Warning Sign to Greeks on the Temple Mount

It feels like a long time since my Turkey trip in March 2017. I took about 6500 photos from my study tour through Turkey. A big shout-out to Dr. Mark Wilson who was an amazing commentator for connecting the archaeology and landscape of the sites I visited with the history of early Christianity in Asia Minor. Many thanks also to Tuktu Tours who organized the trip (as safe as safe could be!) and Meltem Ciftci, our official tour guide. 
    This post is on the Istanbul National Museum because I was able to finally connect one archaeological find in the Israel Museum, of which I took photos back in April 2016, to another artefact housed in Istanbul. First is the inscription from the Israel National Museum which was found near the Lion's Gate of old Jerusalem: 

Greek Temple Mount Warning (Israel Museum)
Photo by Max Lee ©2016

This small inscription currently housed in Jerusalem is so fragmentary, it's hard to figure out what it might say. None of what you see is a full word except for a random article (τοῦ) or conjunction (καί). Here is the inscription again in transcribed form: 

• ΘΕΝΑΑΛΛ
• ΤΟΣΤΟΥΠ
• ΤΟΥΚΑΙ
• ΗΦΘΗΑΥ
• ΙΑΤΟΕΞ
• ΘΑΝΑΤ

Josephus writes about a series of stone slabs that give warnings to foreigners, some written in Greek, others Latin, that no foreigner was permitted to enter the Temple area (see Jewish Wars 5.194). Scholars rightly identify the above inscription as an example of this warning. 
     But the identification is only possible because we can compare it to a larger and more complete warning which was found north of the Temple Mount and is currently housed at the Istanbul National Museum (how a fragment unearthed at the Temple Mount finds its way to Istanbul is another story). 
     Surprisingly, unlike the smaller one above that was protected in a (fiber)glass casing in prominent display, this larger and arguably more important find was on the floor of the Istanbul Museum, sandwiched obscurely between two other displays, without any protection, and vulnerable to the goodwill of any observer who walks by it. It was a first for me to be so close to, and able to touch, an inscription of such importance. 

Companion and More Complete Inscription of the Greek Temple Warning
1st century C.E., located at the Istanbul National Museum
Photo by Max Lee ©2017

As you can see, the larger inscription is likely complete. For comparison, you can see where the lettering preserved in the 1st inscription (red font) is repeated in its 2nd companion copy: 

• MHΘΕΝΑΑΛΛΟΓΕΝΗΕΙΣΠΟ
• ΡΕΥΕΣΘΑΙΕΝΤΟΣΤΟΥΠΕ
• PΙΤΟΙΕΡΟΝΤΡΥΦΑΚΤΟΥΚΑΙ
• ΠΕΡΙΒΟΛΟΥΟΣΔΑΝΛΗ
• ΦΘΗΕΑΥΤΩΙΑΙΤΙΟΣΕΣ
• ΤΑΙΔΙΑΤΟΕΞΑΚΟΛΟΥ
• ΘΕΙΝΘΑΝΑΤΟΝ

Put the inscription in cursive text with an English translation, and it reads: 

μηθένα ἀλλογενῆ εἰσπο|ρεύσθαι ἐντὸς τοῦ πε|ρὶ τὸ ἱερον τρυφάκτου καὶ | περιβόλου. ὅς δ' ἂν ληφθῇ ἑαυτῷ αἴτιος ἔσ|ται διὰ τὸ ἐξακολου|θεῖν θάνατον

No foreigner is to enter within the balustrade and enclosed area surrounding the Temple. And whosoever is caught will himself be responsible for his resultant death

With this full inscription from the 2nd artefact, we can now reconstruct what the 1st smaller inscription must have looked like as a companion copy of the same warning. Below is an artists's reconstruction of the 1st inscription in its entirety as the script is extrapolated from the original piece (traced out below).

Diagram from Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae Palestinae (vol. 1, pt 1; p. 43)

As Josephus stated ("In this [balustrade] at regular intervals stood slabs giving warning, some in Greek, others in Latin characters, of the law of purification, to wit that no foreigner was permitted to enter the holy place, for so the second enclosure of the temple was called" J.W. 5.194; LCL, p. 61), there were several such warning signs all over the temple area. Luckily, we have at least two of them. 
     The signs give a historical context to several texts in the New Testament, including the scene in Acts where some pious Jews thought Paul had brought a Gentile, Trophimus the Ephesian (Acts 21:29), into the temple, and started a riot as a result. There is also Paul's reference to the temple's physical walls separating out the court of the men from foreigners in the Letter to the Ephesians. Here he uses it as a metaphor for how this "dividing wall of hostility" between Jews and Gentiles has been torn down by the work of Christ (e.g., Eph. 2:14). 

