesthouse. A row of rooms with a private entrance from
the outside and private access to the main body of the monastery provided
privacy for visitors of higher status that those who were communally accom-
modated in the hostelry halls. Apparently these guests were also served in
private, for a marble dinner table was also discovered in the central room of
this wing. The innermost room was paved with a colourful mosaic floor,
under which Umayyad coins were found. A round medallion decorated the
centre of the floor: at its centre, an inscription (Fig. 3) is set in eight lines,
separated by rows of red tesserae. The diphthong OU is sometimes in liga-
ture, sometimes not.
ˆEpì Q-
ewdórou
presbuté-
4 rou k(aì) ™goumé-

10
Eutichio, Gli Annali, translated into Italian by B. Pirone (Studium Biblicum Francisca-
num – Studia Orientalia Christiana, Monographiae 1, Cairo, 1987), pp. 401-404. According to a
Christian tradition, al-Ma'mun even secretly converted to Christianity: the legend shows at least
that the Christians viewed him as sympathetic to them. See D. Sourdel, “La politique religieuse
du calife ‘Abbaside al-Ma'mun”, Revue des Études Islamiques 30 (1962), pp. 27-48; S.H. Grif-
fith, Theodore Abu Qurrah. The intellectual profile of an Arab Christian writer of the first
Abbasid century (Tel Aviv, 1992), pp. 24-25 and n. 106, pp. 54-55. Eutychius does not say much
about Basilius, while giving a notable place in his narration to Basilius' predecessor, Thomas.
However, the chronicler involuntary stresses Basilius' importance by ascribing him a 25-year
patriarchate, instead of the real term of 18 years: Eutichio, Gli Annali, p. 404.
11
D. Amit, J. Seligman and I. Zilberbod, “The Monastery of Theodorus and Kyriakos – on
the Eastern Slope of Mount Scopus”, in A. Faust & E. Baruch (eds.), New Studies on Jerusalem,
Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies. Proceedings of the Sixth Conference, December
7th 2000 (Ramat Gan 2000), pp. 166-174 (Hebrew), pp. 11*-12* (English summary); D. Amit,
“The Monastery of Theodorus and Cyriacus on Mount Scopus”, in One Land – Many Cultures
(above, n. 6), in press.
 L. DI SEGNI 251

nou k(aì) Kuriak(oÕ) mo-

naxoÕ êgé-
net(o) t(ò) p¢n
8 ∂rgon.

Under Theodorus the priest and hegumen, and Cyriacus the monk, all this
work was done.

The mention of a mere monk, associated with the abbot in carrying out the
work, is curious. Perhaps he was in charge of hospitality, or possibly he was
the architect who supervised the building of the additional wings of the com-
plex. However, it is not clear whether the southern and western wings were
added at the same time: for instance, the bathhouse went through some struc-
tural changes and may have been built (or renovated?) as late as the early
Abbasid period, based on numismatic evidence. The coins under the mosaic
floor with the inscription, on the other hand, are Umayyad. In any case, it is
clear that substantial additions were made to the complex, perhaps starting in
the late seventh century, and certainly in the course of the eighth. The addition
of the bathhouse also shows that the upgrading was not only in size, but also
in the level of luxury offered to the guests.
It cannot be taken for granted that the building activity in Jerusalem and
vicinity reflected the condition of the Christians in other parts of the country in
this period. After all, Jerusalem was the Holy City and continued to focus the
attention of the entire Christianity. Pilgrims and envoys of the Christian courts
visited the holy places and endeavoured to care for them, long after Christian
rule had passed from the region.12 An ecclesiastical complex recently exca-
vated at Jabaliyah near Gaza shows a picture of continuity similar to that of the
Cathisma: the church was erected in the fifth century, enlarged and embell-
ished in the mid-sixth, and its nave was repaved with beautiful mosaics in
732.13 This discovery confirms that Christianity still flourished in the large
cities of Palestine, but this is not surprising, and moreover, it was already
known or at least hinted at by the written sources.14 However, now we have

