advanced considerably from the antiquarian endeavours of the
Renaissance and Enlightenment. More scientific approaches, first
developed in northern Europe and Scandinavia, were applied to
the Mediterranean world, and the study of early Christianity was
one of the beneficiaries. A fine example of the new fieldwork
being done is provided by the efforts of Scotsman W. M. Ramsay
(1851–1939), who tirelessly traversed Asia Minor in search of
classical and Christian antiquities.
Indeed, in many respects the fields of Graeco-Roman antiq-
uity and early Christianity were beginning to coalesce. This was
evident, for example, in the excavations conducted by French and
American archaeologists at the Hellenistic and Roman frontier
outpost of Dura Europos, perched above the river Euphrates in
what is now Syria. The finds at Dura Europos caused a sensa-
tion. In 1931–2 the excavators explored a building decorated with
frescos that had clearly been a church. The remains were far from
spectacular, and Dura certainly yielded more dazzling finds, such
as the Jewish synagogue unearthed in 1932–3. What really
mattered about the Dura church, however, was that it could be
dated very precisely: the city had been destroyed in a war between
Rome and Persia in AD256, thus making the building the earliest
securely datable church known. A memoir of the excavations
shows the excavators’ excitement:
Our camp was awestruck by the extraordinary preservation
of Christian murals dated more than three-quarters of a
century before Constantine recognised Christianity in 312.
The scenes were small, but they were unmistakable. It is
true that compared with the paintings in the Temple of the
Palmyrene Gods [another building excavated at Dura] they
were sketchy and amateurish, but that mattered little, for
they were Christian!
(C. Hopkins 1979: 91)Awestruck the excavators may have been, but they published and
discussed the Dura church in the broader context of the other
THE HISTORICAL QUEST FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY1
2
3
4
5
61
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
1711
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
61 Folio