Herculaneum: Where Particle Physics and Papyrology Meet

I love what I do. Just when you think nothing can surprise you any more, something always lights up your horizon in the world of the ancient history and biblical studies. NPR just released a fascinating radio story on a major breakthrough in papyrological studies: using a particle accelerator developed in France, papyrologists are beginning to read the text off of a fossilized papyrus scroll without having to open it. You can listen to the radio show here, and read more from the technical published article on which the show is based at Nature Communications. 

Photo of a rolled up, charred scroll uncovered from the Herculaneum
library which was buried under volcanic ash in AD 70
Photo credit: www.npr.org

   Since my research agenda involves the intersection between ancient philosophical discourse and Paul, and my next major monograph will be on Paul and the Epicureans (right after I'm done with my 1st one.... almost there by the way!), I have been reading the philosophical writings of Philodemus uncovered from the ancient library at Herculaneum in Italy for some time. The villa of Piso (Julius Caesar's father-in-law) near the seaport of Herculaneum, along with the entire city of Pompeii just 9 miles south, if you recall, was buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 70. Hopefully some of you had a chance to see the exhibit of Pompeii when it circulated nationally in the States back in 2006. It was stunning! and my sons and I had a great learning experience when the exhibit was displayed at the Field Museum in Chicago. 
   To appreciate the NPR article, let me digress a bit to explain succinctly the process that archaeologists and papyrologists undertake to reconstruct an ancient text from papyri. When I work with the ancient texts, I almost always deal with the published form, like this example from Richard Janko's Philodemus: On Poems, Book 1 (The Asthetic Works 1:1; New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 260: 

Print edition: P Herc 460, Column 67, lines 1-10

The above critical, published text is reconstructed, with conjectures on what the text might be in brackets since there are gaps or unreadable sections in the original papyrus.
    But in order for me to read the above, some enterprising papyrologist had to do the hard work of unrolling a brittle, charred scroll. As soon as you unroll the scroll, it starts to fall apart and you are left with hundreds of fragments that need to be carefully put together with the other fragments in correct order, much like how a person has to solve a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, but in this case, you might be missing many of the pieces, or some of the pieces are stuck together and you have to take them apart before finishing the puzzle. Here is the same text above but as a photo of its original fragment: 

Photo of P Herc 460, fragment 1

This piece, however, needs to be laid aside the other pieces to reconstruct the full text. Many times the texts are illegible and have to viewed under a multi-spectral, infra-red light in order to read the ink (click the link for a youtube video on the process). Without the infra-red light, it looks much more like a charred mess: 

Almost completely illegible charred Herc papyrus fragment
Photo Credit: The Friends of the Herculaneum Society

Fragments from an unrolled scroll put back together
Photo credit: www.npr.org

Often papyrologists double as artists and sketch their reconstructed texts in their notebooks. Here again is the same P Herc 460 fragment (highlighted in yellow) but hand-drawn and put to gether with other fragments:

P Herc 460, frag 1-4, redrawn by F. Casanova
(frag 1 is highlighted in yellow)

   What makes the NPR article, now, so exciting, is that with the particle accelerator and technique called "X-ray phase-contrast tomography," they can read the ink off the papyrus scroll without having to unroll it. This way, the rolled scroll is kept from potentially being destroyed by the unrolling process. The technique still needs further refinement but if all goes well, we might see previously unpublished scrolls accessible to the academy and public when their texts are reconstructed and made available in the print edition. I don't have the expertise to do any of the above, except to read the printed form of the texts. So I'll have to eagerly await along with everyone else what treasures can be unlocked when particle phyics and papyrology collide at Herculaneum!
   Want to watch a video demonstration of the process? See the youtube video demonstration below from the University of Kentucky lab team. Wow!

Wake Up O Sleeper!

