The "Christians for Christians" Inscriptions of Phrygia by Elsa GibsonReview by: Dennis E. GrohJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 101, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1981), pp. 449-450Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601252 .

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BRIEF REVIEWS 449

P. 7, n. 1. Misleads the reader into thinking that teham is Egyptian. Cf. p. 8, n.s.

p. 22, 1. 17. "You (Amun) are wakeful." Cf. dalpata said of gamag (BWL 128:44).

p. 27. n. f. Read ysr for ysr. p. 64. Add reference to T. G. Allen, The Book of the Dead, or,

Going Forth by Day. Chicago, 1974. p. 82, n. n. Certainly teh6m is the etymological equivalent of

Tiamat. For Hebrew functional equivalents see NERTOT, p. 198, notes z, a.

p. 94. Gilgamesh XI agrees with J and P in ascribing the flood to human sinfulness as is evident from the exchange between Enlil and Ea not translated in NERTOT.

p. 107, n. t. Add Phoenician ?tnm tht p'my(KAI26:A:ii:16-17 = NERTOT 241:16).

p. 110, 1. 40. More accurately, "the dying one recovers, the ill one gets well" (iballut mTtu itebbi marsu). On the whole problem see Hirsch, AfO 22 (1968/69). Pp. 39-58.

p. 118. To bibliography add Hunger and Kaufman, JA OS 95

(1975), 371-75. p. 137. Translate ludlul bel nemeqi as "Let Me Praise the

Lord of Wisdom." See CAD D p. 47. ibid., It is passing strange for a contemporary author to refer

to a Kassite protagonist as a "true-blooded Pharisee." p. 139 11: 1. Translate "this year and next year," reading

KUR-UD-ma as sat-tam-ma with CAD B, p. 52a. p. 189. In bibliography correct date of Jacob's book to 1960.

To translations add Caquot, Textes ougaritiques (Paris, 1974). To Language, R. Whitaker, A Concordance of the Ugaritic Literature. Cambridge, 1972.

p. 195, 1. 16. The translation ignores parallelism. Better, "She drives off captors with the staff, with the string of her bow (she drives off) opponents." See Held, AS 16 (1965), p. 403, n. 121; Cf. Cassuto, Anath (Jerusalem, 1965), p. 64.

ibid., 11. 15, 28 "Rings" is unlikely in parallelism to "knees." "Hip" is preferable. See Cassuto, Anath, p. 64.

p. 197, n.s. For hsk 'sk 'bsk see Grelot, JSS 1 (1956) pp.202-5. p. 198, 1. 46 "Who seeks to seize his ears like a bird." For a

more reasonable interpretation see Held, EI 9 (1969), p. 71, n. 10.

p. 223. In 1. 37 'ab 'adm is translated "father of the exalted" but correctly as "father of man" in 1. 43.

p. 226, 1. 1. For an OT parallel see A NET, p. 150. p. 239, 1. 12. "Uriel their David" is unlikely. Semitic idiom

generally does not tolerate a pronominal suffix after a proper name. In support, Lipinski cites krtn (CTA 16:39). See Or 40 [1971], p.333) but does it mean "our Ketet"?

ibid., 1. 14. Explain Ik 'hz 't nbh 'I ySr'l anastrophically as "Proceed against Israel and seize Nebo."

p. 245, 1. 7. Translate, "should you disturb me" (rqz). Cf. 1.6. The German (p. 262) has "stdren" in both cases.

p. 255. Read "Kamil."

p. 265, n. a. Misleading. Aramaic br 'ns means "a man"

(= anyone). Akkadian awTlum sometimes means "king" (See

p. 127, n. k), but Addadian mar awTlim does not mean

"prince" (mar farrim). Hence the analogy is faulty.

S. DAVID SPERLING

HUC-JIR-NY

The "Christians for Christians" Inscriptions of Phrygia. By ELSA GIBSON. Pp. xiii + 161 + xxxiii pls. [Harvard Theological Studies, No. 32.] Missoula: SCHOLARS PRESS.

1978. $7.50 (Members, $5.00).

Gibson has collected, edited, and translated a group of pre- Constantinian inscriptions from the Upper Tembris Valley bearing the peculiar formula contained in the title of this volume. Eight previously unpublished inscriptions of this type are included here, as are some additional texts from the same and neighboring areas (p. 3). The volume is furnished with an index of names (pp. 146-51), a list of "ethnics" (p. 151) and of "proveniences" (pp. 152-53), a concordance (pp. 154-57), a list of plates, and two maps (of unspecified scale).

Gibson has produced a volume to be used by only the most patient and tenacious of scholars. Her statement of organiza- tional principle of the volume both shows the problem and prepares the reader for the level of prose that must be faced throughout the book:

I summarize the history of the movement and the discussion of attribution, and draw some tentative conclusions, after presenting the inscriptions, the ob- ject of this arrangement being to avoid influencing the judgment of the reader (p. 3).

In short, the reader is going to have to do too much work. Simply to find out whether or not this group of inscriptions is Montanist (announced on p. 3), we must piece the informa- tion together (pp. 131-35), only to discover the evidence is inconclusive for such an attribution (pp. 143-44). Dating of the inscriptions, precious knowledge for epigraphy and social history, must be dug out from a variety of places (cf. p. 4 to Nos. 8-13, pp. 9-31).

