Endnote 5 – Earliest Christian Inscription

In his Ecclesiastical History (5.16.1–5), Eusebius refers to an anonymous anti-Montanist writer who sent a treatise to one Avircius Marcellus. (Montanism was a second- to third-century Christian prophetic movement centered in Phrygia.) Eusebius also refers to “our presbyter, Zoticus of Otrous,” that is, a fellow presbyter of the anonymous author and possibly also of Avircius Marcellus. Given that Eusebius mentions Otrous—almost certainly the Phrygian Pentapolis city—in the same passage in which he writes about Avircius (whose epigraphic namesake comes from the same area), it is probable that the man named Avircius Marcellus is identical with our Avercius of Hierapolis. The two references to two very important early Christian individuals—each involved in some way with church affairs, living in the same time period, bearing virtually the same name, and most likely living in the same region of Phrygia—suggests that they are one and the same. A date of 192/193 C.E. would be the earliest possible, since Avercius probably received the anti-Montanist treatise of the anonymous author at the same time. (The difference in spelling—Avercius or Avircius—is minor. Eusebius’s addition of Marcellus, a Roman cognomen, simply makes this a Roman-style name.)