The first volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae covers the inscriptions of Jerusalem from the time of Alexander to the Arab conquest in all the languages used for inscriptions during those times: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Syrian, and Armenian. The 1,120 texts have been arranged in categories based on three epochs: up to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, to the beginning of the 4^th century, and to the end of Byzantine rule in the 7^th century.

The eight hundred years between the first Roman conquests and the conquest of Islam saw a rich, constantly shifting blend of languages and writing systems, legal structures, religious practices and beliefs in the Near East. While the different ethnic groups and cultural forms often clashed with each other, adaptation was as much a characteristic of the region as conflict. This volume, emphasizing the inscriptions in many languages from the Near East, brings together mutually informative studies by scholars in diverse fields. Together, they reveal how the different languages, peoples and...