Someone has worked hard on their blog. The link was on spiritdaily.com

http://myamazingfact.blogspot.com/2009/08/amazing-early-christian-sites.html

Not too much Christian stuff actually goes back to AD 100. Even the Catacombs date to the second century AD. And the site is at least partially wrong on one point: it was not merely Christians who were not allowed to bury the dead inside the Pomerium of Rome--nobody could be buried inside the city limits, and the catacombs were used by non-Christians long before the Christians arrived.

The taboo against burying bodies within city limits extended to many peoples in many places. For instance, the Jews would not bury anyone within the walls of Jerusalem. At the time of the crucifixion, Golgotha, and the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, were well outside the walls.

As to why this taboo arose, it may have had something to do with the spirits of the dead, possibly reinforced by the pollution of the ground water by decaying bodies. Though nobody understood the germ theory of contagion, they knew enough about cause and effect to realize that when you lived close by an active graveyard, you often got sick--probably due to the angry spirits of the dead.

Sorry!

No, don't be. It's a great site with tons and tons of beautiful photos of places most of us go. What it needs is people commenting on it so that it gets better, particularly in the commentaries. I certainly intend to use it as a resource. It seems, with the exception of Ephesus, to be weighted heavily towards Italy--which is certainly the most accessible place for early Christianity. It would be nice if other people could provide photos and commentary on the churches and shrines of the Holy Land (some of which do date to the first century), Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. I would love to find a site that had good photos and commentary on the house church of Dura Europos on the Euphrates, which dates to the middle of the third century (there's also a synagogue down the street from it which contains fascinating proto-iconic images).

I intend to comment on the site, commending it for its effort, and recommending a few places that were missed--even in Rome (e.g., the 8th century basilica of Santa Prassaede and the fourth century church of Santa Pudentiana (once a private bath house), both of which have some of the oldest mosaics in Rome, done by Byzantine workmen, and predating the iconoclasm.

There, I posted on the site. Hope it flourishes.

Not to many Christian web sites date back to 100 AD

I wonder if they used HTML or JAVA back in those days :)

Just kidding!

Nice find, thanks for sharing.

Dear Pani Rose,



You have *nothing* to be sorry about!

This was a nice site. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

With love in Christ,
Alice

I think they were using the PAPYRUS operating system. Except, of course, for those things that were written in stone.

Christ is Among US!
He is and Shall Be!

Would that be Papyrus V.1 for Windows (no glass, of course)?

Great site. Thanks for sharing.

Tim

Be careful, though. The Hittites were the beta testers, and look what happened to them.

Beautiful pictures.