In 1895, the German epigrapher Ludwig Bürchner visited the Greek island of Samos to record inscriptions, which he placed in a notebook that currently is in the archive of the Inscriptiones Graecae at the Berlin Academy (Germany). One epigraph that Bürchner noted was a Latin epitaph that may refer to Lucius Sergius Paullus; the most probable candidate for the Cypriot proconsul whom Paul and Barnabas encountered on Cyprus (Acts 13:7).

This funerary inscription remained unknown to most of the scholarly world until 1964, when another German epigrapher, Günter Dunst published all known Latin epigraphs from Samos, which were known at that time.[1] In the process, he pointed out the existence of a certain first century AD “grave inscription” (Grabinschrift), which refers to “a slave of L(ucius) Ṣẹrgius Paullus” (eines Skiaven des L(ucius) Ṣẹrgius Paullus) named “Gemellus” (Gemellus).

Some historians have accepted Dunst’s identification. Professor Werner Eck (Cologne University, Germany) comments on the epitaph:

Vermutlich ist dies der in der Apostelgeschichte bezeugte Sergius Paulus; sein Sklave war vielleicht auf der Fahrt nach dem Osten auf Samos gestorben. Er erhielt ein eigenes Grab und der volle Name des Herrn sagte, dass der Verstorbene kein Niemand gewesen ist.

Presumably, this is the Sergius Paulus attested in the Acts of the Apostles; perhaps his slave died on Samos on his journey to the East. He received his own tomb and his master’s full name testified that the deceased was not a nobody.[2]

In 2003, Prof. Klaus Hallof (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany) edited all the Samian inscriptions and revisited the epigraph in question. After consulting Bürchner’s notebook, he reproduced the following text, restoring the name Lucius Sergius Paulinus, not Lucius Sergius Paullus:

Gemello ∙ L(uci) ∙
Ṣẹrgi ∙ Paul–
[i]n[i ∙] servo
– –m ∙ f(aciendum) c(uravit) ∙ Dro–

“For Gemellus, the slave of L(ucius) Sergius Paulinus, who made this . . . Dro . . .”[3]

I have been unable to examine the epigraph or see a picture of it. Presumably, the inscription is lost and Prof. Hallof informs me that the squeeze that Bürchner made is of poor quality. Therefore, it remains debatable whether or not the stone refers to the member of the Sergii Paulli whom Paul and Barnabas probably met.

Nevertheless, Alexander Weiß proposes that even if the epitaph refers to Lucius Sergius Paulinus, he still may be associated with Lucius Sergius Paullus:

denn Paulinus wäre wohl ein Freigelassener oder ein Nachkomme eines Freigelassenen dieser Familie.

For Paulinus is probably a freedman or a descendant of a freedman of this family.[4]

Weiß may be correct. Hopefully, future epigraphic discoveries will shed light on this epigraph and the presence of Lucius Sergius Paullus or Lucius Sergius Paulinus on Samos and his possible connection to early Christianity.

[1] Günter Dunst, “Die lateinischen Inschriften von Samos,” Helikon 4 [1964]: 284

[2] Werner Eck, “Sklaven und Freielassene von Römern in Iudaea und den angrenzendenzenden Provinzen,” Novum Testamentum 55 (2013): 19

[3] IG XII.6 no. 711

[4] Alexander Weiß, Soziale Elite und Christentum Studien zu ordo-Angehörigen unter den frühen Christen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2105), 73.

One of my goals in my book, Paul and Imperial Divine Honors: Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024), is to demonstrate the diversity of Julio-Claudian imperial divine honors in the Roman Empire and that no such thing as “the imperial cult” existed. This is evident from a contextual examination of grants of such honors.

For example, in Rome and her colonies, imperial divine honors tended to be given to deceased Julio-Claudians whom the Roman Senate deified and provided a temple, cultic statue, altar, priests, sacrifices, festivals, and the official title Divus (for a male Julio-Claudian) and Diva (for a female Julio-Claudian). Because this deification tended to be reserved for Julio-Claudians who advanced the interests of Rome and her empire, not every emperor or Julio-Claudian was hailed as a Divus. For a list of these divi (the Latin plural of divus), see p. 43 of my book.

