This week I had the pleasure of being part of a panel on the use of documentary sources or material culture as I prefer to call it and the interpretation of the Bible at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, which due to COVID 19 was online this year. My task in the panel was to address how I determine a source to be documentary or material, what method I use to interpret documentary sources or material culture, and what value these sources have in the interpretation of the Bible.
As a historian of early Christianity who focuses on the Greco-Roman period of history, I determine a source to be documentary or material if it restores the human touch to the inquest of history. Thus, I define documentary sources as archaeological, papyrological, numismatic, statuary, inscriptional, and ceramic (i.e., pottery) evidence that individuals living in antiquity produced. In essence, almost anything that does not consist of written literature that scribes copied throughout the centuries.
Let me unpack what I mean. Archaeological evidence comes from controlled, scientific excavations—whether they be large like the city of Philippi (see Image 1) or small like a cave near Khirbet Qumran (see Image 2)—conducted by qualified archaeologists. Papyrological evidence consists of ancient written documents on papyri or ostraca (i.e., pottery sherds). This dataset is diverse and contains private letters, reports, census, and much more (see Image 3).
Numismatic evidence consists of coins that local cities and empires produced (see Image 4). These sources are diverse too and contain texts and images that help to reconstruct cults, magistrates, and customs of individual Greek cities. Statuary evidence are images that ancient artists created and that individuals viewed, which were erected throughout Greco-Roman cities (see Image 5). For a discussion of some of the famous statues of mainland Greece, see the second century CE traveler Pausanias and his Description of Greece.
Inscriptions are messages engraved, incised, or scratched on durable materials that imperial and local governments as well as individuals set up in conjunction with monuments (see Image 6). There are myriads of surviving Greco-Roman inscriptions (close to half a million) and this lot, like papyri, is diverse and consists of official decrees, funerary inscriptions, magical curses, and much more. Finally, ceramic evidence is pottery that individuals made, distributed, and used (see Image 7). Pottery is one of the surest chronological dating methods on an archaeological excavation because of the diversity of pottery in time and place and the constant changes in its appearance and shape.
To say that these sources are variegated is an understatement. Each type of documentary source has its method of interpretation with limitations and possibilities. As a historian of earliest Christianity, I try not to prefer one over the other (even though I am partial to inscriptions, see Image 8 and click here to purchase my book on inscriptions) because I am convinced that historians must use all these documentary sources to reconstruct antiquity. However, I confess to the ire of my friends and colleagues who are ceramicists that I find pottery the least exciting of documentary sources with which to work. In my reconstruction of history, I endeavor to use all these sources for one common goal: to provide what I call narrative glimpses, always incomplete, into the lives of ancient individuals. Thus, I am convinced that each documentary source that I use has a life of its own and a story to tell, which I labor to reconstruct.
In the end, every narrative glimpse that I reconstruct will be incomplete due to the fragmentary nature of the source. However, I am an optimist and something is always better than nothing. To reconstruct a given narrative glimpse, I approach whatever documentary source with which I am working contextually. That is, I interpret each datum in light of its archaeological context. Consider the following example.
In the winter of 1855, a statue base with an inscription was discovered on the Greek island of Calymnus (on the western coast of modern-day Turkey, see Image 9) among the partial remains of a temple dedicated to a personification of Apollo, Delian Apollo, who appears to have been Calmynus’s patron deity. The inscription (see Image 10) dates to 37 CE and says:
The citizen-body of the Calymnians dedicated (a statue of) Gaius Caesar [G]e[rma]nicus beside Apoll[o] [De]lian the Guardian of Calymnus because of his piety . . . (Ὁ δᾶμος ὁ Καλυμν[ί]ων συνκαθιέρωσε Ἀπόλλ[ω]νι [Δ]αλίῳ
M. Segre, “Tituli Calymnii,” Annuario della scuola archeologica di Atene e delle missioni Italiane in oriente 22-23, (1944-1945) [1952]: no. 105
Καλύμ[ν]ας μεδέοντι άϊον Καίσαρα Γερ[μα]νικὸν εὐσεβ[είας ἕνε][κεν . . . . ]; my translation).
