shoshana kordova

By Shoshana Kordova

MEGIDDO, Israel - An estimated 1,700 years after early Christians created a mosaic pronouncing their loyalty to “the God Jesus Christ,” the site that Israeli archeologists say could be the oldest church in Israel- and perhaps one of the oldest places of public Christian worship in the world - continues to convey a sense of spirituality.

Refael Yuhayev, a 38-year-old prisoner, sifts through piles of dirt, searching for ancient coins and pottery shards. He is sitting a few feet away from the mosaic, discovered here during a dig conducted by more than 60 prisoners and overseen by archeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority. Holding up a reddish-brown shard barely distinguishable from the soil covering it, he says, “This is pottery,” and tosses it into a pile.

Before being assigned to work at the archeological site on the prison grounds, Yuhayev says, he didn’t know much about it. “After I saw this sacred thing,” he says, tilting his head toward the mosaic, “I felt there was true power here… I feel something special here.”

Other brown-uniformed inmates working at the Megiddo jail, which holds 1,200 Palestinian security prisoners, also see the work as special. “I never liked any other work as much as this,” one says. Only prisoners considered relatively low security risks are allowed to work in the archeological site, which is considered “part of their rehabilitation,” according to Sharon Shuan, commander of the high-security Jezreel Valley prison. More than 60 prisoners from the Megiddo and nearby Tzalmon jails participate in the excavations.

But while the archeological digs appear to be good for the prisoners, it is less clear what the findings, which were announced last month, mean for Christianity. Archeologists agree that the building in which the mosaic was found had served as a place of early Christian worship. But two fundamental issues remain open to debate: first, the exact dating of the structure, and second, whether it can even be considered a church.

Yotam Tepper, the Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist responsible for the excavations, says the rectangular structure was built as the Roman Empire was waning, between the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth. The antiquities authority - which calls the discoveries “rare finds of unusual significance to the Christian world” - has decided to continue excavations in an effort to confirm the dating and use of the structure.

“This structure is unique and important to the understanding of the development of early Christianity into a recognized and official religion,” Tepper says. “This is a unique church. Such structures are not known in archeology in all of Israel, and they are not known in the countries around us.”

If Tepper is right about the dating, the structure would precede early churches like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, believed to be built around 330 C.E., and join the third-century “house church” at Dura Europus in Syria as one of the oldest Christian places of worship.

One indication that the structure was used by early Christians is the fish depicted in the mosaic. The fish is an early Christian symbol that preceded the widespread use of the cross, and Tepper says the image of “one fish going up, one fish going down” - what looks like two fish chasing each other around a circle - represents the “choice between good and evil.”

But it is the western inscription on the mosaic that Tepper says confirmed the Christian nature of the structure, leaving no room for ambiguity. The inscription - one of three, all written in Greek - cites a woman named Akaptos as having contributed a table “to the God Jesus Christ, as a memorial.”

The word “table” is also significant, because if the inscription literally refers to a table rather than an altar, it could indicate that early Christians conducted a food ceremony that symbolized the Last Supper and was centered around a table - an early version of Communion. The archeologists have found a base in the center of the mosaic that Tepper says could be the remains of a leg of the table.

The eastern inscription is dedicated to the memory of four women who may have donated to the building: Frimilia, Kiriaka, Dorothea and Karasta. The northern inscription is dedicated to a man called Gaianos who is identified as a centurion, an officer in the Roman army, who contributed the mosaic floor.

The reference to the Roman army appears to indicate that Gaianos was from the Roman Legio VI (Sixth Legion) encampment that was stationed between today’s prison site at the Megiddo Junction and the Tel Megiddo hill to the south. Tepper says the camp stayed there until the year 305, another indication that the mosaic stems from that period. Tel Megiddo, or Mount Megiddo, is believed to be the Armageddon mentioned in the New Testament book of Revelations as the battleground between good and evil at the end of days.

The mosaic’s reference to community members is also significant because it appears to indicate that the site was one of public Christian worship at a time when Christianity was illegal and many Christians practiced their religion in private homes. The Romans persecuted adherents of early Christianity until Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the year 313.

“It was a time of heavy persecution, and the edicts of [Emperor] Diocletian were to destroy all churches and Christian manuscripts and to compel church leaders to sacrifice to the gods and deny their faith,” says biblical scholar and archeologist Stephen Pfann, president of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem.

“Here a soldier, an officer, was doing something that was illegal - they weren’t supposed to be Christians until the time of Constantine,” he says. “This would be a blatant defiance of the rules of the time if they were set into a mosaic like this.”

David Parsons, the spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, which represents Evangelical Christians from 40 countries, says that if Tepper’s dating is correct, the public pronouncement of belief in Jesus is all the more remarkable because the mosaic was not only near the encampment of potential Roman persecutors but was also situated along a key trade route. Tel Megiddo controlled a widely used pass on the Via Maris, a major military and trade route linking Egypt to Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia.

“It’s a pretty bold statement of faith at a time when they were still persecuted,” says Parsons.

On the other hand, if the structure was actually built after 313, the overt reference to Jesus and to community leaders would not be particularly surprising, and could even be seen as an indication that the mosaic was not constructed prior to the fourth century. However, such a theory would need to explain why the structure was used for only a short period of time, according to Tepper, and was either destroyed or abandoned.