12
Such an expedition, charged with reporting on the state of the churches and monasteries in
the holy places, came in 801 even from the far west, from the court of Charles the Great: Com-
memoratorium de casis Dei (edd. T. Tobler and A. Molinier, Itinera Hierosolymitana et descrip-
tiones Terrae Sanctae, vol. I, Genéve, 1879), pp. 301-305.
13
On the mosaic pavements, see J.-B. Humbert et al., “Mukheitem à Jabaliyah, un site byzan-
tin”, in J.-B. Humbert (ed.), Gaza Méditerranéenne. Historie et archéologie en Palestine (Paris,
2000), pp. 121-126; on the inscriptions, C. Saliou, “Gaza dans l'antiquité tardive: nouveaux doc-
uments épigraphiques”, Revue Biblique 107 (2000), pp. 390-411. The inscription dated 732 is
no. 15, pp. 405-406.
14
B. Bagatti, Antichi villaggi cristiani di Giudea e Neghev (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 155-158
(Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio minor, no. 24). Gaza had bishops until the eleventh
century, and again Chrisitianity in the city revived under the Crusaders: G. Fedalto, Hierarchia
Ecclesiastica Orientalis, II (Padova, 1988), p. 1022.
252 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

positive evidence that building activities were taking place in the late seventh
and eighth centuries also in remore parts of the country. Among the recent
excavations, one uncovered a church in the Roman-Byzantine village of Aris-
tobulias, today Khirbet Istabul, in the Hebron Hills.15 The church was paved
with mosaics: the pavement of the nave had a central panel with a geometrical
pattern. A Greek inscription (Fig. 4) is set within a tabula ansata at the east-
ern end of the carpet, at the foot of the bema. The text opens and closes with
horned crosses and reads:
+ ˆEp® toÕ Üsiwtátou Gewrgíou dia-
kónou kaì Camoußlou lamprot(átou)
kaì Abbeov <or Abbeso(mbov)> Haxaríou êgéneto tò p(¢n)
4 ∂rgon t⁄v cifÉsewv taútjv
ên mi(nì) ˆIoun[íou ∂t(ouv) ˆEleuqero]póle(wv) bfb +

Under the most saintly deacon George, and the most illustrious Samuel, and
Abbeos <or Abbesombos> (son) of Zacharias, all the work of this mosaic
was done, in the month of June, [in the year of Eleuthero]polis 502.

The date is reckoned by the era of Eleutheropolis (Beth Govrin), in whose

territory Aristobulias was located. The restoration of the city name fills exactly
the gap in l. 5 and is not in doubt. The era of Eleutheropolis started in January
200 or in autumn 199;16 therefore June 502 fell in 701. It is noteworthy that,
despite the competition of the Muslim era and of creation eras for the use of
the Christians, eras in the Roman-Byzantine tradition were still employed in
the region.
Apparently the church was erected at this time, for the excavation showed
that the mosaic floor with the inscription was the original pavement of the
building.17 The persons mentioned in the dedication include a deacon, a man
identified by a honorific title, and another designated by name and patronymic.
Samuel, the ‘most illustrious', was probably one of the village leaders: seem-
ingly the Greek terms for village leaders – prwtokwmßtjv, an elder in a
village of free landowners, êpítropov, the steward of a privately owned vil-

15
On this village, see Y. Tsafrir et al., Tabula Imperii Romani (above, n. 4), p. 67, s.v. Aris-
tobulias. The report of the excavation of the church is to be published shortly by the excavator,
S. Batz, in Y. Magen and V. Tzaferis (eds.), Christians and Christianity in Judaea and Samaria
(forthcoming).
16
L. Di Segni, Dated Greek Inscriptions from Palestine from the Roman and Byzantine Peri-
ods, PhD Diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 21-23.
17
An earlier church must have existed in the village, as it was Christian since the early fifth
century, when the saintly monk Euthymius converted its inhabitants from Manicheism to Chris-
tianity: Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii, ch. 12, ed. Schwartz, pp. 22-23. Our church, how-
ever, must be a new foundation, and possibly a private one: note that the church had no priest but
was under the charge of a deacon. It may have coexisted with the old church, in charge of the vil-
lage priest. The existence of several sacred buildings in a single village is a well-known phe-
nomenon in the region.
 L. DI SEGNI 253

