scholarly journals For a Discussion About Epigraphic Evidence of the Activities of Byzantium in the Mountainous Crimea in the 6th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 6-18
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Aibabin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Construction Period ◽  
Dating Methods ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
Mountainous Crimea

Introduction. In the basilicas discovered on the Mangup plateau (fig. 3), in the Karalez valley (fig. 1) that begins at its foot and on Eski-Kermen (fig. 2, 1), inscriptions were found, the interpretation and dating of which caused many years of discussion. Some scientists considered them as evidence of the activities of the Eastern Roman Empire in the region in the 6th century, while other specialists doubted both such an interpretation of the inscriptions and their dating. Methods. To substantiate the chronology of the mentioned inscriptions, it is important to consider the formulas and linguistic features contained in them, as well as the stratigraphy recorded during the excavation of temples and the revealed dated closed ceramics complexes. Analysis. The text of the inscription with the name of Justinian I is correlated with the information of Procopius about the construction of the “Long Walls” in the Dory region at the behest of the emperor. Most likely, the inscription reported the construction of one of the “Long Walls” in the Karalez valley at the foot of Doros. It is possible that the stone (fig. 1) with the typical Byzantine graffiti with the formulas ΦΩС ΖΩΗ and κ(ύρι)ε βοήθ(ει...) was inserted into a wall of an apse of the basilica right after its construction in the Karalez valley in the second half of the 6th century. On a stone over the graffiti ΦΩС ΖΩΗ letters of the second graffiti “Ἰς νικᾷ” are cut out which means Ἰ(ησοῦ)ς (Χριστὸς) νικᾷ – “Jesus Christ wins”. In Byzantium the images of a cross with the formula IC XC NI ΚΑ (Ἰ(ησοῦ)C Χ(ριστὸ)C Ν(ικ)Α) appeared at the iconoclast emperor Leo III (717–741) and were distributed in later time. Results. Undisputed evidence of Byzantium’s activity in the region in the 6th century is only the fragment of a plate with a building inscription that means the emperor Justinian I found in a late slab grave at the basilica on Mangup. According to the stratigraphy, revealed in 1938 during the excavations of the Baptistry on Mangup, the graffiti (fig. 3) that caused a long discussion was carved on the back of the cornice in the second construction period not earlier than in the 9th century.

scholarly journals How the Goths and Alans of the Mountainous Crimea Assimilated Greek Language

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Il’ich Aibabin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Narrow Neck ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
Mountainous Crimea

The Goths and Alans settled in the Mountainous Crimea about the mid-third century. The Eastern Roman Empire pursued the policy of integrating barbarians on the frontier in order to strengthen its northern borders. In the mountainous Crimea, the Goths and Alans assimilated Greek language in result of political and ideological interaction and trading with Cherson and other cities and towns of the Eastern Roman Empire. The earliest in this area Greek inscriptions were dipinti drawn on the light-clay narrow-neck amphorae of D. B. Shelov’s type F, which were produced in Herakleia Pontike. According to the life of St. John of Gothia who led a revolt against Khazar domination in Gothia, the correspondence of Theodore of Stoudios with the archimandrite of Gothia, and official church documents, Greek was the only language of worship in the churches and monasteries of Gothia from the establishment of the Gothic bishopric on. The priests and monks contributed to the spread of Greek language among the Goths and Alans. From the eighth to thirteenth centuries, there appeared numerous epitaphs in church burials and in cemeteries located around these churches starting with a typical Byzantine phrase: Φῶς ζωή (“Light – life”), Κύριε, βοήθει... (“Lord, help...”), Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς νηκᾷ (“Jesus Christ conquers”), Ἐκοιμήθη (“Deceased” or “passed away”), and so on. From the materials examined there are reasons to state that, by the ninth century, the Goths and Alans assimilated Greek language, which from the ninth to thirteenth centuries predominated in Gothia. There are several written sources documenting the preservation of Gothic and Alan languages in the first half of the thirteenth century. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Goths of the mountainous Crimea spoke mostly Greek. According to written sources, the functioning of Crimean Gothic dialect was restricted and started disappearing from the sixteenth century on.