In my previous post on the grave reliefs depicting the agony of separation between the deceased and surviving family (here), I shared how many people in the Greco-Roman world grieved over the prospect of never seeing their loved ones ever again. In contrast to their grief and pain, Apostle Paul puts forth the hope of every Christian believer: 

• 13 But we do not want for you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, concerning those who are sleeping (περὶ τῶν κοιμωμένων), so that you will not grieve as the rest (of the world) do, who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Christ died and was raised, and in the same way, God, through Jesus, will also bring with him (σὺν αὐτῷ) the ones who have fallen asleep (τοὺς κοιμηθέντας).... 17 Then we who remain living will be snatched up together with them (ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς) in the clouds for a meeting with the Lord in the air (1 Thess 4:13-14, 17)

There are many exegetical points to unpack in this short set of verses, but let me focus on just two related themes. The first is the metaphor which Paul uses for the believers who have died: i.e., they are sleeping (κοιμωμένων). For Paul, Easter Sunday means that Jesus conquered death's grip on our world. In the same way that God raised Jesus from the dead, Paul encourages the Thessalonian church that God will raise believers who have died to new life. Death is not final separation, but a temporary or interim state like sleep. God will raise Christ followers on the day of the resurrection. With a command-cry (ἐν κελεύσματι; v. 14), God will give this word to the dead: "Rise!" Or in the words of Eph. 5:14: "Wake up, O Sleeper! Rise from the dead and Christ will epiphany before you!" Christ will return to awaken those who have fallen asleep by the power of his word. 

   The Christian hope has always been that life, really living, does not end at the grave. Death is just a momentary interruption like a person taking a long nap. God will raise us up with a command of his word, and we will not only be united with Christ forever (σὺν αὐτῷ) but we will be united with each other (ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς). The resurrection is a reunion of Christian believers where we meet again with those whom we have left behind and those who have moved on ahead of us. It gives us hope that beyond the grave, believers in Christ have an eternity to catch up with one another in the life to come.

6th century AD Inscription
ΚΟΙΜΗΤΗΡΙΟΝ... ΑΙΓΙΑΡΙΟΥ (highlighted in blue)
 "The sleeping place... of a goatherder"
Photo by Max Lee ©  2014 Corinth Museum

In the above inscription, one of a few dozen that can be found in the Museum at Corinth, Greece, we have an example of a Christian grave marker. But instead of the word "tomb" or "memorial" (μνημεῖον), the term ΚΟΙΜΗΤΗΡΙΟΝ (κοιμητήριον) or "sleeping room" is used. By the 4-6th century AD, Christian believers wrote on their tombstones that the grave is but a sleep room, a temporary resting place, for those who have died in Christ and have the hope we will not only be reunited with Christ but with loved ones who have also believed.

   Eventually, the idiom of "sleeping place" (κοιμητήριον) will make it into the Byzantine Greek lexicon under the alternative spelling (κυμητήριον) and mean "burial place" or "tomb" as the following inscription shows: 

6th century AD inscription with the Byzantine spelling
ΚΥΜΗΤΗΡΙΟΝ (derived from κοιμητήριον) which means "burial place"
Photo by Max Lee ©  2014 Corinth Museum

   This past weekend, three generations of my family met together in Chicago: the grandparents, my younger brother, myself and our spouses, and my teenage sons and middle school nieces. As we get older, life can leave us with many regrets. But as Christian believers, we all have the hope that not only will the Lord make all that is wrong and crooked right at the resurrection, but we can all celebrate what God has done together and spend eternity catching up on time missed with one another and those we love. Maranatha!

Postscript 08/09/14: Exegetical Exercise: 1) Read the above post. 2) Go to the Bible dictionaries/encyclopedias in the reference section of the university library and learn more about the resurrection of the dead and how this doctrine is different from Greco-Roman ideas about the immortality of the soul. 3) Interpret 1 Thess. 4:13-18 drawing insight from your background study. In other words: how does understanding that the resurrection means more than resuscitation but an different state of bodily existence help you understand Paul’s message of hope in 1 Thess. 4:13-18? What happens to the soul in the interim period between the (physical) death (of the body) and the resurrection of believers at Christ’s return? 4) Be sure to consult at least one academic commentary on your biblical text from the reference section. 