lage18 – were no longer in use, possibly superseded by Arabic terms loaned

from the Arab-speaking bureaucracy. In fact, in the eighth-century inscription
from St. Stephen's Church in Umm er-Rasas, a village leader is designated
with the vague term ãrxwn.19 Interestingly, Samuel's status is still expressed
with a Greek honorific, the ancient title clarissimus once reserved for gover-
nors and high-ranking civil servants and municipal magistrates, later depreci-
ated and granted also to minor local officials, and now meaningless in the new
order brought about by the Muslim conquest. Apparently, the honorific was
enough to identify Samuel, while the third man mentioned in the inscription –
either a benefactor or the master-builder or mosaic-layer – needed to be iden-
tified by name and patronymic. Another fact worthy of note is that two of the
three men had typical Semitic names: only the cleric bears a Greek name,
probably acquired with his entering the ecclesiastical status. At this date, they
were probably Aramaic speakers – their mother-tongue being the Palestinian-
Christian dialect also attested in inscriptions, as well as in papyri discovered at
the Monastery of Castellion.20 Nevertheless, they chose Greek for the founda-
tion inscription in their church.
A church excavated at Khirbet Yattir, in the southern Judaean Hills, pre-
sents two phases, both dated by inscriptions. A building inscription discovered
in the atrium gives the date of erection of the church, May of the year of the
city 483, 9th indiction; a second inscription, in the nave, dates the renovation
18
For the former, in this same village of Aristobulias, see Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii,
ch. 12; and in the village of Thecoa, Cyr. Scyth., Vita Cyriaci, ch. 8, ed. Schwartz (above, n. 5),
pp. 22, 227. For the latter, see Cyr. Scyth., Vita Sabae, ch. 35, ed. Schwartz, pp. 120-121; SEG
XXVII, no. 1006. Cf. also L. Di Segni, “The Involvement of Local, Municipal and Provincial
Authorities in Urban Building in Late Antique Palestine and Arabia”, in J.H.Humphrey (ed.),
The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research (JRA Supplemen-
tary series No. 14, Ann Arbor, Mi., 1995), pp. 314-315. Another term, found in inscriptions of
the late 6th-8th c., is pistikóv, ‘trustee': it is uncertain which village office it represented, but
seemingly it applied to villages of free landowners: ibidem, pp. 315-316.
19
SEG XXXVII, no. 1553, and cf. PNessana 58 (late 7th century): in the latter, a man styled
ãrxwn heads a group of eight village elders who give receipts for the land tax.
20
For the inscriptions, see for instance J.T. Milik, “Une inscription et une lettre en araméen
christo-palestinien”, Revue Biblique 60 (1953), pp. 527, 530-533; id., “L' inscription araméenne
christo-palestinienne de ‘Abud”, Liber Annuus 10 (1960), pp. 197-204; id., “The Monastery of
Castellion”, Biblica 42 (1961), pp. 21-27; M. Halloun and R. Rubin, “Palestinian Syriac Inscrip-
tion from ‘En Suweinit”, Liber Annuus 31 (1981), pp. 291-298; E. Puech, “L'inscription christo-
palestinienne d''Ayoun Mousa (mont Nebo)”, Liber Annuus 34 (1984), pp. 319-328; id., “L'in-
scription christo-palestinienne du monastère d'el-Quweismeh”, ibidem, pp. 341-346; id., “Les
L'inscriptions christo-palestiniennes de Khirbet el-Kursi – Amman”, ibidem 38 (1988), pp. 383-
389; L. Di Segni and J. Naveh, “A Bilingual Greek-Aramaic Inscription from H. Qastra, near
Haifa”, ‘Atiqot 29 (1996), pp. 77-78. For the papyri (most of which are still unpublished), see
R. De Langhe, “Oude handschriffen in de woestijin van Juda”, Onze Alma Mater 7/4 (1955),
pp. 14-19; id., “De Leuvense expeditie naar de woestijin van Juda”, ibidem 8/1 (1954), pp. 3-5;
J.T. Milik, “Une inscription et une lettre en araméen christo-palestinien”, Revue Biblique 60
(1953), pp. 533-539; C. Perrot, “Un fragment Christo-palestinien découvert à Khirbet Mird”, ibi-
dem 70 (1963), pp. 506-555; H.M. Cotton, “The Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert:
A Matter of Nomenclature”, Scripta Classica Israelica 20 (2001), p. 118.
254 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

of the mosaic pavement: March 526, 6th indiction.21 The two inscriptions read
as follows:

A. (inscription in the hall) (Fig. 5)

+ˆEpì toÕ qeosebestátou ˆIwánnou
Haxaríou diakónou kaì ™goumé-
nou êgéneto tò p¢n ∂rgon toÕ
4 c(jf)íou kaì ºlei ™ filokáliov toÕ
naoÕ ên mj(nì) Maíwç îndikti˙nov q´
∂touv t±v pólewv upg´ +

Under the most God-fearing John (son) of Zacharias, deacon and abbot, was
made all the work of the mosaic and the whole adornment of the church, in
the month of May of the 9th indiction, year 483 of the city.

