The Abercius inscription: context, chiasm, and composition

Thesis

The Abercius inscription represents a composite of epigraphic motifs contemporary to second-century central Anatolia creatively arranged in a thematically chiastic structure. The thesis delivers the first expansive and detailed treatment of the inscription in its varied contemporary contexts: epigraphical, literary, historical, and religious. This contextual study examines the epitaph as artifact and art, not as a crypto-Christan message, but as a creative allegorical chiasm of carefully arranged Anatolian epigraphic motifs. The inscription’s content, including its use of allegory and symbolism, is shown to find multiple points of contact with its age's literary, religious, and historical context. At the same time, an expansive survey of scholarship, both pre- and post-discovery, provides a baseline for interpretation. Epigraphic evidence, which corresponds to each of the chiastic elements, establishes the author’s conscious adaptation of recognizable monumental motifs.

Authors: Tully, K

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-o8om7rgoy
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English and Greek, Ancient (to 1453)
• Keywords: Christian inscriptions; Second-century Christianity; Abercius
• Subjects: Inscriptions; Allegory; Fathers of the church; Christian art and symbolism