Minor Correction 08/16/14: I'm going to add a clarifying point. With the Christian grave inscriptions above (ca. 6-7th centuries AD), probably the semantic shift from the definition of κοιμητήριον as "sleeping room" to the meaning "burial place" had already taken place. You actually see both words κοιμητήριον (Koine spelling) and κυμητήριον (Byzantine spelling) used on a number of inscriptions from this time period (good examples are found at the Museum in Corinth, Greece). I'm not exactly sure when the semantic shift took place but we know that by Byzantine times, κοιμητήριον had come to mean "burial place" and its Koine definition of "sleeping place," along with its use by Christians on grave markers, was earlier. This note does not change any of the points I make above but simply clarifies the time stamp when the definition of "burial place" for κοιμητήριον enters into the Byzantine lexicon. MJL

Idol Food Is No Idle Business at Corinth

Whew! Just turned in the proof's for the Seyoon Kim Festschrift yesterday. That was brutal. I went through several pots of coffee and about a half-bottle of Advil to get this done... and all this with the help of a TA (Thanks Kerry!) who did fantastic work. But back to where I left off.
   Pardon the pun, but idol food was no idle business in the Roman Corinth of Paul's day. To the contrary, it was a thriving enterprise that produced a high-quality item in mass quantities with amazing efficiency at an affordable price. While we are not sure of the exact location of the butcher shop which took left-over food sacrificed to idols and prepared it to be sold in the marketplace before it could spoil, historically we have three competing locations based on the recovery of inscription fragments found around the area of the Corinthian agora. These have been mapped out below (in burgandy, green and blue): 

Map of Ancient Corinth (credit: www.planetware.com)

(1) The least likely location was once argued by Broneer who later retracted his initial assertion that based on the discovery of an inscription at the crypto-porticus near the South Basilica (dotted burgandy rectangle on the map), the shops of the south forum was where the macellum was situated. But this location was based on an earlier (mis)conjecture that the fragment read: ΛΟΥKIOC  ΛAN[IO]C ("Loukios the but[che]r"). But it was later determined that the better reconstruction was ΛΟΥKIOC  ΚAN[IO]C ("Loukios Kan[io]s") where the second word is not "butcher" but the nomen "Kanios" [See the discussion by David Gill in his "The Meat Market at Corinth (1 Cor 10:25)," Tyndale Bulletin 43.2 (1992) 391-92; cf. O. Broneer, "Studies in the topography of Corinth at the time of St. Paul," Archaiologike Ephemeris (1937) 125-133].

(2) Bruce Winter mentions the possibility of its location at the basilica near the Lechaion Road where the Roman market existed (green circle; see his After Paul Left Corinth, 294). 

(3) But the most likely location remains the Peribolos of Apollo where a series of shops built by the Romans are located, and these and the Peribolos are built on top of the former location of the old Greek meat market (mentioned by Pausanias in his Description of Greece 2.3.2-2.3.3; see blue circle on the map). Fotopoulos gives a detailed summary for why the Peribolos is the most likely location based on how other macella (e.g., the macellum at Pompeii) are similarly constructed near a water source so live fish can be kept and then butchered on order (see his Food Offered to Idols in Roman Corinth, 139-42).  

(4) Perhaps the safest estimation is by Gill who simply says that the location of the butcher shop, though unspecified, nevertheless was likely near the Lechaion Road. 

   The point, however, is that the butcher was close by the temples. From the Temple of Apollo, it was roughly 15-20 yards away from the Roman market place (green circle) and 25-30 yards away from the Peribolos (blue circle). Or, as I like to say, the butcher shop was just two "first down's" on the football field away from the temple. Not far at all. The food was quickly butchered and sold immediately before it spoiled. It met a real need after major festivals and religious holidays by providing high-quality food at an inexpensive price to the common person off the street. 

   And Paul, against his Jewish instincts, appears to have no qualms about eating idol food sold in the macellum (ἐν μακέλλῳ; 1 Cor 10:25). Much good discussion has already been made about a theology of creation (based on Paul's quotation of Psalm 24:1 LXX  [= 23:1 LXX] in 1 Cor 10:26) which informs Paul's permissibility. But what I find intriguing is the non-sacramental view Paul has towards idol food when it comes to the elements (or meat) themselves. What makes idol food idolatrous (and possibly sacramental) is not the elements or food, but the cultic setting in which pagan worship and fellowship took place. I believe this foil has enormous theological implications for the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor 10:12-24. But more on this next time.

