Biblical and Eschatological Imagery in the Jewish Catacombs of Rome: An Overview

This article examines the epigraphic formulae attested in the Jewish funerary inscriptions of Rome — drawn principally from the catacombs of Villa Torlonia, Vigna Randanini, and Monteverde — with a view to recovering the biblical and eschatological beliefs of the communities that produced them. After a preliminary discussion of the linguistic landscape of the corpus, the article offers a systematic analysis of the main formulaic clusters: laudatory epithets encoding a distinctly Jewish moral vocabulary (φιλόνομος, φιλέντολος, φιλόλαος, φιλοπένης), closing augural clauses centred on peace (ἐν εἰρήνῃ, shalom), and the theology of resurrection implicit in the κοίμησις metaphor and its Latin equivalent dormitio. The analysis concludes that the biblical contribution operates not through explicit scriptural quotation but through a dense network of formulaic allusions mediated by liturgical practice, constructing a coherent eschatological imaginary in which the deceased is perpetually blessed and oriented towards resurrection.