Moreover, at just those points where the scholar would not mind doing his/her own work, Gibson has made us utterly dependent on her reports and typescript. The inscriptions have all been published without squeezes or drawings; many of the photographs are entirely (Pls. IV, VII, XIII, XIV, XXIV) or partially (Pls. III, XV, XXI-XXIII, XXV [No. 30]) un- readable; no meter sticks appear. The photographs have not been cropped, so that landscape (PI. IV) and even portions of

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450 Journal of the American Oriental Societv 101.4 (1981)

humans (Pls. XXVI-XXVII) appear in the backgrounds; in one case, a picture has been simply turned upside down uncropped because the inscription was resting wrong side up (Pi. XII).

But for the patient scholar, this volume could be a gold mine. Despite her acceptance of the now-disputed early date of 157 C.E. for the beginnings of Montanism (cf. Barnes, J7hS, 1970), the scholarship on the inscriptions themselves is admirable and thorough. Useful touches do abound: her solid conjectures of a common workshop for some of the inscrip- tions (p. 141) and the inclusion of a list of stone masons' names from the region (pp. 68-70).

Gibson has given us a fine little corpus of late-third and early-fourth century inscriptions that provides real grist for the social historian's mill. The literary pretensions of a number of these rural inscriptions (particularly the metric ones) caution us against identifying 'rural" with non-literary (cf. pp. 94-96). The kinship orientation of these Christian inscriptions reinforces Peter Brown's recent contention that reports of massive conversions to Christianity in late antiquity do not fit the facts of Christian communities deeply pre- occupied with problems of kinship and relatively stable in size (The Cult of the Saints, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, pp. 29-32). Although Gibson has a tendency to walk unscathed through what seems to me to be scholarly mine fields (e.g., crosses on pre-Constantinian inscriptions, pp. 19, 118-19; mention of a female Montanist presbyter, p. 136; undiscussed secondary additions to the inscriptions of the formula 'Christians for Christians,' p. 11), this book has done an important service for epigraphy and social history.

DENNIS E. GROH

GARRETT-EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels. By FRANK ZIMMER-

MAN. Pp. xiv + 244. New York: KTAV PUBLISHING

HOUSE. 1979. $17.50.

This volume by a some-time professor at Dropsie College seeks to carry on the pioneer work of C. C. Torrey. From some two hundred examples of alleged mistranslation, Zim- merman argues two basic theses: (1) there existed a written underlying document in Aramaic from which all four of the canonical gospels were translated; (2) the cast of this Aramaic came from the north of Palestine (a proto-Syriac). In addi- tion, the author also contends that the first half of Acts had an Aramaic background, that the Johannine prologue had an Aramaic substratum which read "Lamb" for "Word," and that some fourteen logia of Jesus quoted by the church fathers are authentic because of their semitic roots.

The book is twenty five years out of date. (1) Today the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to argue that the semitisms in the gospels and Acts reflect something other than the style of the Evangelists. Semitisms cannot be used to establish either Jesus-logia or relative antiquity. (2) The volume shows practically no awareness of what the Qumran Aramaic texts have contributed to our knowledge of the language. (3) Except for one reference to Max Wilcox's The Semitisms of Acts, which would undermine Zimmerman's thesis if heeded, there is virtually no knowledge of recent Aramaic studies (e.g., Joseph A. Fitzmeyer is not even mentioned) or of recent attempts in New Testament study to come to terms with the problem of semitisms (e.g., R. A. Martin, "Syntactical Evidence of Aramaic Sources in Acts 1-15," NTS, 11 [1964], 38-59; F. L. Horton, "Reflections on the Semitisms of Luke-Acts," in Perspectives on Luke-Acts, ed. C. H. Talbert [Danville, Va.: ABPR, 1978], 1-23; Schuyler Brown, "From Burney to Black: The Fourth Gospel and the Aramaic Question," CBQ, 26 [1964], 323-39, to mention only a few). For an up to date study of the Aramaic question as it relates to the four canonical gospels, one must look elsewhere.

CHARLES H. TALBERT

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY

A Manual of Babylonian Jewish Aramaic. By DAVID MARCUS.

Pp. viii + 132. Washington: UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

PRESS. 1981. $7.75.

This splendid little volume admirably fulfills its promise to introduce students to a knowledge of Babylonian Jewish Aramaic, which is the principle language of the Babylonian Talmud. In an era of expanding interest in Aramaic text editions and manuals from the early stages of the language the appearance of a book which taps the richest literary source of the later and to many people less well-known period is to be welcomed.

The brief Introduction sketches the Aramaic parentage of Babylonian Jewish Aramaic and provides succinct and accu- rate notes on the vocalization, orthography and phonetics. The method adopted by the editor is the inductive one whereby the grammar and syntax are studied in close associa- tion with a given passage from the Talmud. The manual is based on select readings from five of the following texts (from the standard Vilna edition based on Daniel Bomberg's 1cL

edition of 1520-1531): Baba Bathra 58a-58b, Shabbat 156b, Sanhedrin 108b-109b, Baba Mezia 83a-84a, and Berachot 2a-2b. The texts are mainly non-legal (aggadic) although a few legal (halachic) texts are incorporated in the later chapters when the student is more equipped, from a grammatical point

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