Robert Houston Smith
[Robert Houston Smith received a Ph.D. in New Testament from Yale University in 1960. At present he is Fox Professor of Religion at the College of Wooster and director of The Wooster Expedition to Pella.]
The following article first appeared in Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 4, October 1973, and is reprinted here, slightly abridged, with permission.
We know that the earliest Christians were Jews who continued to embrace both the beliefs and customs of Judaism and who differed principally from their fellow Jews in regarding Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. These Jewish Christians, as they have come to be called, had their earliest centers in Galilee, where Jesus preached for the greater part of his ministry, and in Jerusalem, where finally at Passover, he was put to death. This community, sometimes referred to as the “primitive church,” was destined to flourish for several generations only, from the time of Jesus’ death until the end of the Second Jewish Revolt in Palestine in A.D. 135. After that time, it drifted slowly into oblivion.
Archaeological evidence of the early Jewish Christian community — at least prior to the Second Jewish Revolt — is extremely scanty. This is logical enough since the community was small and virtually indistinguishable from the larger Jewish community in the practical matters of daily life. Despite these obstacles, students of early Christianity have persisted in seeking to uncover mementos of Jesus, the Apostles and the primitive church; it is a time-honored quest stretching at least as far back as Constantine the Great (whose
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concern with the primitive church was less historical than pious) and reaching a crest during the course of the Crusades when an enormous number of alleged early Christian relics found their way to Europe. Needless to say, few of these relics were authentic survivals.
Even archaeologists have been prone to such enthusiasm; the past hundred years have seen a number of “discoveries” of objects supposedly from the earliest days of the church. The famous Chalice of Antioch, probably Byzantine in date, was at first thought to be the very chalice used in the Last Supper. A generation ago a number of interpreters believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls had been written by Jewish Christians, and more recently it has been suggested that certain Galileans mentioned in letters from Wadi Murabaat in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, penned during the Second Revolt, were Christians. Other bits of questionable evidence continue to come forward from time to time, such as graffiti on ancient walls, marks scratched on ossuaries (bone repositories) and symbols incised on early Christian gravestones.
Given the discouraging results of such efforts, it might seem unlikely that any authentic archaeological traces of the Jewish Christians could ever be found. Yet substantial new evidence may have begun to emerge with the discovery of a sarcophagus at Pella, Jordan, one of the ten Graeco-Roman cities on the eastern periphery of the Roman Empire which were known collectively as the Decapolis. This sarcophagus, buried beneath the floor of a Byzantine church, promises to help us see more clearly the primitive community, its geographical distribution, its importance and its practices. For there is a possibility that the sarcophagus itself, if not the latest burial use to which it was put — for the male bones we found inside it date by radiocarbon tests to A.D. 655 plus or minus 140 years — links Pella to Jordan and Galilee as an early Christian center, and establishes grounds for some interesting surmises about the Jewish antecedents of the Christians at Pella.
Pella, to begin with, achieved a small but lasting place in history during the First Palestinian Jewish Revolt between the years 66 and 70 after Christ. The church fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius have recorded how the Christians of the Jerusalem church fled to Pella to escape from the Roman legions advancing on their city. This account has generally been taken as valid, but recently a few scholars have disputed it, partially on the grounds that the people of Pella were
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hostile to Jews (from whom Jewish Christians would have been indistinguishable). It remains plausible, however, since the Decapolis cities were recognized as cities of refuge, and Pella was one of those closest to Jerusalem, just outside Jewish territory.
How long the Jerusalem Christians remained at Pella we do not know; the tradition indicates that they returned to Jerusalem, but it is possible that only part of the community went back, the remainder staying on as permanent residents of Pella. We know that at least one second-century Christian apologist, a man named Aristo, came from Pella; this would confirm the notion of an ongoing Christian community in the city.
With this background in mind, let us turn to the sarcophagus and the church in which it was found. I was director of excavations carried out at Pella by the College of Wooster in the spring of 1967 when a cist was uncovered beneath the north apse of the West Church. The stratigraphy of the building showed that there had been five phases of occupation following its construction between A.D. 475 and 575. The church had three apses and a large nave flanked by two narrow aisles. Much of the flooring in the vicinity of the north apse had been damaged, repaired or removed during the church’s history, but a portion of the bedding beneath the paving stones remained intact.
The hewn-stone cist was discovered immediately below the floor of the apse. In it the sarcophagus lay carefully packed in soft cement
(Left) Plan of the north apse of the West Church, showing the sarcophagus and the outline of the cist. Remnants of the paving of the church floor are not shown. (Right) Section of the north apse, showing the location of the sarcophagus and its cist in relation to the floor of the church. Drawing by Robert H. Smith.
