The Telegraph: World’s “oldest christian church” found in Jordan
For those of you with a penchant for stuff dug out of the ground, archaeologists claim to have found the world’s “oldest christian church”, tentatively dated in the 33-70 CE region (although how they got the precision of ‘33′ with a margin of error that large does smell rather odd to my sceptical nostrils).
Time (ha!) will tell.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Speaking as an angry atheist (so I could be way off base), but didn’t Jesus allegedly die at age 33? Perhaps a Christian church couldn’t exist before that date, by definition.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
It must also be remembered that Xians regard almost any building where “2 or 3 are gathered in my name” as a “church”.
Technically, any christian home in the first few centuries could be a church.
the “70 diciples” mentioned in the piece are a mob of early church leaders, comprising the apostles + others.
I’ve only found this out since trawling the web after reading the telegraph article.
The archeologists haven’t released any of their ‘proof’ other than a losaic claiming that the 70 used to hang out there.
I reckon historical evidence for the 70 will be about as thin as historical evidence for the Man himself, ie: nothing older than 3rd century and that being copied from various sources.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
@idahogie: The alleged year of death, considering that the best estimate of an alleged birth is somewhere between 8 and 4 BCE would necessarily be somewhere between 25 and 29 CE. The figure cited of 33 CE, to me, smacks of theological convenience rather than bona fide science.
@Stewart: do you have those sources handy? The Telegraph article (as these things usually are) is a little thin on detail.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:47 am
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2028840/posts
I gleanes it from the comments on this forum
June 12th, 2008 at 8:25 am
@Stewart: thanks for that. I was hoping that there’d be a bit more detail on the proposed evidence, but no such luck.