“If it did exist [before Christianity was legalized], it was probably destroyed because of those very mosaics,” says Pfann.

One of the key methods Tepper used to determine the date of the structure was by dating the pottery found in the area. The pottery above the floor, he says, indicates the latest use in the area and comes from the third to fourth centuries. The pottery beneath the floor - excavated by digging holes next to the mosaic - indicates the time of the construction and is dated no later than the third century, he says.

The 9×6 meter (30×20 feet) structure deviates in several ways from houses of public worship unequivocally considered to be churches. The structure is not a basilica, a rectangular building characterized by an interior colonnade with an apse at one or both ends, and it does not have an east-west orientation. Indeed, Tepper says the mosaic - though rectangular in shape - has a circular element, with each of the three inscriptions facing a different direction.

Tepper calls the find a church because he says he doesn’t have any other word for it. “Religious Christian communal activity: It can’t be called anything but a church. There’s no possibility of calling it anything else,” he says. Later on, he indicates that he sees the nature of the structure’s religious identity as a semantic question. “It’s a public structure in which Christian rituals were conducted,” he says. “Whether to call it a church or not - that’s already an issue of terminology.”

For Father Michele Piccirillo, however, the very elements seen as a sign that the Megiddo find represents an early form of Christianity - that is, the differences between the ancient structure and a modern church - are precisely what make him adamant that the word ‘church’ not be used to describe the site.

“For sure it’s not a church,” says Piccirillo, who teaches biblical geography and history at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum graduate school in the Old City of Jerusalem. Piccirillo - who has visited the site and is an expert in Christian archeology with whom the Israel Antiquities Authority consults - says the one thing that is clear is that “it’s a room with a Christian mosaic.”

According to Piccirillo, it’s irrelevant whether Christians held prayer services in the room. “A hole to pray in is not a church,” he says in Italian-accented English. A church, he says, must be oriented to the east and divided into separate sections for the clergy (that is, the apse) and the laity.

However, Pfann, the biblical scholar and archeologist, says that although the structure is not a church in the sense of being a basilica and facing east, the word can still be used to describe it.

“The main thing that’s interesting about it is that it is in fact a communal worship site,” he says. “It could have been a type of local gathering place. You can call it a synagogue or a place of assembly. You can even call it a church, if a person wants to use ‘church’ in the most primitive form.”

Meanwhile, Piccirillo, who has discovered several mosaics in the region and has researched Byzantine and Ummayad archeology in Jordan, also disputes the assessment that the structure dates back to the late third or early fourth century. Basing his judgment on the style of the mosaic, Piccirillo estimates that the structure is from the fifth century (or at least no earlier than the end of the fourth century), and may have been part of a monastery.

“The moment that they will move the mosaic perhaps we will have a more clear idea,” he says.

The antiquities authority says it plans to transfer the mosaic to its conservation laboratories for treatment and to allow archeologists to check for finds below it. However, Tepper says the mosaic can’t be moved until winter ends, because of the seasonal rains that have yet to arrive in force. For that reason, some preservation work is now being done on site.

As the prisoners dug last week, a woman from the antiquities authority kneeled on a piece of white padding, painstakingly fitting pieces of mosaic into a hole in the pattern and tapping in the dust-colored cubes. In an effort to protect against the expected damp, a bulldozer pushed piles of dirt against the sandbags already lined up at the edge of the site; Tepper says a protective structure will be built to better preserve the mosaic.

Prisoners like Yuhayev continued to sift and dig last week under the black tarp protecting the mosaic and blocking out the unseasonably strong sun. The archeologists, for their part, are trying to understand the connection between the structure in which the mosaic was found and the surrounding remains. Just outside the tarp, more prisoners excavated the foundations of ancient private homes as a sentry stood guard on a white watchtower just beyond the fence topped with barbed wire.

The Megiddo site has been known to hold antiquities for about 60 years, since a mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath, was found there during the British mandate period. The area used to be a Roman-era Jewish village called Othnai and subsequently became a Byzantine-era Christian settlement known as Maximianopolis.

Salvage excavations conducted at the prison site for nearly two years, to determine whether any significant findings would keep the prison from expanding, have since uncovered dwellings and another mikvah. Archeologists allowed the prison to build in those areas after documenting the findings, but the antiquities authority decided the mosaic and the structure in which it was found - also part of the salvage excavations - were too important to allow the prison to build over it.

But it is not yet clear what will happen to the site. The Israel Antiquities Authority is weighing several options: covering it up and closing it to the public, moving the prison and leaving the mosaic in place, moving the mosaic to the nearby tourist site at Tel Megiddo or putting the mosaic on display in a museum. The decision, says antiquities authority spokeswoman Osnat Goaz, depends in part on the available financial resources - a lot of money will be required to transform the area into a tourist site - and on the decision of a committee of experts regarding, Goaz says, “what’s the most correct thing to do.” Moving the prison could be the most complicated option, since it will likely require the consent of the Israel Prison Service or a government decision.

The Tourism Ministry says it views the findings as important but is waiting for the dating to be confirmed before deciding how to deal with the site. But Stephen Pfann maintains that no matter when the place of worship was built, it is still an important find.

Even if the structure and the mosaic turn out to be from the era in which Christianity was legal, it’s an “important witness to what the churches would have looked like” in the early days of the religion, Pfann says. “It’s an enduring remnant of the past.”