The Early Church, Unearthed: New Discoveries Found in the Holy Land

“in memory of the priest Gaianos and Severa the deaconess,”

This inscription, implanted within a mosaic floor of a fourth or fifth-century Roman-Byzantine church near the city of Ashdod in the Negev region of southern Israel in late 2021, caused great excitement in the field of religious archaeology. While there is no shortage of archaeological sites that have identified a multitude of churches, basilicas, chapels, and monasteries from the Byzantine era, indicators of deaconesses in the early church is a highly exceptional find by any measure.

Why are so many ruins of Christian churches discovered across the Holy Land?

Following the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, the eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Emperor Constantine allowed for the free practice of Christianity, which included the region we today consider the Holy Land and Jordan.  His mother, Empress Helena, a fervent convert to Christianity, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 324-326 AD and identified many of the most important sites of the Christian faith, and through a generous endowment of church construction projects, laid the foundation of what would become a network of churches and monasteries that would spread from one end of the region (then known as Syro-Palestine).  At its zenith during the late fourth to early seventh centuries, it was said that the bells of the Christian places of worship could be heard without a break from Syria and Lebanon in the north to the Negev Desert in the south. Slowly, as two destructive raids by Persians and the rise of Arab Muslim rule in the region led to the retreat of the Byzantine Christian empire from the Holy Land, many churches were left in ruins, abandoned, repurposed as mosques, deconstructed for their building materials, with little but their foundations and mosaic floors surviving.

Why were the mosaic floors kept intact? 

No technology at the time allowed for the transfer of mosaic floors from one location to the next, and the tesserae (mosaic pieces) of the mosaics were of no financial value, the mosaics were often simply left to be covered up by the shifting sand and earth. And so, every year, new archaeological digs uncover more ruins of these ancient churches.

The newly-discovered church in Ashdod is just one of many recent discoveries. Indeed, while one team of archaeologists was busy uncovering the church dedicated to the priest and deaconess, another team of archaeologists working on the shores of the Galilee were busy at the site of a major find, believed to be the Biblical Bethsaida, which may be the ruins of an important church connected to the Twelve Apostles. Other sites, now known, have also been better understood with new finds being discovered due to better technology and more thorough research. The find at Ashdod turned out to be a much larger undertaking than the project manager originally envisioned: ultimately, it was discovered to be a large three-nave basilica, with expansive mosaic floors, some depicting animals, others having geometric patterns. Also found within the sanctuary where the altar would be placed was a T-shaped cross with the Greek characters signifying 'Alpha' and 'Omega' (“I am the Beginning and the End” – as found in the Book of Revelation). Yet the indication that the church was dedicated to the memory of an abbess and a second deaconess along with the aforementioned priest and deaconess has caused great interest, with even the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem visiting the site. While the practice of deaconesses died out in the Orthodox Church in the early centuries, two jurisdictions of the Orthodox Church at present have revived it, and this discovery will undoubtedly increase interest in the subject.

Another fascinating find was a substantial number of skeletal remains at the site, possibly implying a pandemic that may have led to the decline of the diocese in the region. One grave, however, remained untouched, and speculation that it may be one of the four daughters of the Apostle Philip (as recorded in the Book of Acts) is in part fueled by the knowledge that the Apostle had ties to the region.     

Though we may never know the full story of this special place of worship, it serves as a reminder of both the glory of the past age of Christianity in the Holy Land and what further mysteries may yet be revealed to us in this ancient and amazing part of the world to important to the Christian faith. 

Journey to the Holy Land!

Good Shepherd Travel offers visits to the Negev and Bethsaida as part of our Holy Land pilgrimages along with Jerusalem, Nazareth and the Galilee, Bethlehem, Jericho, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea. Other popular pilgrimage tours to locations such as Rome, Lourdes, Fatima, and Ireland are also available. For more information on how to begin preparing for a pilgrimage in late 2022 and 2023, contact Good Shepherd Travel owner and manager, Tony AbuAita at Tony@goodshepherdtravel.com.