Several of the Hima inscriptions are explicitly Christian, and the inscriptions appear to be the product of the activities of a Christian community, especially given their Christian decorative symbols like large and ornate crosses. The calendar used by which dates are referred to was the
Bostran era, which begins at the equivalent of 106 AD in the
Gregorian calendar in accordance with the date of the establishment of the
Roman province of
Arabia Petraea. The use this calendar can also be seen in another Paleo-Arabic inscription, the
Jebel Usays inscription. The choice of use of the Paleo-Arabic script may have been a conscious choice to align those individuals in the Najran area more closely with their co-religionists in the north, in opposition to the script in use in the
Himyarite Kingdom. In addition, the use of the same script for the first time in both southern Arabia, northern Arabia, and Arabic-speaking regions of southern Syria alongside the declining use of
Aramaic attests to a significant trend of cultural unification across the
Arabs in the fifth and sixth centuries. This may have gone hand-in-hand with a progressive separation from the
Roman Empire. Several of the names in the Hima inscriptions are clearly Himyarite, and others are clearly derived from names of figures in the
Old Testament, such as Isaac and Moses. == Use of divine epithets ==