mountainman

Early Christian Archaeology: A State of the Field
Kim Bowes

Toto

Nothing in this article (available for now on google docs) indicates that there is any problem with the Dura Europos house church or its identity as a Christian structure.

mountainman

The key quote from this book (bolded above) IMO was this:

This fact needs to be highlighted, alongside two other facts, to present a trinity of facts as follows. As a precursor it needs to be stated that archaeologists were IN ADVANCE EXPECTANT to find three separately scaled structures - namely (1) the large scaled Christian churches, (2) the medium scaled Christian "church-houses" and (3) the small scaled Christian "house-churches".

(1) Not even one pre-Constantinian Christian "church" has been found anywhere in the empire (ie: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, etc).

(2) Not even one pre-Constantinian Christian "church-house" has been found anywhere in the empire (ie: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, etc).

(3) Some are conjecturing that we have found one and one only exemplar of pre-Constantinian Christian "house-church" - discovered on the Persian border of the empire (ie: at Dura Europos). The identification that this structure is in fact "Christian" is reliant upon the appreciation of the presence of "The Good Shepherd" (a pre-Christian motif) and other artistic motifs supposedly "found" as murals on the walls of the structure.


Attempting to use the singular example of the Dura-Europos archaeological citation as an exemplar of Pre-Constantinian archaeology is clutching at straws in the overall scheme of the utter silence of all the available EXPECTED evidence.

Toto

You still have not produced any evidence that the Dura Europos structure is anything other than a third century Christian house church. It may be unique, but it still looks like a genuine find.

avi

Yes, you are correct, however, (and I do not write this sarcastically, or in joking fashion)

HOW would you expect it to look, if it were a fraud?

Connie Allen's Laboratory Manual (or via: amazon.co.uk)
Take a look, please, at page 411/412: The Autonomic Nervous System.

An excellent dissection, if I do say so myself.

The brilliant Spanish Anatomist, Michael Servetus would have been proud of Ms. Allen's 2001 dissection.

Here's the forward to Ms. Allen's text, second edition, 2005:

Hmm.

What do you think Toto?

Do you suppose that Ms. Allen performed that elegant dissection, illustrated on page 411? Does that illustration not appear genuine to you? Ms. Benyak performed remarkably well, wouldn't you agree? And, how about Ms. Allen's technique? Fantastic, don't you agree? Take a look please, especially, at how neatly all the cranial nerves, save the 7th, are trimmed so precisely. And don't you find that syncytium of sympathetic nerves coursing along the ascending Carotid, absolutely breathtaking?

haha.

Try this reference instead:
Frank Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy- Fifth edition (or via: amazon.co.uk)
I don't possess the fifth edition, but rather the first edition, dated 1989. Netter, however, had already published this famous illustration, (shown with a few extraneous coloring modifications, by C. Allen and the Wiley plagiarism press on page 411 of her infamous forgery) in another of Dr. Netter's famous manuscripts, The Nervous System, Volume I, Part I, 1983 (or via: amazon.co.uk), where one finds on page 73, the original dissection, performed, NOT by Ms. Allen, but by Dr. Netter.

So, Toto, here's the question: How would you expect a fraudulent drawing, picture, sculpture, or illustration to look, if it were a forgery, and not the real McCoy? Do you suppose the Wiley folks wanted people to understand that they had created a forgery?

No. The average bloke isn't looking at Dr. Netter's famous second signature, the one not destroyed by Wiley's air brush, his 7th nerve, the one with two little "teeth", symbolic of a smile, right? Which cranial nerve, Toto, innervates the muscles of facial expression--muscles whose contraction yields a smile? When you smile, do we see your teeth? Do you imagine that in real life, the 7th cranial nerve looks as Dr. Netter has illustrated it? Nope. He did that as a joke, understood by Anatomists, but not by forgers.

The Wiley forgers also failed to change the syncytium of sympathetic nerves plying the Carotid artery, Toto. The two illustrations are IDENTICAL in that regard, though, in real life of course, those nerves are invisible without a dissecting microscope, and each person has a unique configuration, a syncytium, not a constant pattern.

avi

Toto

As your extended example shows, forgers tend to slip up and leave evidence behind. There is a pattern to forgery, especially archaeological fraud, and this doesn't fit. There's no profit motive, no nationalistic implications, nothing out of place.

