Mosaic from Earliest Christian Prayer Hall to be Loaned to Museum of Bible in the US
Israeli officials are loaning the mosaic floor from what is believed to be the world’s earliest Christian prayer hall in Megiddo, northern Israel, to the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.
Experts completed the removal of the mosaic last week from its location in northern Israel. It will be preserved and cataloged. It is scheduled to arrive in the US in September and be on display for nine months.
The Israel Antiquities Authority is in discussions with other organizations about displaying the floor, and it will likely be “a few years” before the mosaic is returned to Israel, IAA head archaeologist Prof. Gideon Avni of the Hebrew University told The Times of Israel.
Based on other finds from the dig and the style of letters in the inscriptions, IAA archaeologists dated the mosaic floor to the early third century. This era was before the Roman Empire officially converted to Christianity and was when Christians were still persecuted.
The prayer hall at Megiddo was located in a Roman-era village dating to the 3rd century CE. The area belonged to the ancient Roman town of Legio, known previously by its Hebrew name, Kefar ‘Otnay. The site was abandoned in 305 CE after Christian persecution instituted by the emperor Diocletian.
“There was a community there who knew Jesus,” Avni said. “It’s unique because it is so early.”
He added that the mosaic was part of a public building where early Christians would gather before formal churches were instituted.
“It is from the edge, between when Christianity was a local movement, not so well known, and then a few decades later there was Constantine making Christianity an official religion [in the Roman Empire] and building big churches,” Avni said.
The remains of the church were discovered in 2005 during a salvage excavation conducted as part of the planned expansion of an Israeli prison in the Jezreel Valley in Northern Israel. The excavation uncovered a large (580 sq ft) mosaic with a Greek inscription stating, “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.” The mosaic is very well preserved and features geometrical figures and images of fish, an early Christian symbol.
The mosaic also names a Roman army officer, Gaianus —a centurion serving in the adjacent Roman legionary camp who was the donor behind the floor. This seems incongruous as Christianity had yet to be adopted by the Romans.
A woman named Ekoptos is also named as “donating this table to the God Jesus Christ in commemoration.” Four other women were also inscribed in the mosaic, reflecting the role of women in early Christian communities.
The site is near Tel Megiddo. The Christian Book of Revelation describes an apocalyptic battle that will take place at the site of “Armageddon,” a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew “Megiddo”.
When the loan was first proposed, several archaeologists and academics voiced objections. Cavan Concannon, a religion professor at the University of Southern California, told the Associated Press that the museum acts as a “right-wing Christian nationalist Bible machine” with links to “other institutions that promote white evangelical, Christian nationalism, Christian Zionist forms.”
“My worry is that this mosaic will lose its actual historical context and be given an ideological context that continues to help the museum tell its story,” he said.
“We are aware of the controversy,” Avni said. “The conditions are clear. The story they will tell [when displaying the mosaic] will be from a historical and archaeological angle, not religious – on the side of science, not trying to bring a certain narrative.”
“Certainly, the museum is associated with American evangelicals. We aren’t ignoring this issue,” Avni said.
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