The History of Sex: Pompeii -- Were There Christians in Pompeii? (Chap. I, Pt. 13)

According to the Bible, converts to the new religion came to be known as 'Christians' some time during the thirteen-year reign of Claudius, beginning in 41 AD—less than a decade after the crucifixion of Christ.

However, no original manuscripts of the New Testament survive.

As a result, the inscription at Pompeii represented the first record of the word 'Christian.'

'—that we know of,' adds Dr. Varone with a qualifying chuckle.

Apart from the primal juxtaposition of sex and Christianity, what makes the graffiti intriguing is the fact that one of the Church's founding fathers actually visited the Bay of Naples just a few decades before Vesuvius exploded.

The Bible notes that Paul, the Jewish Christian-hunter turned Apostle to the Gentiles, stayed for a week with Christians in a port just a few miles from Pompeii, before journeying on to Rome.

So were there also Christians in Pompeii?

Dr. Varone was the expert commissioned to answer this question in 1979 for the nineteenth centennial of Pompeii's demise.

'There are lots of reasons why there should have been Christians in Pompeii,' he explains. 'Our problem is that we have nothing concrete—they were here, but we have no proof. We know that Claudius expelled them from Rome because there was already this problem with the rise of Christianity. Also, we know that Christians were burned alive in Nero's garden.'

'The reason we cannot be sure that there were Christians here is because we do not know the manner in which the word 'Christian' was spread. We don't know what gestures or symbols were used as forms of recognition amongst them.'

Those came only in later years.

And there's another problem: Pompeii's 'Christian inscription' has all but disappeared.

 Dr. Varone shrugs and laughs. 'We don't know why—maybe the rain. It was written in carbon.'

The inscription is 'very problematic,' he notes, pointing out that the two drawings of it by Kiessling and another archeologist were made within days of each other, but they were both very different.

Kiessling, for instance, thought the only legible line referred to Nero's persecutions and read 'To the fire, with joy, o Christian.'

The first cleaning: IGNI GAUDE CHRISTIANE, or
'To the fire, with joy, O, Christian'
(The Christian Inscription at Pompeii)

However, the second cleaning changed the meaning entirely; and even then, some missing letters had to be filled in for it to make sense:

The second cleaning:
BOVIO AUDI(T) CHRISTIANOS
or

BOVIO LENDS HIS EAR TO THE CHRISTIANS 

What's more, the other inscriptions on the walls imply that the building had more in common with the neighboring 'house of ill repute' than a Christian 'house of God.'

'At the so-called "Hotel of the Christians" it was easier to find prostitutes than Christians,' Dr. Varone laughs. 'It was a hotel for prostitutes—a motel.'