Five of these inscriptions on stone in Hebrew were excavated in the Roman synagogue at Sardis, sixty miles northeast of Izmir in Turkey, during the excavation seasons of 1962 and 1963; the sixth is a stray find from near the Temple of Artemis. Other Hebrew inscriptions or joining fragments may well lurk in the piles of hundreds of marble revetment pieces stored in the depots outside of the north wall of the synagogue.

Five of these inscriptions on stone in Hebrew were excavated in the Roman synagogue at Sardis, sixty miles northeast of Izmir in Turkey, during the excavation seasons of 1962 and 1963; the sixth is a stray find from near the Temple of Artemis. Other Hebrew inscriptions or joining fragments may well lurk in the piles of hundreds of marble revetment pieces stored in the depots outside of the north wall of the synagogue.

The inscriptions in Hebrew found in the Sardis Synagogue are few and fragmentary in comparison with the rich deposit of Greek inscriptions. One may compare the coeval synagogue in Hammath-Tiberias with its similar proportion of Greek and Hebrew inscriptions—despite its Palestinian locale. The Hebrew inscriptions were found, save one, in the Synagogue near the southern shrine in the east side of the Main Hall, and originally, no doubt, were built into or attached to the walls of the Synagogue.See A. R. Seager, “The Building History of the Sardis Synagogue,” AJA 76 (1972) 432–33. The inscription from outside the Synagogue, the graffito of Shemaryah, was found in a fill north of the Expedition camp.

If Emerson was correct that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” then the mind of the Wisdom of Solomon's author may be considered both supple and expansive, since an ongoing theme of scholarship on the book has been the effort to reconcile in one way or another its real or seeming inconsistencies. The field has tacitly agreed to categorize the Wisdom of Solomon as a wisdom book, which in some ways seems obvious, not least because of the broad hint offered by its Greek title.The title found in the Septuagint actually provides two hints: the word “wisdom” itself, and its attribution of the work to the hero of the sapiential tradition, Solomon. The Latin translations call it “The Book of Wisdom.” The book's ancient designation may not be the title provided by the original author, but it does attest that the work was received by early readers as an example of wisdom literature. Nevertheless, an undercurrent of unease with the common classification has also emerged. In one widely respected collection of essays on Second Temple period texts, the author of the chapter on the Wisdom of Solomon states bluntly that “there is no type of literature in the Bible into which Wisdom as a whole fits,”Maurice Gilbert, “Wisdom Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (ed. Michael E. Stone; CRINT, section 2; Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud 2; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 307. although the book is, for want of a better location, discussed in the collection's section on wisdom literature. Another scholar does not shrink from saying that it “is clearly a wisdom book,” although he also notes that by “focusing on only one or another aspect of the book, one could make a case for a variety of literary genres.”Lester L. Grabbe, Wisdom of Solomon (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 25. A third simply comments that the text is “elusive.”John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to Trajan (323 B.C.E.–117 B.C.E.) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996) 181.

