Ben Wirthington, an evangelical writer who blogs at beliefnet, posted some evocative photos today of a second-century headstone in Turkey. He writes:
Now the third line in the inscription has the word CHRESTOS which was sometimes mistaken for CHRISTOS, but it appears often enough in ancient inscriptions and has a meaning range from upright to worthy to anointed. ... The last line of the inscription is more mundane--- 'to those passing by, Greetings!' As you know however, the word 'grace' is in fact a modified form of the word greetings, and when one couples this with the double entendre CHRESTOS it is more than possible that this is a Christian inscription made generic enough that the casual observer would see this as a normal grave inscription, but the Christian might well make more of it. It is of course odd to us that a deceased person would be portrayed as greeting the passerby, but a Christian might well think of a grace wish to passersby.
... The early second century was a dicey time for Christians in western Turkey as is evident from reading Pliny's letter to Trajan asking what to do with Christians handed over for practicing a 'superstition'.
