Cool!

ChrisL

The full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4411286.stm

hhp

That isn’t a story. It is a blurb. I want more. Hrant, give us the real links.

Does this have anything to do with Haliburton selling nukes to Iran?

What doesn’t? ;-)

Miss Tiff, if I revealed any more, an overgrown
albino killer-monk would surely come after me...

hhp

For those who want a little more on this story, here’s the NYT’s version: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/international/middleeast/07mideast.htm...

There is another piece in the Telegraph, with a different photograph of the inscription that is easier to read. I’ve tried to transcribe, but I don’t recognise most of the words and some may be abbreviated. The first letter of the fifth line is confusing. I’m guessing it is sigma, simply because I can’t imagine what else it would be (san = as), but everywhere else the lunate form has been used. It is difficult to be sure whether the first word in the second line ends with a double tau or a really wide pi. I’m guessing the latter, because double tau seems unlikely at the end of a word.

ΠΡΟΣΗΝΙΚΕΝ
ΑΚΕΠ ΤΟΥΣ
ΗΦΙΛΟΘΕΟΣ
ΤΗΝ ΤΡΑΠΕ
ΣΑΝ ΘΩ ΙΥΧΩ
ΜΝΗΜΟΣΥΝΟΝ

I believe ’ΤΟΥΣ ΗΦΙΛΟΘΕΟΣ’ refers to ’their love of God’, unless Ηφιλοθεοσ it is a proper noun, e.g. the name of a deceased person. The last word is ’memorial’.

Oh, heh, the NYT story has a translation: ’Lovers of God who contributed the Altar to the God Jesus Christ as a memorial’. So I was right about the words I could identify.

“Ηφιλοθεοσ”

As I hazily recall from my long-ago youth (when I still went to a Greek Orthodox church), this was “Those in fellowship with God” in our church, it was the brotherhood of what might be called “elders” in the church. Basically, it was the church committee who did the fundraising and paid the bills (including building the church edifice).

ChrisL

In which case John could be right about it being a proper noun, and this would be a “donor” plaque.

“donor” plaque.’

Makes sense to me. Maybe I can talk my mother into translating it more accurately.

ChrisL

The fifth letter of the third line must be a zeta — the accusative form ΤΡΑΠΕΖΑΝ wrapped around the lines.

I think ΑΚΕΠΤΟΥΣ must be a single word/name, the subject of the sentence, who is the (feminine) φιλοθεος in question. I can’t explain why the NYT gives a plural subject, since the nominative nouns (assuming ΑΚΕΠΤΟΥΣ is a name) and the verb (which I can’t make out, but is evidently a 3rd person singular form) are both singular. The verb looks like a relative of προσφέρω, in this context ”to make an offering.”

Contra the Telegraph, the mosaic reads (unusually!) “[to] God Jesus Christ,” with the words abbreviated as nomina sacra.

Thanks, Adam! I hand’t counted on word divisions at line breaks; no wonder I was having trouble recognising many words.

So there was probably an alter. Interesting.

Tiffany: “Interesting?”

Well, the altar was an integral part of the mass, even then I suspect.

Yes. I know. Sorry, I was thinking out loud.

>So there was probably an alter. Interesting.

power in the blood

Tiffany, The fact that the mosaic identifies the gift as a “table” rather than an “altar” may be a significant clue to the dating of the site.

I’ve been checking around to see what my colleagues make of the verb, and so far as I’ve been able to tell the consensus is that it must be an odd form of προσφέρω. Brandon Mason conjectures that the mosaic was broken and misrepaired; he also calls attention to the ΗΝ ligature in the first line.

Phil Harland provides wonderful amplification on the matter of nomina sacra in the penultimate line.

And National Geographic provides a photo of the mosaic in situ.

(By the way, I find it incongruous that the bb software compels me to use the tag for “emphasis” when I want to use true italics for a foreign language.)

Hi.

My name is Shahar, and I have started the website www.armageddonchurch.com
I have posted several interviews, maps and pictures. Its only 2 weeks old, so I guess it’ll take some time to mature.

Shahar.

Thanks Shahar!

ChrisL