Thread by @Safaitic

#Crucifixion in #Safaitic and #Jesus: Crucifixion was a common method of capital punishment in the Roman Empire; the ancient Jewish historian Josephus mentions the crucifixion of thousands. Yet this terrible punishment is so far mentioned only twice in Safaitic.

Both of these texts are enigmatic and have lead to creative, yet ultimately unsupported, theories about the historical event to which they refer. HaNS 660 was written by a man named Marṭ ben Yaśkor, who states: wa-ṣoleba ḥabīb-oh ‘and his beloved was crucified’.

In the 2nd (AbJ), a man called śāhem dates his return from the desert to the year ṣlb h-yh[]dy ʾbkr. I haven’t vocalized this text because that depends entirely on our interpretation. A Jordanian scholar named Sabri Abbadi suggested that it refers to the crucifixion of Christ.

According to him, hyh[]dy ʾbkr means ‘the Jewish man who is the eldest son of his family was crucified'. Since the Safaitic inscriptions minimally stretch from the 2nd c. BCE to the 3rd c. CE, some of their writers must have lived at the same time as Christ.

So while chronologically plausible, does the philology work out? ṣlb h-yhdy does indeed mean ‘the year the Jew was crucified’ but this does not explain the final word ʾbkr. Abbadi’s understanding of it as an adjective meaning ‘eldest’ does not work grammatically.

ʾbkr is in fact a rather common name in the region, attested even in Greek, e.g. from Ghōr Aṣ-Ṣāfī as Αβχορος. This is likely the name of the crucified man, who was Jewish. The nomads did not have a fixed calendar; they dated their inscriptions to events of local significance.

The nomads of the Ḥarrah interacted with the Jews and there are several references to the Hasmonean dynasty of Judea as well, with a number of inscriptions dated to sanata ʾāl yahūd ‘the year of the Jews’. Some may have even been Jewish, such as Yosef in IBS 330.

KRS 37 preserves an example of good relations between the 2 ppls: ‘O Allāt, grant a safe reunion with his family [and] may the Jews be secure; and he returned with camels to the Ḥarrah to pasture’ hā-llāt qeblāl ʾaslam ʾahl-oh salām le-yahūd wa-ragaʿa be-ʾebel raʿāy le-ḥarrat

Perhaps ʾabkor was a well-known Judaean and news of his crucifixion spread among the nomads, notable enough for the dating of one’s inscription. It is impossible to know if the ḥabīb ‘beloved’ of HaNS 660 above was ʾAbkor. Bandits were often the victim of crucifixion.

While banditry is not often mentioned in Safaitic, the author of ShNGA 1, Ḥamlat ben Sālem, proudly calls himself ʾal-leṣṭ ‘the bandit’. The ‘beloved’ of HaNS 660 could have simply been a bandit companion of the author, who was captured and crucified by the Romans.

So does Jesus occur in the Safaitic inscriptions? So far no clear examples of Christianity have been attested. Prayers to a god named Yṯʿlead Winnett (1941) to suggest that this name was a rendition of yešūʿ. But Safaitic ṯ (=(th)in) was never used to render Hebrew/Aramaic š.

More problematic was the fact that yṯʿ was invoked beside other gods, so if it did refer to Jesus, it was certainly not in a Christian context. Since 1941, this term has appeared in Greek transcription and we now know its pronunciation was Yayṯaʿ, ironically 'he who saves'.

There are no examples of ysʿ = yasūʿ but the personal name ʿsy, with no reference to Christ or Christianity, is attested. Could this be the form ʿīsā, which in Safaitic would be ʿīsay? After all, the Muslim Arabic term for Christ remains a puzzle.

Biblio:
[AbJ] ʿAbbādī [Abbadi], S. Jesus? in an Ancient North Arabian Inscription: An analytical study. Unpublished article on academia.edu. See ju-jo.academia.edu/SabriAbbadi. n.d..

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

[HaNS] Ḥarāḥšah [Harahsheh], R.M.A. Nuqūš ṣafāʾīyah ǧadīdah min al-bādīyah al-urdunīyah al-šimālīyyah al-šarqīyah — dirāsah muqāranah wa-taḥlīl. Unpublished doctoral thesis submitted at the University of Baghdad, August 2001. 2001.

[ISB] Oxtoby, W.G. Some Inscriptions of the Safaitic Bedouin. (American Oriental Series, 50). New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1968. Pages: 92 Plates: XVI

[ShNGA] Al-Šudayfāt Y.M. Naqš ṣafawiyy min ǧabal ʿanāzah fī šamāl šarq al-urdunn, "iʿādah qirāʾah wa-taḥlīl ". Maǧallat muʾtah li-l-buḥūṯ wa-ʾl-dirāsāt (silsilat al-ʿulūm al-insāniyyah wa-ʾl-iǧtimāʿiyyah) 18:3, 2003: 213-229.
1ce again, pls. excuse typos, tweeting in haste :)