The Mystery of the Missing Fragment from the Butcher Shop Inscription at Corinth

[Warning: Going turbo nerd here!] Besides the Gallio inscription at Delphi and the Erastus inscription near the theater at Corinth, another inscription that drew my attention during the Greece trip was the dedication of the butcher shop by the family of Cornelii (Murphy-O'Connor, St. Paul's Corinth, p. 30). Paul, in his discussion of idol food (1 Cor 10:25) instructs that any idol meat sold ἐν μακέλλῳ ("in the market") is permissible to eat, although he was willing to relinquish this right for the sake of his brother and sister. 
    The Greek word μάκελλος is a Hellenized transliteration of the Latin macellum. The inscription dedicating the macellum (meat market) and macellum piscarum (fish market) is supposed to be on display at the Museum on site in ancient Corinth. When I went there, this is what I found (next 4 photos taken by Max Lee at the Corinth Museum © 2014): 

Outdoor display at the Museum in Corinth

Close up (right-bottom of the display): description/date of the inscription

Close-up (left top of the display):
Q CORNELIV

Close-up (right top of the display):

NDVS                         ET

Q CORNELIV

Q L CLEO...ENIS

SCARIO E...... 
...NIB(P?)V...                     

And that's it. Two fragments (one of which is a composite cemented back together) and the display description, and no other fragments. I looked. There was no sign saying that some of the fragments were going to be displayed later and are being prepared (which I hope is still the case because so much is missing!). So my question is: where's the rest?
   In David Gill's article "The Meat Market at Corinth (1 Cor 10:25)," Tyndale Bulletin 43.2 (1992) 391, he reports and transcribes the fragmentary marble inscription uncovered in 1898. What I have tried to do is take Gill's transcription and match, to the best of my ability, what I found on display at the Corinthian museum:

Q(uintus) Co[r]nelius [.] f(ilius) [A]em(ilia) Secundus [et]      

Maec[ia Q(uintus)] f(ilia) vxor [eius] [.] [Cornelius Secundus      

M]a[e]cianus f(ilius) Q(uintus) Corn[elius]                                  

Secu[nd]us f [Co]rn[elia Secunda f eius vxor Q(uintus) M]a[e]ci

Q(uintus) l(ibertus) Cleogen[is]                                                     

macellu[m--- cum----] et pi[scario ----]                                    

Key: [brackets] indicates missing letters conjectured to be there; (parentheses) indicated the spelled out word that the initial letter abbreviates; the red color font indicates what fragments of the inscription are on display at the Museum of Corinth at the time when I took these photos on 1/10/2014; the black color font indicates parts of the inscription that are missing from the display but have been published by Gill (see also Cadbury 1934), and especially missing is the crucial MACELLV (market) shown in bold.
    The English translation by Gill of the butcher shop inscription is as follows (again parts of the inscription on display in red, with the missing fragments not display in black):

Quintus Cornelius Secundus, son of [---], of the tribe Aemilia, and

his wife Maecianus, daughter of [Quintus], his son [--- Cornelius         

Secundus] Maecianus, his son Quintus Cornelius Secundus, his         

[daughter] Cornelia [Secunda, who is the wife of Quintus] Maecius        

Cleogenes the freedman of Quintus (Maecius) [built (?)] the                 

meatmarket [---] along with [---] and facilities for fish [-----]         

There are several odd things when you compare the museum display with Gill's transcription. 
   1) Some of the inscription that are conjectured by Gill [in brackets] actually appear quite clearly in the display fragments: notably, the family name Cornelius. Where Gill transcribes only CORN---, in both the fragments I saw at the museum, it clearly shows more letters: CORNELIV... Another example is the word for fish (piscarius). Gill transcribes only PI... and conjectures the rest PI[SCARIO]. My photos instead show the PI to be missing and shows alternatively [PI]SCARIO. 
   2) Secondly, everything in black and especially the crucial word for "meat market" (= the Latin MACELLV[M]) is missing from the museum display. By comparison, the parts of the inscription that are displayed at the museum are shown in red, and even here I'm just guessing. 
   3) Lastly, the last illegible line of the displayed fragment ..NIB(P?)V... is simply not mentioned at all by Gill and omitted from his transcription.

    Did someone make a mistake? Am I even looking at the same fragments that Gill writes about? Did the museum lose some of the fragments? Where is the rest of the inscription? Are the missing fragments stored somewhere? ... A million questions were darting through my mind since the one fragment with the word "meat market" was absent from the display. 