If this house church were a fraud, I would expect it to contain symbols of 20th century Christianity - probably Jesus being born in a manger and a crucifixion, or at least crosses. I would actually expect other artifacts rather than a mural. It is a lot of work to fake and plant a mural, but it would be much easier to plant amulets or jewelry or pottery with Christian themes, and these would be much more valuable for resale on the market. Or I would expect the forgers to create a simple house of a secret Christian, rather than a house church, with the sort of artifacts that make for good resale. Or possibly a item connected to some martyr or saint - bones, an ossuary, a container for relics, a shroud. Those are hot items.

I would also expect some tie in with current religious or political controversies. But the existence of Christianity in the third century at an outpost of the Roman Empire was not at all controversial in the 20th century.

This discussion is getting to be not worth my time. You have yet to make a prima facie case that the Dura Europos house church has anything suspicious about it.

mountainman

That the onus of proof rests with the claimants is summarised clearly by Momigliano ....

The totality of the evidence itself is insufficient in my mind to accept a judges verdict that this archaeological find is a genuine "early christian habitation" on the basis of a small section of mural motifs, which include the c.1000 BCE Hermetic motif of "The Good Shepherd".

It is a leap of faith alone by which the fragmentary mural motifs are to be unambiguously identified with textual motifs from the NT canon. If there were other evidence outside Dura, pointing to and adding greater weight to this conjecture, then I would be more inclided to consider it as indeed "genuine and unambiguous evidence" as is being claimed.

Seeing patterns in evidence according to conditioned belief structures

It is an established fact that if people are expecting to apperceive a specific motif in the milieu of artistic motifs which arise as a result of an artistic representation, then they will see something explicit. Most people may be aware of the experiments involving the results of preconditioned expectations based on simple images such as the young woman / old woman pic. Where people who have not seen the image are told it is the "young woman", and then mixed with another control group who have been preconditioned to see in the same picture, the old woman, the resultant discussions can become very heated in defence of both positions. In this case the evidence itself can be seen in more than one manner.

... Dura as "Christian" [YOUNG WOMAN]; Dura as "Non Christian" [OLD WOMAN]

Analogously, the 20th century archaeologists who uncovered the images of the "Good Shepherd" and other "artistic motifs", were very hopeful that the evidence revealed the young woman called Christianity, because it was available in their belief structure to make that leap of faith. But the old woman of Hermes and the Judaic art traditions may indeed be represented in the artwork, and these motifs are not being apperceived because of the expectations of traditions, in the face of all the evidence, that somewhere, in some city of the Roman empire "ante pacem", some evidence just has to be found to corroborate the expected existence of "christianity" before it was legalised, and codified, and politicalised, and edited and then published far and wide by a fascist warlord.

The claim reeks not necessarily of fraud, but certainly of conditioned myopia and "unfulfilled expectations" in all other aspects of new testament archaeological evidence.

Toto

If it wasn't Christian, what was it? What other religion involved women approaching a tomb? Healing the Paralytic? Peter and Jesus walking on water near a boat?

mountainman

Followers of some other cult or other as yet unspecified.


All religions include the simple human respect enacted by women (and/or men) approaching the burial place of a "departed one". Are all tombs Christian?

See the votive offerings and literary attestations to the Healing God Asclepius abundantly scattered across the entire Roman empire and beyond.


Jake and Elroy standing beside the Euphrates River near Dura.
Bilbo and Frodo using stepping stones to cross Lake Doom.
Mani and his disciple bathing in the Ganges.
Hermes and Asclepius in deep discussion walking on the water.


Where are the images?
Where is a copy or rendition of this objective scientific evidence?
Where have the high resolition photographs been moved to?
Where does "The Good Shepherd" fit in with things?

Toto

Some images, along with images of the synagogue and the mithraeum:

www.sacred-destinations.com/syria/dura-europos