Image Details

M. Ali Dogenci; Aphrodisias Excavations
The six-foot-high marble pillar was part of a “memorial building” referred to in the inscription as having been built by the people whose names were listed there. Possibly this building was a community soup kitchen attached to a synagogue; neither building has been found.
The inscription, uncovered in 1976, includes two lists. The first is a register of common Jewish names, presumably, of ktistai (Greek for donors or founders). The second, shown here, lists Greek names under the phrase kai hosoi theosebeis, Greek for “and those who are God-fearers.” The phrase occurs in the first line of the inscription, to the left of the dot.
A second inscription (not seen here) from Aphrodisias’s odeum, or theater, reads “the place of those who are complete Hebrews,” and suggests that the citizens of the Anatolian city felt it necessary to differentiate between “full” Jews and pagan “half-converts” known as “God-fearers,” who may have observed some, but not all, Jewish religious practices.