The Erastus Inscription at Corinth

In 1928 and 1929, and again in 1947, excavators at Corinth in Greece found pieces of a stone inscription. It named one man: Erastus.

Scripture: Gaius, my host and host of the whole assembly, greets you. Erastus, the treasurer of the city, greets you, as does Quartus, the brother.

Now to the letter. Near its close, a scribe named Tertius passes on greetings from several people. One is Erastus, who is named by his public role.

That role is hard to translate. The Greek word, oikonomos, means a manager of household affairs. Translators have chosen treasurer, chamberlain, or director of public works.

Background: an Erastus is also mentioned in Acts and in 2 Timothy. He is often taken to be the same person as the Erastus of this letter.

The fragments came from near a paved area northeast of Corinth's theater. The excavator was T. Leslie Shear. The sources here don't say where the stones are kept today.

Scripture: With its Latin abbreviations expanded, the text reads: Erastus paid for the paving himself, in return for his aedileship. An aedileship was a public office in the city.

The dating is disputed. But it is possible the inscription comes from the middle of the first century.

There is a second question. Some researchers ask whether the New Testament mention shows Erastus was a Christian at all. He could have been a wealthy patron of the church without being a believer.

The debate matters because it bears on the social status of the members of the Pauline churches.

So the stone shows, at most, that a man named Erastus held public office in Corinth. It doesn't prove the letter. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today. Follow for more.