THE ROLE OF ACCOUNTING IN PUBLIC EXPENDITURE AND MONETARY POLICY IN THE FIRST CENTURY AD ROMAN EMPIRE

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Oldroyd
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Financial Planning ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
First Century ◽  
Financial Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

Previous authors have argued that Roman coinage was used as an instrument of financial control rather than simply as a means for the state to make payments, without assessing the accounting implications. The article reviews the literary and epigraphic evidence of the public expenditure accounts surrounding the Roman monetary system in the first century AD. This area has been neglected by accounting historians. Although the scope of the accounts supports the proposition that they were used for financial control, the impetus for keeping those accounts originally came from the emperor's public expenditure commitments. This suggests that financial control may have been encouraged by the financial planning that arose out of the exigencies of funding public expenditure. In this way these two aspects of monetary policy can be reconciled.

The Roman Empire in Paul’s Letters

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tat-siong Benny Liew
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Textual Interpretation ◽  
Paul's Letters

Paul’s reality as a colonized Jew and an imperial subject of Rome means that the Roman Empire loomed large in his world, especially given his frequent travels to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to Gentiles of the Roman Empire. Although Paul’s letters seldom refer directly to the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire formed the content as much as it constituted the context of Paul’s letters. While these letters contain critiques of the Roman Empire, they also mirror the Roman Empire in different ways. Attempts to pin Paul down through his letters as either anti-imperial or pro-Rome are unrealistic and reductionist, because they do not take seriously the complexity of the Roman Empire, of Paul as a person, of language and writing, and of textual interpretation.

scholarly journals The figure of Jesus Christ in the context of religious studies

2003 ◽  
pp. 146-157
Author(s):  
Pavlo Yuriyovych Pavlenko
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Bruno Bauer

The study of the origins of the Christian religion has always been one of the most difficult problems. This is due, first of all, to the almost complete absence of specific historical evidence of early Christianity and of its founder, which in turn led to the emergence of the so-called "mythological theory" according to which Christianity emerged "spontaneously" in Palestine and is unknown in any way. F. Engels, who borrowed from Bruno Bauer the date of writing the Book of the Annunciation of John the Theologian, the last book of the New Testament canon, played a significant role in the formation of such views. In accepting this date, understanding of Christianity as a "spontaneous" phenomenon, initially representing the movement of the underprivileged masses of the Roman Empire, played a role. In this sense, any "spontaneity" automatically excluded the historicity of virtually all evangelical characters (according to Engels, all of them are nothing but mythological images). If neither Jesus nor his apostles existed, then the gospel narrative of Christ evolved from the myth of Christ as God to the myth of Jesus as God-man.

Commemoration and Élite Benefaction of Buildings and Spectacles in the Roman World

2015 ◽  
Vol 105 ◽  
pp. 101-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Ng
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Motivating Factor ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

AbstractCurrent scholarship on élite munificence in the Roman Empire often sees architectural benefactions as being at least partially driven by the élite desire for personal commemoration. I use juristic opinions from theDigestand other textual evidence related to building gifts to argue that there was an ancient understanding of the physical and symbolic ephemerality of architectural benefactions. In contrast, I present legal and epigraphic evidence to argue that there was an explicit expectation for gifts of spectacles and monetary distributions to be lasting memorials for their donors, and that the perpetuation of identity was also a motivating factor in the euergetic choice of a spectacle.

