New Evidence for ‘Godfearers’ in Asian Bosporos
Bekhter Anastasia P., Chkhaidze Viktor N.
The article publishes an inscription on a marble stele reused in the staircase of a private house in the stanitsa of Taman. The house is located directly on the territory of the archaeological site that was used for a long time for the extraction of building stone, which makes it possible to attribute the stele to the ancient Hermonassa with a very high degree of reliability. The inscription is a manumission; it is the first document of this genre found in the territory of Hermonassa. The main part of the text has been destroyed, but the dating (392 of the Bosporan era, i.e. 95/96 AD, the reign of Sauromates I), and the last line, where θεο<σε>βῶν is clearly read, have partly survived. Together with the manumission found in 2007 by A.I. Aibabin (the article also offers a new reading of the initial part of that document), and CIRB 71 (both inscriptions come from Panticapaeum), we now have three documents irrefutably proving that Jewish communities, which included Godfearers (quasi-proselytes), existed in the territory of the Bosporan kingdom in the first century AD.
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