Bible Synapse
Theodotos inscription
Inscription · 1st century BC – AD 70 · Time of Jesus
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 1st century BC – AD 70 (the inscription (the date most scholars accept))
- Found
- City of David (Ophel), Jerusalem, 1913. Found during Raymond Weill's excavation season of 1913–14 (in December 1913, by most accounts), in a cistern filled with building debris on the ridge south of the Temple Mount.
- Now
- Israel Museum (Israel Antiquities Authority collection; formerly shown in the Rockefeller Museum), Jerusalem
- Passages
- Acts 6:9, Luke 4:16–17, Acts 13:14–15, Mark 5:22
What it is
A limestone block with ten lines of Greek. In it Theodotos son of Vettenos, a priest and head of a synagogue (archisynagogos), whose father and grandfather had held the same office, records that he built the synagogue for reading the Law and teaching the commandments, with a guest house and water installations for visitors from abroad.
How it connects to the Bible
It describes the same activities as the Gospels and Acts, which show the scriptures being read and taught in synagogues (Luke 4:16; Acts 13:15). Theodotos's title matches the “rulers of the synagogue” of the Gospels, such as Jairus. Its Greek language and its lodging for travellers from abroad suit the Greek-speaking Jews from other lands who appear in Jerusalem's synagogues in Acts 6:9.
What scholars debate
A few scholars date it after AD 70, to the 2nd or 3rd century. Some have linked it with the synagogue of the Freedmen (Libertines) in Acts 6:9, but that link is speculative.
Sources
- Theodotos inscription — Wikipedia
- Charles Clermont-Ganneau, “Une inscription grecque sur bloc de calcaire, découverte à Jérusalem sur le mont Ophel”, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions (1920), on Persée
- HolyLandPhotos: the Theodotos inscription in the Israel Museum, with the museum's translation