Precreation Discourse and the Nicene Creed: Christianity Finds its Voice in the Roman Empire

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 334-350
Author(s):  
Vernon K. Robbins
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
God The Father ◽  
Nicene Creed ◽  
Heaven And Earth ◽  
Christian Leaders

AbstractExploring the emergence of creedal statements in Christianity about non-time before creation, called precreation rhetorolect, this essay begins with the baptismal creed called the Roman Symbol and its expansion into the Apostles’ Creed. These early creeds contain wisdom, apocalyptic, and priestly rhetorolect, but no precreation rhetorolect. When the twelve statements in the Apostles’ Creed were expanded into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the first three statements added precreation rhetorolect. God the Father Almighty not only creates heaven and earth, but God creates all things visible and invisible. Jesus Christ is not only God’s only Son, our Lord, but the Son is begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, and true God from true God. Being of the same substance as the Father, all things were made through the Son before he came down from heaven, the Son was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became human. With these creedal additions, a precreation storyline became the context for a lengthy chain of argumentation about belief among fourth century Christian leaders.

From Narmouthis (Medinet Madi) to Kellis (Ismant El-Kharab): Manichaean Documents from Roman Egypt

1996 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 146-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. M. F. Gardner ◽  
S. N. C. Lieu
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
Annual General ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Annual General Meeting ◽  
Fertile Crescent ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Consummate Skill

In 1968, Peter Brown read at the Society's Annual General Meeting a paper entitled ‘The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire’. Delivered at a time when little research was being carried out by British scholars either on Manichaeism or on the cultural and religious relationship between the Roman and the Sassanian Empires, it was for many a complete revelation. With consummate skill and vast erudition Brown placed the history of the diffusion of the sect against a background of vigorous and dynamic interchange between the Roman and the Persian Empires. He also mounted a successful challenge on a number of popularly held views on the history of the religion in the Roman Empire. Manichaeism was not to be seen as part of the mirage orientale which fascinated the intellectuals of the High Empire. It was not an Iranian religion which appealed through its foreigness or quaintness. Rather, it was a highly organized and aggressively missionary religion founded by a prophet from South Babylonia who styled himself an ‘Apostle of Jesus Christ’. Brown reminded the audience that ‘the history of Manichaeism is to a large extent a history of the Syriac-speaking belt, that stretched along the Fertile Crescent without interruption from Antioch to Ctesiphon’. Its manner of diffusion bore little or no resemblance to that of Mithraism. It did not rely on a particular profession, as Mithraism did on the army, for its spread throughout the Empire. Instead it developed in the common Syriac culture astride the Romano-Persian frontier which was becoming increasingly Christianized consequent to the regular deportation of whole communities from cities of the Roman East like Antioch to Mesopotamia and adjacent Iran. Manichaeism which originally flourished in this Semitic milieu was not in the strict sense an Iranian religion in the way that Zoroastrianism was at the root of the culture and religion of pre-Islamic Iran. The Judaeo-Christian roots of the religion enabled it to be proclaimed as a new and decisive Christian revelation.

scholarly journals Sobór chalcedoński. Kontekst historyczny, teologiczny, następstwa

Vox Patrum ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 137-179
Author(s):  
Józef Grzywaczewski
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Definition Of