Because of the findspot of this inscription and a Greek term (συνκαθιέρωσε) and a linguistic construction (Ἀπόλλ[ω]νι [Δ]αλίῳ Καλύμ[ν]ας μεδέοντι, a dative of place) used in it, I have argued elsewhere that this statue base is of a temple sharing image.[1] That is, a statue of a benefactor that is set up inside the temple of a deity next to their cultic image. In this case, the benefactor is Caligula and the temple is that of Delian Apollo. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Greek kings and Roman emperors were in the best position to offer benefactions to Greek cities and thus there is more evidence that monarchs shared Greek temples than any other individual from antiquity. When rulers shared temples, it was to acknowledge the ruler’s piety and beneficence and to showcase that the deity in whose temple the ruler’s image was erected approved of and supported their reign. Provided that I have identified correctly this inscription from Calymnus, we can reconstruct the following narrative glimpse.
Caligula provided some concrete benefaction for Calymnus, which the city interpreted as stemming from his piety. Hence, the mentioning of “because of his piety” (εὐσεβ[είας ἕνε][κεν . . .]) in the inscription. To show appreciation for this gift, the citizen-body met to decide how best to honor the emperor. Someone must have put forth the motion, which was subsequently ratified, that Caligula should share the temple of Delian Apollo and that his statue should be set up next to that the deity’s, which indeed occurred. This short narrative glimpse, however, is incomplete. We neither know the benefaction for which Calymnus granted Caligula temple sharing with Delian Apollo, details of other divine honors that the emperor received, nor if and when the island polity removed him from being Delian Apollo’s temple sharer. Nevertheless, without this inscription and archaeological site from Calymnus, we would never have known that Caligula has a relationship with this tiny, insignificant island.
In my estimation, documentary sources such as this inscription and archaeological site from Calymnus are invaluable for reconstructing the social history of the early Roman Empire and thus the context of the spread of nascent Christianity for two main reasons. First and foremost, they are direct witnesses of the past that provide windows into the lives of non-elite men. Almost all surviving Greek and Latin literature are either by elite men or those who were patronized by them, much of which focuses on major events that and persons who changed the course of history in the Mediterranean world and the ancient Near East. In short, they focus on history from above. What is more, this literature has been passed down through the copying, editing, and sometimes alteration of scribes until the invention and widespread use of the printing press. Such is not the case with documentary sources where we can construct the social history of non-major cities such as Calymnus and where we can find letters and inscriptions composed by non-elite men, women, children, and slaves and sometimes archaeological sites where such individuals lived and worked. In short, documentary sources provide us with a history from below. Such information often supplements and sometimes contradicts surviving Greco-Roman literature.
Second, documentary sources are contextual data allowing historians to contextualize early Christian documents in a way heretofore unrealized. Archaeological sites, inscriptions, coins, statuary, pottery, and the occasional papyri finds outside Egypt provide evidence for local cults, customs, law-codes, and traditions. This information has the potential to help us contextualize more concretely early Christian texts whose provenance and addressees are certain. To provide an example, I have been able to show in my contextual work that contrary to the oft-repeated false claim that the Roman emperor was hailed as Lord (kyrios) during Paul’s tenure as the apostle to the Gentiles (from the early 30s to the early 60s CE) inscriptions and coins from Philippi, Corinth, and Thessalonica indicate that the denizens of those cities did not acclaim the emperor with this title.[2] For all these reasons, I endeavor to employ documentary sources, as much as literary sources, in any research project that I undertake. My hope is that my fellow New Testament scholars will do likewise!
[1] D. Clint Burnett, Christ’s Enthronement at God’s Right Hand and Its Greco–Roman Cultural Context, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 242 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021)
[2] D. Clint Burnett, Studying the New Testament Through Inscriptions: An Introduction (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2020); “Imperial Divine Honors in Julio–Claudian Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Correspondence,” Journal of Biblical Literature 139 (2020): 567–89; reprinted in The First Urban Churches 7: Thessalonica, edited by James R. Harrison and Larry L. Welborn (Atlanta: SBL Press, forthcoming); “Divine Titles for Julio–Claudian Imperials in Corinth,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 82 (2020): 437–55; Christ’s Enthronement.