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and covered with six large slabs of stone. Though both sarcophagus and cist lay roughly east to west with the head end toward the west, they were not oriented parallel to the church’s main walls which were carefully situated so that the east-west axis of the church lay at a right angle to true north. We wondered if the sarcophagus was positioned at an angle so that the space beside it in the apse might be used for other burials, but we found no other interments to justify this explanation.
The sarcophagus proved to be a fine-grained limestone with a fitted, pitched-roof lid. It was 2.04 meters long and 0.52 meters wide in its outside dimensions, and 0.73 meters high to the top of the lid. The exterior had been dressed with a fine-toothed adze, whereas the interior had been finished less smoothly with a chisel. The walls were exceptionally thin for a sarcophagus — they ranged from a mere 2 to 5 centimeters in thickness. The front was decorated with a frieze in
The Pella sarcophagus during excavations. The staff watches tensely as a large stone is lifted from the north apse of the West Church. Beneath the debris near the bottom is one end of the cist. There is a hole in one of the covering slabs.
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North apse of the West Church during excavation. One of the covering slabs of the cist has been broken, revealing the lid of the sarcophagus inside.
low relief, while the right end displayed a square boss. The back contained two square bosses widely separated from each other. The lid had an acroterion on each corner and a projecting handle at each end.
Because of its location, we at first took the sarcophagus to be of Byzantine date (A.D. 323 — 636), even though its form and decoration were unusual. It was not until I began to study it after the excavations that I became aware that I was dealing with something of great significance. While its design bears a resemblance to debased forms still in use in Byzantine times, this sarcophagus has strong affinities with more than a dozen much earlier sarcophagi found in Israel and Jordan; together, they can be said to form a school. These stone coffins are generally characterized by their fine limestone material, unusually thin walls, similar masons’ techniques, small
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bracket feet, anterior friezes of about the same overall dimensions, geometric designs carved in low relief and sloping headrests inside. These features set the sarcophagi apart from the usual Roman style, which is far more massive and otherwise differs in its form and decoration. One of these sarcophagi — the one at Rosh Ha’Ayin — had been housed in a cist of the sort in which the Pella sarcophagus had rested. We can determine fairly closely the date of such coffins. Aside from the one from Pella, those specimens with known archaeological contexts can be dated to the period between the years 60 and 225 after Christ, and mostly to A.D. 60-150. At present, we lack sufficient evidence to permit the discernment of typological developments, but a recently reported mausoleum at ‘Askar, near Neapolis in Samaria, which contains ten sarcophagi of this sort, may eventually help to fill this vacuum.
Detail of the sarcophagus, showing the acroteria and handle on the lid. The opposite end of the sarcophagus displays a square boss at the same level as the frieze.
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The Pella Sarcophagus. Drawing by Robert H. Smith.
Now, how do we account for the discrepancy that exists between this Roman date and the Byzantine context of the sarcophagus, not to mention the apparent seventh-century date of the skeleton found inside it? The problem posed by the skeleton is easier to solve: the original burial was possibly looted by Persian invaders around the year 610 and the sarcophagus was reused at some point during the next fifty years during the second phase of the church’s history. A small, incised cross found on the edge of the sarcophagus was presumably carved at the time of the reuse. The former problem, however, is more involved. It might be supposed that the Byzantine Christians of Pella found the sarcophagus not far from the city in a tomb of the Roman period and appropriated it for the burial of a religious leader under the floor of the West Church. But while Christian reuse of earlier sarcophagi is not unknown elsewhere, it seems unlikely in the case of this sarcophagus which lacks sufficient solidity and magnificence to have been worth the effort to transport it to the church. Besides, quite obviously most reused sarcophagi were meant to be seen — they were showpieces. The Pella sarcophagus could have served no such use, buried as it was beneath the church floor.
We still have, then, the problem of finding an adequate explanation. That the Rosh Ha’Ayin sarcophagus also was found in a cist provides us with a clue. This cist was discovered beneath the floor of a mausoleum from which it had not been moved since first being placed there. An intriguing possibility is that the Pella sarcophagus and its cist, like the Rosh Ha’Ayin specimen, originally rested beneath the floor of a mausoleum which stood on that spot in the Roman period. We know in fact that the West Church was constructed at the eastern end of a plateau that had served as an extensive cemetery in Roman and Byzantine times, and it is not at all
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implausible that there had been a mausoleum here — one that was torn down at the time of the church’s construction. The cist and its sarcophagus beneath the floor of this mausoleum would have remained undisturbed. The cist lies so directly below the flooring of the apse of the West Church that it is difficult to suppose that it survived by accident; it seems much more likely that the leaders of the Christian community positioned the church in relation to it. In some Byzantine churches the north apse served as a repository for relics of saints’ remains. Because the church officials were eager to have the church facing due west, the sarcophagus ended up lying at an odd angle.
