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Politarch inscription from Thessalonica
Inscription · 1st or 2nd century AD · The early church · also called Vardar Gate inscription
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- Date
- 1st or 2nd century AD (the inscription's carving)
- Found
- Western (Vardar) Gate, Thessaloniki, Greece, 1876. Copied by travellers from the 18th century onwards while it was still set in the arch over the Via Egnatia at the city's western entrance. When the arch was pulled down in 1876, the inscribed stone was rescued, kept at the British consulate and later sent to the British Museum.
- Now
- British Museum, London
- Passages
- Acts 17:5–9
What it is
An inscribed stone from a Roman arch that spanned the Via Egnatia at the western gate of Thessalonica. It names six local magistrates who held the title politarch, meaning ruler of the city. Ernest DeWitt Burton (1898) dated it later than 30 BC and perhaps as late as the mid-2nd century AD; it is usually placed in the 2nd century.
How it connects to the Bible
In Acts 17 a crowd in Thessalonica drags Jason and other believers before the city's magistrates, called politarchs in Luke's Greek and “rulers of the city” in the KJV. The word is rare in ancient literature, but inscriptions like this one show that it was the real title of Thessalonica's chief officials, attested there from at least the reign of Augustus into the 2nd century AD.
What scholars debate
This stone is probably later than Paul's visit. The link to Acts rests on the title, which other Thessalonian inscriptions show was already in use under Augustus.