Friday, November 01, 2019

Was the "glorious martyr" Thecla?

GRAMMAR MATTERS: Tales from a crypt: Shedding light on a mysterious – female? – ‘glorious martyr.’ A 1,500-year-old Christian site in the heart of ultra-Orthodox Ramat Beit Shemesh takes The Times of Israel down a rabbit hole to meet St. Thecla, a feisty 2nd-century preacher (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

The article reports that the grammatical gender of the martyr in the Greek inscription is unspecified. Speculation on who the martyr may have been is, well, speculative. But fun.

Background here.

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