The article presents the Council of Chalcedon; its theological and historical context and its consequences. The author starts with the theological context of this Council. In that time the question of relation between humanity and divinity in Christ was discussed. Apollinarius of Laodicea taught that in the person of Christ there were two elements: the Logos and the body. The Logos replaced the soul. He propagated the formula mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene. Others theologians were not agree with his opinion. Generally, there were two theological schools which worked on this matter: school of Alexandria and of Antioch. In the first one, the Christ was seen especially as God who became man. In the second one, He was seen as the man who was God’s Son. With other words, in Alexandria the starting point of reflection was the Divinity of Christ. In Antioch the starting of reflection was His humanity. The author mentioned Eutyches whose ideas on Christology produced a lot of trouble. In such a context, the Council of Chalcedon was organized (451). It was the proposal of Emperor Marcjan. The Council, after having condemned Eutyches and Dioskur of Alexandria because of their position on theological matter, proclaimed a new definition of the catholic faith. The base of this definition was the Letter of Pope Leo the Great Ad Flavianum. The most important point of this definition was the statement that Divinity and humanity meet in Christ, and both form one person. Such a declaration seems to be clear, but it did not satisfy Greek theologians. They did not want to accept the formula two natures (duo physeis) in one person, because in their opinion it signifies a separation between the Divinity and the humanity of Christ. They preferred to speak about mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkomene. Surely, by the term physis they did not understand nature, but a being. While saying mia physis they did not mean one nature, but one being. In their conception, Jesus Christ was a Being in which met Divinity and humanity. Many theologians were suspicious of the term person (prosopon); they supposed that it had a modalistic meaning. The main opinion of Modalists is: there is only One God who appears sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometime as Holy Spirit. There were also other reasons of contesting the definition of Chalcedon. It was known that that this definition was imposed by the Greek emperor, influenced by the Bishop of Rome (Pope). Many theologians, especially in monastic milieu, did not want to accept the intervention of the civil authorities in religious matter. They did not have a very good opinion about Latin theology. In the fifth century there were some anti-Hellenic tendencies in the eastern part of the Empire. Many Oriental theologians rejected the definition of Chalcedon because it was „a for­mula of Rom and Constantinople”. In such circumstances, a lot of Christians separated themselves from the Catholic Church, forming Monophysite Churches. Those who remained in unity with Rome and Constantinople, keeping the defini­tion of Chalcedon, were called Melchites. Another problem was the canon 28, which gave some privileges to the bishop see of Constantinople. Pope Leo the Great did not approve this canon. Anti-Hellenic tendencies were so strong that in the time of Islamic invasions the people of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt welcomed Arabic soldiers as liberators from Byzantine domination. It is to be said that Arabic authorities, after having taken power in a country, were friendly towards Monophysites and persecuted Melchites. So, the contestation of the definition of Chalcedon prepared the ground for the victory of Islam in the East. The article is ended by an observation of a French theologian Joseph Moingt: declaration that Divinity and humanity make union the person of Jesus Christ produced division not only in the Church, but also in the Roman Empire. This is one of great paradoxes in the history of Christianity.

Urban Infrastructure and Euergetism Outside the City of Rome

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marietta Horster
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the connection between the monumentalization of cities, the use of local resources, and the involvement of benefactors in civic building operations. At its peak the Roman Empire comprised a mosaic of some two thousand flourishing cities. For the establishment and maintenance of their infrastructure, they benefited in large part from the contributions of wealthy citizens and, in some situations, of outside sponsors. This chapter uses epigraphic evidence to explain what financial resources cities had at their disposal and who was responsible for benefactions that benefited the communities and their inhabitants. It also discusses the nature of the benefactions and what such munificence meant for the cities.

scholarly journals Pax Romana as agtergrond van die Christelike kerugma

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frans J. Boshoff
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Global Stability ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pax Romana ◽  
Second Coming

Pax Romana as background of the Christian kerygma: The concept ‘kingdom of God’ is fundamental to the kerygma on the salvific meaning of Jesus Christ in New Testament times. This article aims to explore the raison d’être why this concept had been such an important element in the kerygma. It argues that the Pax Romana as the primary ideology of the Roman Empire played a significant role. The Pax Romana advocated harmony with the gods, and subsequent heavenly peace and global stability and security in the inhabited world. However, the kerygma replaced the Pax Romana as an ideology with the apocalyptic-eschatological concept ‘kingdom of God’. According to apocalyptic eschatology, an end to the known world is expected. This end was considered to be a cataclysmic catastrophe awaiting in the future, albeit indeterminate to humankind. On the contrary, the church’s kerygma proclaimed that the kingdom of God was already present. An element of Jewish apocalyptism, however, remained in the Christian religion - yet adjusted. That is, although the kingdom of God was regarded already present, the idea of a second coming of Christ as Redeemer was upheld. The article demonstrates that the Christian kerygma on the realised kingdom of God had its origins in the expectation of an utopia, as envisaged in the Pax Romana as ideology.

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