B. (inscription in the nave) (Fig. 6)

+ ˆEteljÉqi
tò p¢n ∂rgo(n)
toÕto mjnì
4 Martíou înd(ikti¬nov)
ˇ´ ∂touv t⁄v
pólewv f´
kˇ´ üpèr sot-
8 erßav (kaì) ântjl(ß)m-
cewv Qwm¢ ägiw(tátou)
eïgouménou filw-
xrístou, xirì êmoÕ
12 Haxar(íou) ˆIs˘ êr(golábou) d(oúlou) qe(oÕ).

This whole work was completed in the month of March of the 6th indiction,
in the year of the city 526, for the preservation and succour of Christ-loving
Thomas, most holy hegumen, by myself, Zacharias (son) of Jesse, contrac-
tor, servant of God.

There is some uncertainty about the precise dates of these two phases. Two
possible eras must be considered: the era of Eleutheropolis, and the era of
Provincia Arabia, but neither gives an agreement between the year and the
indiction; the error in one inscription is not even consistent with the error in
the other. If we reckon the dates by the era of Arabia, May 483 fell in 588, in
the 6th indiction (the text says 9th, an error of three years), and March 526 in
631 or 632,22 in the 4th or 5th indiction (the text says 6th, an error of one or
21
H. Eshel, J. Magness and E. Shenhav, “Khirbet Yattir, 1995-1999: Preliminary Report”,
Israel Exploration Journal 50 (2000), pp. 153-168.
22
In the era of Arabia, the year began on March 22: therefore, if the unspecified day was one
of the last ten days of the month, the date would be March 631; if it was one of the first 21 days,
the date would be March 632.
 L. DI SEGNI 255

two years). If, on the other hand, we reckon the dates by the era of Eleu-
theropolis, May 483 fell in 682, 10th indiction (instead of 9th: an error of one
year), and March 526 in 725, 8th indiction (instead of 6th: an error of two
years).
The later inscription was discovered first, and was brought to my attention
by the excavators. My opinion at the time was that the era was probably that
of Provincia Arabia.23 This for several reasons: one, that the era of Arabia is
sometimes called in the Negev ‘era of the city', probably with reference to
Elusa rather than Petra, since some dates given by the era of Arabia are desig-
nated with the formula kat´ ˆEloúsjv, and the formula ∂touv t±v pólewv
appears twice in Nessana, a dependence of Elusa, to designate the era of Ara-
bia.24 Second, at the state of research at the time, no dated Greek inscription of
the eighth century was known in the whole region, except in Jerusalem and in
Transjordan.25 Third, the disagreement between year and indiction in the
inscription was even greater if the reckoning was done by the era of
Eleutheropolis than by the era of Arabia. On the other hand, this would be by
far the northernmost inscription dated by the era of Arabia in western Pales-
tine: Beersheba, where some of the inscriptions are dated by the era of Arabia,
is about 25 km to the southwest. As to the location of Yattir, ancient Iethira,
Eusebius included the village in the Daroma (ên t¬ç êswtérwç Darom¢ç),26 all
or most of which was within the boundaries of Eleutheropolis. However, the
southernmost villages of the Daroma explicitly said by Eusebius to be within
the boundaries of Eleutheropolis – Duma, Anab and Eshthemoa – are to the
north-west and north-east of Iethira: Eshthemoa is describes in the Onomasti-
con as ºrion ˆEleuqeropólewv.27 It is possible, therefore, that Iethira in
Eusebius' time belonged to the Geraritikß, the border area of Judaea with