But why should the ecclesiastical authorities have gone to such lengths, not only to preserve an earlier burial, but to erect the West Church above this cist? In every case but one in which a sarcophagus of this school has been recorded in an archaeological context, the sarcophagus has been located in a tomb also containing ossuaries — rectangular limestone receptacles of the sort then used in Palestine as containers for bones of the dead. There is ample archaeological evidence to show that the use of such ossuaries was a Jewish, not pagan, practice. It therefore follows that the sarcophagi of this school had a cultural connection with Judaism. Moreover, it is inconceivable that the Christians of Pella would have located their church above the grave of a Jew unless that Jew was also a Christian and someone, in addition, whom the authorities wished to venerate.
We cannot say who this esteemed person was. The sarcophagus has no inscription on it to help us. The name of this dead man might have been known in Pella for centuries, but none of the surviving texts mentions any Christians by name besides Aristo and two Byzantine bishops. Nor do we find any reference to the Christian churches of Pella. If this man was not a martyr, he was probably an important leader in the Jewish Christian community; indeed, given the date we can assign to the sarcophagus, he may have had contact, if not with Jesus himself, at least with Jesus’ disciples.
What does this tell us about the flight from Jerusalem to Pella? And what confirmation does this lend the stories handed down to us by Eusebius and Epiphanius? Apparently there were indeed Jewish Christians settled at Pella in the last half of the first century or the first half of the second century — this much seems firm. Whether they migrated to Pella in advance of the Roman capture of Jerusalem in 70, or had come from Galilee for reasons independent of the fate
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of Jerusalem, or were native Jewish inhabitants converted to Christianity in the first decades of this church’s existence, we cannot say. The fact remains, however, that the Jewish Christians at Pella seem to have buried one of their leaders in a fine sarcophagus in one of the city’s cemeteries where it rested until it was enshrined beneath the floor of the West Church, and this would show that these Christians were more than mere sojourners who left the city a few months or years after arriving there. This sarcophagus, in other words, bears witness to the permanence and prosperity of the Jewish Christian community at Pella. We may hope that future excavations will provide additional data and help to enrich our understanding of these Christians.
The Pella sarcophagus and the others of its school are mutually illuminating: the others, all of the same period, are quite possibly also representative of Jewish Christian communities. There is no substantial evidence against which to test this hypothesis yet, but there is some interesting evidence of a circumstantial nature. First, the time-span of these sarcophagi, around A.D. 60-150, accords reasonably well with that of the floruit of Jewish Christianity; second, and perhaps not entirely coincidental, all of these sarcophagi have been discovered in regions in which the Jewish Christian church was known to have been most active during Christianity’s first decades. One was found at Jubel Mukabbir, a cemetery area south of Jerusalem; it was in Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity that the earliest Christian missionary work and communal life took place according to Acts 1:1–7:60. Three tombs containing such sarcophagi have been found near the heart of Samaria, the earliest outreach of the Jewish Christian community as recorded in Acts 8:1–25. One of these was unearthed at Balata, the others on the slope of Mt. Ebal near Neapolis (Nablus). Then there are three others that have been found on the coastal plain of Palestine — at Rosh Ha’Ayin, 15 kilometers east of Joppa (modern Jaffa), at Benyamina, a few kilometers north of ancient Caesarea, and at Hedera, less than 10 kilometers southeast of Caesarea; according to Acts 8:26–11:18, this coastal plain was the next region after Samaria in which Jewish Christians engaged in evangelical activity. Afterwards, the church’s missionary program became increasingly gentile-oriented, and Jewish Christianity remained primarily a phenomenon of Palestine and some nearby regions.
Even so, the sampling is still too small to be conclusive. We await further evidence that might confirm these suppositions. If such
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Map of Palestine. Double circles mark traditional sites of Jewish Christian missionary work (Acts 1–11). X’s mark sites at which “Jewish Christian” sarcophagi have been found.
evidence appears, there will be other important questions: were the men who manufactured these sarcophagi Christians and if they were, did they labor in a single workshop or were they itinerant masons trained in this style? It, also, will be interesting to know if these sarcophagi shed any light on Jewish Christian theology or the distinctive practices of the community. To push the present evidence too far would certainly be ill-advised, but the Pella sarcophagus has given us a fresh, exciting reason for probing into the beginnings of the church.
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