{"id":1898,"date":"2024-07-01T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajaonline.org\/2024\/07\/01\/4806\/"},"modified":"2024-08-13T03:45:45","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T03:45:45","slug":"4806","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/","title":{"rendered":"The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World\u2019s Oldest House Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his final report of the excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria, the scholar Carl Kraeling established the site&rsquo;s Christian Building as the ancient world&rsquo;s preeminent example of a <em>domus ecclesiae<\/em>, a house converted into a church through architectural adaptation. In Kraeling&rsquo;s interpretation, a private domestic structure (House M8A) built in 232 CE was later remade as a community-owned church through a single, deliberate program of modification. This article engages with legacy ideas about the Christian Building, unexplored archival records, and recent studies of Dura-Europos to rethink the building&rsquo;s phases, functions, and dating. I argue that House M8A was not the <em>domus ecclesiae<\/em> that Kraeling envisioned&mdash;wholly, instantly, and permanently converted to a church&mdash;but a Christian house that retained a domestic aspect even as it was adapted for religious activity. The article proposes new phases for the building and advances an earlier chronology for its construction in the late second or early third century CE, a time that better fits revised estimates of Dura&rsquo;s Roman development. This reinterpretation of the world&rsquo;s oldest domestic church building bears significant repercussions for our understanding of early Christian architecture and communities and underscores the value of critical thinking and revisiting legacy ideas in archaeology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his final report of the excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria, the scholar Carl Kraeling established the site&rsquo;s Christian Building as the ancient world&rsquo;s preeminent example of a domus ecclesiae, a house converted into a church through architectural adaptation. In Kraeling&rsquo;s interpretation, a private domestic structure (House M8A) built in 232 CE was later remade as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[904],"tags":[10,29,37,50],"issues":[799],"region":[807],"class_list":["post-1898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-architecture","tag-romanperiod","tag-religioncult","tag-excavation","issues-799","region-neareast"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World\u2019s Oldest House Church | July 2024 (128.3) | American Journal of Archaeology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World\u2019s Oldest House Church | July 2024 (128.3) | American Journal of Archaeology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In his final report of the excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria, the scholar Carl Kraeling established the site&rsquo;s Christian Building as the ancient world&rsquo;s preeminent example of a domus ecclesiae, a house converted into a church through architectural adaptation. In Kraeling&rsquo;s interpretation, a private domestic structure (House M8A) built in 232 CE was later remade as [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Journal of Archaeology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/aja.journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-07-01T04:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-08-13T03:45:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pettegrew.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"951\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"website\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"website\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"website\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/#\/schema\/person\/f93c211048ad920b94c1e8abdb2053f0\"},\"headline\":\"The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World\u2019s Oldest House Church\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-07-01T04:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-08-13T03:45:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/\"},\"wordCount\":229,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pettegrew.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Architecture\",\"Roman Period\",\"Religion\/Cult\",\"Excavation\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Article\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/\",\"name\":\"The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World\u2019s Oldest House Church | July 2024 (128.3) | American Journal of Archaeology\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pettegrew.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-07-01T04:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-08-13T03:45:45+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4806\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pettegrew.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pettegrew.png\",\"width\":951,\"height\":1000,\"caption\":\"Looking from Room 3 to the west wall of Room 4B in the Christian Building. 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