23
See discussion in Di Segni, Dated Greek Inscriptions (above, n. 16), pp. 673-675.
24
For the formula kat´ ˆEloúsjv, SEG XXVIII, nos. 1395-1396 from Avdat; PNessana,
nos. 55, 57; for the formula ∂touv t±v pólewv, see PNessana, no. 14 and G.E Kirk &
C.B. Welles, “The Inscriptions”, in H.D. Colt (ed.), Excavations at Nessana I (London, 1962),
p. 181, no. 114. See also Meimaris, Chronological Systems (above, n. 2), pp. 149-150.
25
The latest building inscription in Israel was the one commemorating the renovation of the
bathhouse at Hammath Gader, dated both by the era of Gadara and by the Hegira to November
5, 662: SEG XXX, no. 1687; XXXII, no. 1501; XLII, no. 1433. Only a few epitaphs with a later
date were known from the Negev: cf. P.-L. Gatier, “Les inscriptions grecques d'époque
islamique (VIIe-VIIIe siècles,) en Syrie du Sud”, in R. Canivet and J.-P. Rey-Coquais (eds.), La
Syrie de Byzance à l'Islam, VIIe-VIIIe siècles, Actes du Colloque international, Lyon – Maison de
l'Orient Méditerranéen, Paris – Institut du Monde Arabe, 11-15 Septembre 1990 (Damas 1992),
pp. 145-158.
26
Eusebius, Onomasticon (ed. E. Klostermann, GCS 11 i, Leipzig, 1904), p. 88, ll. 3-4.
27
Eus., On., p. 26, ll. 8-9 (Anab); p. 78, ll. 21-22 (Duma); p. 86, ll. 20-21 (Eshthemoa).
Other villages, such as Iutta, Iethira itself, Thala, have their location defined in terms of their dis-
tance from Eleutheropolis (On., p. 98, ll. 26-27; p. 108, ll. 1-3, 8-10), and therefore were
included by M. Avi-Yonah in its territory (The Holy Land from the Persian to the Arab Con-
quests (536 B.C.-A.D. 640) (Grand Rapids, Mi., 1966), pp. 159-162), but this ‘rule of thumb'
cannot be accepted as sound evidence.
256 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

Beersheba, which became part of Palaestina Salutaris (Tertia) in the late 4th
century.28 In this case, the village might have adopted the era of Elusa.
The excavators adopted my suggestion, and in their ‘Preliminary Report'
both inscriptions are dated according to the era of Arabia.29 However, the dis-
covery of the earlier inscription raises some doubt whether after all the era of
Eleutheropolis should not be preferred. While a one-year error in the correlation
of era year and indiction would be acceptable in the troubled period between
the Persian and the Arab conquest, one could hardly justify a three-year error in
588, a period of regular administration and tax exaction. On the other hand, if
we reckon the dates by the era of Eleutheropolis, the correlation of year and
indiction in the earlier inscription would be off just by one year, an acceptable
deviation at such a late date. Moreover, it seems more logical that the error
might have grown from one to two years from (supposedly) 682 to (suppos-
edly) 725, rather than have been reduced from three to one or two, without
being corrected. Last but not least, we have now the example of Aristobulias to
show that building and renovation of churches did take place in southern Judaea
in the eighth century. Thus, we should consider the possibility that also the
church in Yattir was erected (or possibly only decorated) in 682 and renovated
in 725. Both inscriptions are rough and use a good deal of cursive shapes, and
therefore it is difficult to evaluate their chronology on palaeographical grounds.
At the northern end of the country, another dated inscription attests that
Christian religious building was still going on in the eighth century. A settle-
ment was explored at Khirbet el-Shubeika in western Galilee; according to the
pottery recovered in surveys, the site was intermittently occupied from the Iron
Age to the Mameluke period. Part of a village, inhabited from the late fourth
to the tenth century, and including a church, was excavated. Five distinct
phases were observed in the church. The church was founded in the seventh
century, or less likely, in the sixth: an inscription mentioning two deacons sur-
vives from this phase. In the second phase, the bema was enlarged and major
repairs were carried out in the mosaic floor of the northern aisle. A dated
inscription was inserted in the repaired section. In the third phase, the bema
was again extended to the north and the south; in the fourth phase, it was
extended once more, this time also to the west, and paved – or repaved – with
a mosaic, at the edge of which is a small inscription mentioning a deacon and
a woman, possibly benefactors. The fifth and last phase reflects the very end
of the building, which was finally destroyed in a great conflagration: at that
time, it may have already ceased to function as a church.30
28
Eus., On., p. 60, ll. 7-14; p. 166, ll. 20-21; Jerome, Hebraicae Quaestiones in Gen. 21, 30,
CCSL 72, p. 26.
29
Eshel et al., Israel Exploration Journal 50 (2000) (above, n. 21), p. 162.
30
D. Avshalom-Gorni, A. Tatcher and D. Syon, “Excavations at khirbet el-Shubeika 1991,
1993”, Eretz Zafon 1 (2002), pp. 219-345 (Hebrew); D. Syon, “A Church from the Early Islamic
Period at khirbet el-Shubeika”, in One Land – Many Cultures (above, n. 6); V. Tzaferis, “The
Greek Inscriptions from the Church at khirbet el-Shubeika”, ibidem (in press).
 L. DI SEGNI 257