    For the record, the missing fragment with the word MACELLV[M] has been published and a black-white photo of it can be seen in Henry Cadbury's famous 1934 article "The Macellum of Corinth,"JBL 53/2 (1934), 134-41. If you search the web, in the public domain, this photo (credit: Ferrell Jenkins) can be found of the exact same fragment that Cadbury shows: 

Q CO

MAEC

SECV

MACELLV

INEA LOC

To my disappointment, I did not see the above fragment anywhere in the museum display at Corinth. I hope they did not lose it, and it's in the museum basement somewhere, ready to be "rediscovered" and put back on display. At least, we know that the fragment exists and is not a hoax. 
   Well, if anyone who is reading this post happens to be visiting ancient Corinth any time soon, could you please visit the museum on site and see if you can find the above missing MACELLV fragment? Ask the procurator of the museum if they have this fragment on display anywhere or if it is possibly in storage. If you happen to find it, I would be in your debt if you could take a fresh digital photo of it (high res) and kindly send me a copy via email. Many thanks to anyone who can make this happen!
   That said, in my next post, I'm going to talk about the proximity of the butcher shop to the temple cult (of Apollo) at Corinth and its relevance for Paul's teaching on idol food. But it sure is a mystery as to what happened to the missing MACELLV fragment!

The Final Day in the Life of a Slave

When you drive up to Delphi, you cannot help but pause and just marvel at the beauty of Greece. The site of ancient Delphi is located in a mountainous range, part of the southwest spur or lateral ridge of Mt. Parnassus. The photo below gives you a glimpse of an awe-inspiring view from the vantage point of the archaeological remains of the Temple of Apollo. 

The site of the Apollo Temple in the Mountain Range of Delphi

Though famous for many reasons, including the myth that Delphi is the ὀμφαλός ("navel") of Gaia ("Mother Earth") and therefore the center of the world, ancient Delphi was ultimately known as a place where oracles were received. Every spring, pilgrims would take the long trek up the Via Sacra ("Sacred Way"; see the map below) to Delphi in order to receive an oracle from the Pythia, i.e., the priestesses or sibyls through whom Apollo spoke. Prophecy at Delphi goes as far back as the 6th century BC, but continued through the first century AD and beyond, including a famous oracle recorded by Seutonius concerning the death of Emperor Nero (Nero 40.3). 

Map of Ancient Delphi (credit: www.planetware.com)

In the above map, not only can you see the path or "sacred way" walked by the pilgrim, but I have also highlighted where the Polygon wall is located along the foundation of the Temple of Apollo (blue and green arrows). If you look at the carefully cut stone (in the photo below), you can easily see why it was called the Polygon wall. However what makes the wall unique is not just its precisely cut and fitted stones, but the inscriptions that are written upon them.

The Polygon Wall (blue arrow on the map) along the foundation of the Temple (remains of the temple seen above with top three colonades)

There are about 800+ inscriptions along the face of the Polygon wall, some of them include the civic laws which governed the city. The date of the inscription is about the 3rd century BC.

Inscription of Delphic Civic Laws on the Polygon Wall

But most of the inscriptions deal with the manumission of slaves. It is estimated that the names of more than 1200 slaves are inscribed along the walls.

On this part of the wall (left along the steps of the Via Sacra; see the green arrow on the map), one slave's name is highlighted (next two photos)

One of the Stones with the Names of Freed Slaves (I highlighted one name in yellow here and below)

Close-up of the Name of the Freed Slave ΦΙΛΟΠΑΤΡΙΣ 
(in Latin, the name would be: Philopatrus)

When I asked John Kremidas (Prof. of NT at the Greek Bible Institute in Athens) why the names were inscribed in stone, he said that if a slave's freed status was ever questioned, that slave could go to the Polygon Wall and point to his/her name and say: "See! I have been freed!" 
    One can only imagine the thousands of untold stories behind the names of the manumitted slaves. For every freed slave there were a hundred others who died a miserable death by being worked to the bone on civic projects like Nero's failed attempt to cut a canal across the Isthmus, or by back-breaking labor dragging vessels and cargo along the Diolkos. Even if a slave managed to find oneself doing domestic work in a Greco-Roman household, there was no guarantee that he or she would ever be freed. The manumission of any slave was completely up to the whim and mercy of the owner. 
    So it was a truly moving sight to witness name after name after name of men and women who were emancipated by Delphic law from the hard life of slave. So many more never made it to the wall. 
    But to be freed in the Greco-Roman world is not the same as being free. A freed slave could never receive the same social status as a free person. Often the freed individual would still depend the patronage of one's former master in order to start a new business and a new life. But more on this in the next post concerning exegetical connections and pastoral reflections on slavery texts in the New Testament.