The Inscription on the Chalice of Solomon: a New Reading in the Light of New Textual and Liturgical Witnesses

SUMMARY A new analysis of the so-called Inscription on the Chalice of Solomon (known mostly from literary documents in Slavonic) is based on the totality of the available sources, including a recently published (2000) Greek recension and recently found (2013) but so far unpublished two Latin ones. It is argued that the text was written in Hebrew in the late Second Temple period, being therefore roughly contemporaneous to the Damascus Document and some other Dead Sea Scrolls and representing a similar but different liturgy and theology. The original liturgical setting of the Chalice as a liturgical utensil is some kind of New Wine festival.