Roger Pearse

My blog post from this thread has attracted attention from Jim Davila in the Paleojudaica blog, who has suggested Larry Hurtado might be interested. It would be good to get an up-to-date opinion.

Duvduv

What is very strange here is the use of the Seleucid calendar (among Jews known as counting from when Alexander became king). This was only done in contracts, and not on any gravestones. It was known as "minyan shtarot."

stephan huller

It is incredible how badly you read your sources. You obviously got your information from the Jewish Encyclopedia which makes reference to the fact that Yemenite Jews do in fact use 'the era of contracts' for their epitaphs. Here is a more detailed study to confirm that statement http://books.google.com/books?id=d58...%22%20&f=false

stephan huller

Another Jewish gravestone dated to the 'era of contracts'

http://books.google.com/books?id=Zxt...cts%22&f=false

stephan huller

Another in India (which is significant):

http://books.google.com/books?id=w_c...ed=0CEsQ6AEwBQ

stephan huller

Yet another from 'the Middle East' with a photo in the British Museum:



http://www.britishmuseum.org/researc...68634&partId=1

Mayest (תִּהְיֶה = Tihye) thou rest in peace until the [redeemer] cometh! (2-6) In the month of Tebeth, in the year 1644, was gathered in peace to her fathers the worthy, respected woman Madmiyah, the daughter of Se'adyah the son of Abraham (may his memory be blessed) ... [Wright 1886]

Duvduv

So this then means that because of the usage by the Yemenites either Salman was a Yemenite in Palmyra or there must be many other Jewish stones in the area of Palmyra who were using the minyan shtarot dates on things other than contracts?
The Indian example is interesting because there is reason to believe that some Indian Jews did in fact originally come from Yemen. And of course the name Saadya is a common Yemenite name.

DCHindley

Maybe the persons so named in the inscriptions are not Jewish.

Regardless, folks use the conventions of the society they live in.

Per this site:

Language

The language spoken at Palmyra was a dialect of western Aramaic, and belongs to the same group as Nabataean and the Aramaic spoken in Egypt. In some important points, however, the dialect was related to the eastern Aramaic or Syrian ... But the relation to western Aramaic is closer; ... . As the bulk of the population was of Arab race, it is not surprising that many of the proper names are Arabic and that several Arabic words occur in the inscriptions. The technical terms of municipal government are mostly Greek, transliterated into Palmyrene; a few Latin words occur, of course in Aramaic forms. For further characteristics of the dialect see Nuldeke, ZDMG. xxiv. 85-109. The writing is a modified form of the old Aramaic character, and especially interesting because it represents almost the last stage through which the ancient alphabet passed before it developed into the Hebrew square character.

The names of the months were the same as those used by the Nabataeans, Syrians and later Jews, viz. the Babylonian. The calendar was the Syro-Macedonian, a solar ... calendar, which Roman influence disseminated throughout Syria ... as distinct from the primitive lunar; it was practically a reproduction of the Julian calendar. Dates were reckoned by the Seleucid era, which began in October 312 B.C.

And this site:

M. Lidzbarski (Ephemeris fuer semitische Epigraphik, 1 (1902), 247f., 2 (1908), 295, 298) points out that specifically Jewish phrases had crept into Palmyrene inscriptions. A number of them (Février, Religion, bibl., 120–7) are dedicated to an anonymous god with the words לבריך שמה לעלמא ("May his name be praised forever") which is generally assumed to be a Jewish influence on Palmyrenes against profaning the name of a god.

It should be noted that the phrase "name be praised forever" starts the inscription we were discussing. Apparently, it is not distinctive to Jews only.

DCH

Grog

Speaking of which? What happened to BC&H?

Toto

The old forum was moved out of view along with the archives (notice the new name on this forum), and the owners of this site are considering how much to keep or other options.