The inscription in the northern aisle (Fig. 7) reads:

+ˆE[pì toÕ mjtrop]olßtou {™-}
™m[¬n ˆAnast]asíou kè P-
rokopí[ou ™]goum[én]ou ê-
4 géneto tò p¢n [∂rg]on
toÕ ägßou Cergíou: îcifó-
[qj ktíse]ov ∂touv vc˛g´.

Under our metropolitan [Anast]asius and Procopius the hegumen the whole
work of St. Sergius was done; it was paved with mosaics in the year of
creation 6293.

The village of Shubeika was within the boundaries of the bishopric of Tyre,
whose bishop ranked as a metropolitan: therefore, the inscriptions add a new
name to the list of bishops of Tyre. The date is given by one of the eras of cre-
ation current in the area: either the Alexandrine era which is attested in the
Jerusalem area and dated Christ's incarnation on March 25, 5492 of the cre-
ation, or the Byzantine, common in Transjordan, which dated it on March 25,
5508.31 Therefore, the second stage in the life of the church of Shubeika can
be dated to 785/6, by the Byzantine era, or possibly 801/2, by the Alexandrine
era. Notably, at that time the church – undoubtedly a village church, as attested
by the mention of a woman's name in one of the inscriptions – also had an
adjoining monastery whose abbot cared for the building: in other words, not
only did the village remain Christian, but it also produced from its population
a community of monks.
It is time to draw some conclusions from what has been said above. One is
the obvious fact that the cultural and political change brought about by the
Muslim conquest did not result in an immediate change in the life of the Pales-
tinian Christians: until the late eighth century at least, they did not convert en
masse to Islam, and the communities continued to cater to their religious needs
by restoring their religious buildings and erecting others whenever necessary.32
The other is a practical conclusion: when dating Christian buildings lacking
objective chronological data – e.g., layers associated with coins, or a dated
inscription – the archaeologist can no longer adopt the Muslim conquest as a
31
See H. Leclercq, v. Ére, DACL 5, pp. 351-359; Grumel, Chronologie (above, n. 9),
pp. 111-128, 219-220; L. Di Segni, “La data della cappella della Theotokos sul Monte Nebo.
Nota epigrafica”, Liber Annuus 44 (1994), pp. 531-533.
32
Apparently, the end of Christian building activities can be synchronized with the passage
from Greek to Arabic in the religious institutions in Palestine, which took place in the early ninth
century. On this phenomenon, see S.H. Griffith, “Greek into Arabic: Life and Letters in the
Monasteries of Palestine in the Ninth Century: The Example of the Summa theologiae Arabica”,
Byzantion 56 (1986), pp. 117-138; id., “The First Christian Summa theologiae in Arabic: Chris-
tian Kalam in Ninth-Century Palestine”, in Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (eds.),
Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eigh-
teenth Centuries (Mediaeval Studies 9, Toronto 1990), pp. 15-31, esp. pp. 24-26.
258 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

