Chocky

Hi, new poster here.

A while ago I noticed an apologist using a 'ROTAS-SATOR' Latin word square as evidence of fairly developed Christian belief in the first century. The gist of the argument was that hidden Christian messages can be found in the square - including the words 'pater noster' (i.e. 'our father'/start of the lord's prayer) laid out in a cross shape, and 'A' and 'O' as the Latin equivalents of the alpha and omega (i.e. Christ's name for himself in Revelation). Therefore, as the square has been found at Pompeii, destroyed in 79AD by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, a developed Christian belief system must have been around in Italy before 79AD.

There's a little summary of how the squares work at Wikipedia, including a picture of the 'pater noster/alpha omega' cruciform layout:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_A...et_Opera_Rotas
And also, I'd love to see the full article here, but don't have access to JSTOR:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=001...-8&size=LARGE/

These squares seem to have been found across Europe, but the earliest examples I've heard of are at Pompeii, Dura-Europos, Manchester and Cirencester. Later versions of the square switched the top and bottom lines, but I don't know how or if this changed the meaning.

Does anybody know more about these squares? Is it conceivable that they could have had a more fitting pagan use? Or perhaps they're just examples of people finding something they set out to see. After all according to the JSTOR link some viewers have also found 'diabolical incantations' in it.

gstafleu

This looks like a bit of Latin ingenuity to me, and ingenuity that cheats at that: notice that the Wiki article says that Arepo is "Likely an invented proper name." Compare it with "Dogma: I am God" which is one of the better English palindromes, although I don't think you can make a full blown square out of it.

If you play around long enough with language you can find lots of "coincidences," much in the way that experiments will give unlikely results 1 in every 100 times if we define unlikely as occurring with a chance of less than 1/100.

So my guess would be that this pater noster bit is indeed pure coincidence. Unfortunately I can't access JSTOR from here, perhaps someone who can can see what it concludes.

Gerard Stafleu