In Greek provinces, a group of provincials most often worked with the Roman provincial administration, the Roman Senate, and the reigning emperor to determine which Julio-Claudian would be given divine honors, where they would be located, and of what the honors in question would consist. These provincial honors were usually bestowed on living Julio-Claudians, but official documents associated with them tended to avoid calling the honored a “god” (theos in Greek). Moreover, the reason for their establishment was typically to be show gratitude for imperial benefaction and to court such future munificence.

Greek cities most often provided imperial divine honors to living Julio-Claudians to render appropriate gratitude for a specific beneficence and to court more acts of charity. Once the Julio-Claudian divinely honored died and thus could no longer benefit Greek cities concretely, they tended to lump that imperial into a growing number of divine imperials known as Augustan gods, θεοὶ Σεβαστοί (with the emperor Augustus being the chief exception). The traditions by which cities honored divinely the Julio-Claudians were local and some of them stretched back to Hellenistic period of Greek history and even beyond. Therefore, such honors were diverse. Given that there was no Roman oversight of these grants of divine honors, denizens of cities were free to call living or deceased Julio-Claudians “gods” or manifestations of the Olympians.

Finally, ancient Greeks and Romans divinely honored Julio-Claudians, both dead and alive, in their own homes, to varying degrees, and for varying reasons. For example, archaeologists working in Ephesus found a domestic imperial shrine in an elite apartment (insula) in a house in a block of such apartments (insulae) known as Terrace House 2. The shrine dates between AD 14 and 37 and consists of busts of Tiberius and Livia that had been set in a domestic shrine in a niche in the wall.

For the shrine, see Elisabeth Rathmayr, “New Evidence for Imperial Cult in Dwelling Unit 7 in Terrace House 2 in Ephesos,” in Ephesos as a Religious Center under the Principate, ed. Allen Black, Christine M. Thomas, and Trevor W. Thompson, WUNT 488 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 9–35. Often, scholarly works reference a bronze snake that was found with Tiberius’s and Livia’s busts. However, Rathmayr demonstrates that this is not the case and that the snake was placed in front of the niche much later.

In short, to quote Nijay Gupta’s excellent blurb about my book, “imperial divine honors were everywhere . . . [but] they were not everywhere the same.” This means that the early Christian interactions with them were not uniform and must have varied from city-to-city and province-to-province. For more on these interactions, check out my new book!

I am thrilled that my new book, Paul & Imperial Divine Honors, is out in print! In this work, I introduce imperial divine honors, more commonly called imperial cult in New Testament circles, to a more general audience and then provide contextual reconstructions of imperial divine honors in first century AD Corinth, Philippi, and Thessalonica with the goal of adjudicating with precision what relationship, if any, these honors had to early Christianity in these cities.

This book is one on which I have been working since Spring 2010 when I took my first class on imperial divine honors at Harding School of Theology (Memphis, TN) and it is much more than words on a page. I have procured (and in some cases paid for) the rights to publish 43 images and maps from and associated with ancient Corinth, Philippi, and Thessalonica and, in an appendix, I provide 60 Latin and Greek inscriptions associated with Corinthian, Philippian, and Thessalonian imperial divine honors along with fresh translations of them.

I hope this work will be of use not only to scholars but also to clergy as they reconstruct the gospel in its original imperial context and exegete what it means for the Church in our modern context.

Recently, I received my complimentary copy of The Village in Antiquity and The Rise of Early Christianity, edited by Alan Cadwallader, James R. Harrison, Angela Standhartinger, and L.L. Welborn.

This work contains eighteen essays by seventeen different scholars ranging from specialists on second millennium BC Egypt to historians of early Christianity, Greco-Roman epigraphers, and Greco-Roman archaeologists. The scope of this volume is immense, as it examines villages and aspects of village life in Pharaonic and Roman Egypt, ancient Israel, Roman Palestine, Roman Galatia, Roman Asia, Roman Macedonia, Roman Achaea, and Roman Italy. The overall thesis of The Village in Antiquity is that the scholarly consensus that early Christianity was a largely urban phenomenon is fundamentally flawed and in need of revision. Those interested in ancient villages in general and the spread of early Christianity in them in particular will benefit from this great collection of essays. Thanks to Alan, Jim, Angela, and Larry for their hard work in producing it and for including me among its contributors!