terminus post quem non. At the present state of research, this widespread pre-
sumption is no longer valid. The same must be said for the epigraphist. Greek
inscriptions in churches must not necessarily be earlier than the mid-seventh
century. It is imperative to revise the dating of inscriptions lacking explicit
chronological data or valid archaeological dating arguments, with the help of
palaeography.
Let us consider the palaeographic characteristics of the eighth-century
inscriptions presented above – or at least those which belong to the limited
area of Judaea. Though they differ in calligraphic quality, all show some com-
mon traits which differentiate them from inscriptions of the sixth century. The
characters are well spaced, squat, the straight letters resting on a triangular
foot, the rounded ones on a flattened base. Omicron and theta have plump
bodies and small pointed tops. A tendency to the ornate and sinuous occasion-
ally expresses itself in omega made up of two curls, sometimes separated by a
decorative element, rho with open and curling loop, nu with a knotted bar. Tri-
angular serifs decorate the end of horizontal or diagonal strokes; tau and hyp-
silon sometimes have a small horizontal bar across their stem, and finally,
some characters, especially delta, lambda and alpha, but sometimes also omi-
cron and theta, are often topped by a small horizontal stroke. Some of these
characteristics begin to appear in the later part of the sixth century, but in a
much less conspicuous way.33 Even the geographically far-removed Shubeika
inscription shows some of these traits, the most evident of which being the
hypsilon with horizontal bar across the stem.
Let us re-examine one instance of undated inscription from Judaea, in the
light of the palaeographic characteristics. At Battir, ancient Beth Ther south-
west of Jerusalem, a mosaic floor was partly uncovered by Vincent at the
beginning of the 20th century (Figs. 8-9). It was perhaps not the pavement of
a church, judging by its orientation: possibly it belonged to a mortuary chapel.
In any case, it was built by a Christian community under a priest: therefore, it
was connected to the religious needs of the village. Vincent proposed a date in
the late sixth or rather in the seventh century or even in the eighth, based on
the style of the mosaic, but his opinion was viewed with some scepticism
by other scholars.34 However, the palaeographical appearance of the inscrip-
33
See Di Segni, Dated Greek Inscriptions (above, n. 16), pp. 900, 906-907, Tables 7, 13-14.
The same characteristics may be noted also in the mosaics of the Madaba area: see J. Russell,
“The Palaeography of the Madaba Map”, in M. Piccirillo and E. Alliata (eds.), The Madaba Map
Centenary 1897-1997. Travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad Period, Proceedings of the
International Conference Held in Amman, 7-9 April 1997 (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum,
Collectio Maior 40, Jerusalem, 1999), p. 129, and also M. Piccirillo, “Le due iscrizioni della cap-
pella della Theotokos nel Wadi ‘Ayn al-Kanisah sul Monte Nebo”, Liber Annuus 44 (1994),
p. 528, inscr. B (762 CE).
34
H.L. Vincent, “Chronique”, Revue Biblique 19 (1910), pp. 254-261, and see other opinions
in M. Avi-Yonah, “Mosaic Pavements in Palestine”, The Quarterly of the Department of An-
tiquities in Palestine 2 (1932), pp. 142-143, no. 13.
 L. DI SEGNI 259

tions – as well as the spelling of the text – fully justify Vincent's latest date:
we note the well-developed triangular foots and apices, the flattened base of
the rounded letters. the plump omicron with a small pointed top, the horizon-
tal bar on top of alpha and delta. Therefore, judging by the shape of the letters,
this chapel (?) was built, or at least restored (no proper excavation was con-
ducted at the side) in the late seventh century at the earliest. A strict examina-
tion of other Christian cult buildings, freed from the presumption that these
monuments cannot have been erected after the Muslim conquest, is likely to
discover more churches of the seventh and eighth centuries in western Pales-
tine.

ABBREVIATIONS

CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout

DACL Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, Paris, 1924-1953
GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte,
Kirchenväter Kommission der königlichen Preussischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Leipzig
JRA Journal of Roman Archaeology, Ann Arbor, Mich.
PNessana H.D.Colt (ed.), Excavations at Nessana III. C.J. Kraemer, Non-literary
Papyri, Princeton, 1958
REG Revue des Études Grecques, Paris
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden
260 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

1. The Ramot inscription (from Liber Annuus).

 L. DI SEGNI 261

2. The inscription in the Cathisma Church (photo: N. Davidov).

3. The inscription in the western wing of the monastery on Mount Scopus (photo: Z. Sagiv).
262 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

4. The inscription of Kh. Istabul (courtesy of the excavator, S. Batz,

and the Archaeological Officer for Judaea and Samaria, Y. Magen).
 L. DI SEGNI

5. The inscription in the atrium of the church of Yattir (courtesy of H. Eshel).

263
264 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

6. The inscription in the nave of the church of Yattir (courtesy of H. Eshel).

 L. DI SEGNI 265

7. The inscription in the northern aisle of the church of Shubeika (courtesy of D. Syon).
266 CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY IN THE HOLY LAND: NEW DISCOVERIES

8. The pavement of Battir (from Revue Biblique).

 L. DI SEGNI 267

9. Detail of the pavement of Battir (from Revue Biblique)