The most recent addition to the corpus of ancient Christian gospels first became known to scholars from a lecture presented by Charles W. Hedrick at the Sixth International Congress of Coptic Studies in 1996.Charles W. Hedrick, “A Preliminary Report on Coptic Codex P.Berol. Inv. 22220,” in Ägypten und Nubien in spätantiker und christlicher Zeit. Akten des 6. Internationalen Koptologenkongresses, Münster, 20.–26. Juli 1996, vol. 2: Schrifttum, Sprache und Gedankenwelt (ed. Stephen Emmel, Martin Krause, Siegfried G. Richter, and Sophia Schaten; Sprachen und Kulturen des Christlichen Orients 6.2; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999) 127–30. Some months later, the international press took a brief interest in the subject: see, for instance, Sächsische Zeitung, 15–16 March 1997, p. 33; Der kleine Bund (Bern), 14 June 1997, pp. 3–4 (article by Ulrich Luz). Three years later, the new text became available in a critical and photographic edition together with an accompanying English translation and commentary by Hedrick, in collaboration with Paul A. Mirecki,Charles W. Hedrick and Paul A. Mirecki, Gospel of the Savior: A New Ancient Gospel (Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 1999); hereafter: HM or editio princeps. and in a German translation by Hans-Martin Schenke that included his own observations on the text.Hans-Martin Schenke, “Das sogenannte ‘Unbekannte Berliner Evangelium’ (UBE),” ZAC 2 (1998) 199–213 (this is the text of the 1998 Alexander Böhlig Memorial Lecture, Halle). Schenke, who called the newly recovered work the “Unknown Berlin Gospel” because the manuscript belongs to the Berlin Papyrussammlung,Ägyptisches Museum der Staatlichen Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, P.Berol. inv. 22220. Schenke's abbreviation for the new gospel is UBE. had become familiar with the text when asked by Hedrick to make comments on a nearly finished draft of his edition and translation.Schenke, “Unbekanntes Berliner Evangelium,” 199–200; compare HM, vi, where it is also stated that Hedrick was primarily responsible for the transcription and translation, and Mirecki for the commentary and indexes, but that the whole work was collaborative, with both being responsible for the introduction. At that time, the American editors were referring to the new work as “A Forgotten Gospel, Fragments of an Unidentified Gospel Text,”As reported by Schenke, “Unbekanntes Berliner Evangelium,” 200. whereas in their published edition they have entitled it the Gospel of the Savior,On the assignment of this title to the work, see HM, 16–17. which I abbreviate here as Gos. Sav.Modelled on the internationally recognized English abbreviations for the works in the Nag Hammadi codices and related literature: see The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 1984) 96–100; or, see HTR 80 (1987) 253.

The so-called Gospel of Barnabas is attested by two textual witnesses, an Italian manuscript probably dating from the end of the sixteenth century and presently kept in Vienna, and a lacunar Spanish manuscript from the eighteenth century recently rediscovered in Sydney.The Italian manuscript was edited with an English translation by Lonsdale and Laura Ragg, The Gospel of Barnabas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1907). A facsimile of the manuscript, with a French translation, is given in Luigi Cirillo and Michel Frémaux, Évangile de Barnabé (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977). The Spanish manuscript is available in the edition of Luis F. Bernabé Pons, El texto morisco del Evangelio de San Bernabé (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1998). For a description of this manuscript and its history, see John Fletcher, “The Spanish Gospel of Barnabas,” NovT 18 (1976) 314–20. Very little is known, however, about the origins of the writing; dates assigned to it range from antiquity to the early seventeenth century.See the review of recent publications in Jan Slomp, “The ‘Gospel of Barnabas’ in recent research,” Islamochristiana 23 (1997) 81–109. Online: http://home.t-online.de/home/chrislages/barnarom.htm.

It has been recognized by at least some scholars that many early Christians, and not only the simpliciores, believed God to be corporeal (materially embodied) or anthropomorphic (humanlike in form), as some biblical narratives portray him. Likewise certain trajectories of Christian mysticism, under the influence of Jewish kabod speculation, maintained that the pinnacle of mystic ascent was the contemplation of the body of God. Among theologians there was also a stoicizing school, prominently represented in Tertullian, who held that God was corpus, even if not anthropomorphic. All of this stands in stark contrast with that Christian theology which developed, primarily under the influence of Platonism, a nonanthropomorphic and incorporeal conception of God that has come to dominate all subsequent theology and philosophy. It is difficult for moderns to transcend these subsequent norms and recognize among early Christians some quite different theological conceptions, or to do so without dismissing them as crude and primitive notions and, hence, as isolated aberrations.

34And in the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani,” which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35When some of the bystanders heard this, they said, “See, he is calling Elijah.” 36Then one ran off and filled a sponge with sour wine. He put it on a stick and offered it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah comes to take him down.” 37But Jesus, after emitting a loud cry, expired. 38Then the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39When the centurion who was standing in front of him saw that he had so expired, he said, “Truly this man was Son of God.”