What Can We Learn from Early Jewish Epigraphy

Abstract

This article presents a concise overview of the most relevant information that can be gleaned from the approx. 4000 Jewish inscriptions from antiquity (c. 300 BCE – 700 CE). Special attention is paid to those areas and topics about which inscriptions are our only (or main) source of information because the ancient Jewish literary sources are silent about them. The stones turn out to be especially relevant to the study of the western diaspora in the Roman and early Byzantine periods.