Arguments of Ignorance VI: A House of God

Jesus & John Walk on Water
Painting in Baptistery-Dura Europos
232-240 AD

Mark 2:11-12: "I tell you, arise, take up your mat, and go to your house." He arose, and immediately took up the mat, and went out in front of them all; so that they were all amazed, and glorified God.

Romans 16:5: "Greet the assembly that is in their house."

There are many that believe that there were originally no churches built for the Christians. A simple perusal of the texts in the New Testament written by Paul and Gospel writers clearly show that the homes or believers, often rich widows were often used by the early Christians (men were being martyred more frequently by the time the house churches were being used). This was often denied as there was little or no historical evidence until the last hundred years.

On the edge of the Syrian desert, soldiers digging a trench uncovered painted walls. It was a lost Roman border town. When an enemy army was coming, the town had buried the street along its wall under a huge ramp of earth to make the wall stronger. The town fell anyway,and the earth kept everything inside. One buried house had a room with a baptism pool, and paintings on the walls: a shepherd carrying a sheep, and Jesus telling a paralyzed man to pickup his mat and walk. They did meet in houses.

These homes were in-fact, converted into early churches. From the outside they would appear as normal homes to military forces bent on destroying a religion that had only recently become an illegal religion in the Roman Empire.

The houses would go through architectural adaptations. The Dura-Europos building was originally a standard courtyard home built around 200 AD. Around 232–233 AD, walls were knocked down to create a larger assembly hall holding about 65 to 75 people, and another room was fitted with a masonry basin for baptisms.

As mentioned it was also built for stealth and survival. Because Christianity lacked legal status and faced sporadic, intense waves of Roman persecution (especially under Emperor Decius in 250 AD), maintaining a normal exterior was vital. Blending into a residential neighborhood allowed communities to gather without drawing immediate attention from local authorities.

Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates in eastern Syria, was found in 1920 when British soldiers digging trenches uncovered wall paintings. Excavated by Yale University and the French Academy from 1928 to 1937, it held a house converted into a church around 232-233 AD during the height of Christian persecutions. It is the oldest securely identified church building known. The surviving frescoes of the baptistry room are probably the most ancient Christian paintings in existence. 

When the Persian army besieged the town around 256AD, the defenders packed a great earth embankment against the inside of the western wall, burying the houses along Wall Street, the church and a synagogue among them. The town fell, and the embankment preserved them. The church's baptistery held a font under a canopy and paintings of the Good Shepherd, Adam and Eve, Jesus walking on the water, the women coming tothe tomb, and Christ healing the paralytic.