What if there was an inscription that provided records of actual sacrifices offered in Rome by one of the city’s colleges of priests?

What if this epigraph dated to the time of the composition of the New Testament documents? 

Would such a source illuminate not only public religion in Rome but also public religion in the Roman colonies mentioned in the New Testament like Corinth, Philippi, and Pisidian Antioch?  

Such an inscription does in fact exist! 

It is called the Arval Acta after the priestly college who offered the sacrifices mentioned in the epigraph, the Arval Brothers. The Arval Brothers were a priestly college that consisted of twelve men who served for life and who were drawn from senators in Rome. They served the Roman deity Dea Dia who was the goddess of grain and fertility. The Arval Brothers had a cultic site in a sacred grove of trees atop a hill 7-8 km west of Rome. Temples of Dea Dia and other goddesses were on the hill and at its bottom a bath and imperial temple in which the Arval Brothers gathered to recline at sacred banquets. 

Each year the priestly college appointed a president (magister) whose main duty was to offer a number of sacrifices throughout the year. Most of these were directed to Dea Dia but in the imperial period (post 31 BCE) a number of these sacrifices either were offered to deceased and officially deified emperors called divi or to the gods on behalf of the reigning emperor and his family, especially for his health and for celebrating important days like his birthday. 

To provide an example:

A(nte) d(iem) (undecimum) k(alendas) Octobres (vacat)| Taurus Statilius Corvinus promagister collegii fratrum arṿ[ali]um| nomine, quod eo die C. Caesar Augustus Germanicus conṣ[ensu]| senatus delatum sibi patris nomen recepisset in Cạ[pitlio]| Iovi, Iunoni, Minervae hostias maiores (tres) inmolavit et ad templum| novom divo Augusto unam. (vacat). | Adfuerunt Paullus Fabius Persicus, M. Furius Camillus, Appius Iunius| [Silanus, P. Me]ṃmiuṣ [Reg]ụḷụṣ, C. Cạẹcịṇạ, Ḷ. Ạṇṇịụṣ Ṿịṇịcịạṇụ[s,]| [C. Calpurniu]s Piso. (vacat)

On the eleventh day before the Calends of October (Sept 21, 38 CE), because Caius Caesar Augustus Germanicus received the title father of the fatherland, which was offered with the senate’s consent, the vice president Taurus Statilius Corvinus sacrificed on the Capitoline Hill in the name of the college of the Arval Brothers three adult victims to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and a victim to Deified Augustus at his new temple. Paullus Fabius Persicus, Marcus Furius Camillus, Appius Iunius Silanus, Publius Memmius Regulus, Caius Caecina Largus, and Lucius Annius Vinicianus, and Caius Calpurnius Piso were present (Commentarii fratrum Arvalium 12c lines 83-91; translation D. Clint Burnett).

Each year the president chose to have certain (or all?) their sacrifices recorded in a codex. Beginning from Augustus’s reign (21 BCE) and continuing into the third century CE (241 CE), portions of these sacrifices were inscribed on marble plaques placed in Dea Dia’s temple. Numerous of these engraved marble plaques have survived and they make up the Arval Acta, which are our most important primary source for public Roman religion in the entirety of the Roman Empire.^[1]

Currently, I am working through the Arval Acta, translating them from their original Latin, which is no easy task. However, as I work through the text I cannot help but think of the numerous ways in which this inscription could produce nuanced readings of 1-2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Acts of the Apostles as well as refine our understanding of the relationship between Paul and the Roman Empire. Therefore, I want to encourage my New Testament colleagues to pick up this amazing epigraph to expand their understanding of public religion in the Roman Empire and its connections to the New Testament.    

^[1] For more on the Arval Brothers see Mary Beard, “Writing and Ritual: A Study of Diversity and Expansion in the Arval Acta,” Papers of the British School at Rome 53 (1985): 114-162; John Scheid, Commentarii fratrum Arvalium qui supersunt: Les Copies épigraphiques des protocoles annuels de la confrérie arvale (21 AV.-304 AP. J.-C.) (Rome: École Francaise de Rome, 1998), iii-xxii.