Subject: tc-list first church building

From: "Vinton A. Dearing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 12:46:32 PST

This is not a tc question but perhaps listers can help me answer it: 
when and where was the first Christian church built (a question posed 
by an attendant at my church)? The earliest I can find reference to 
was on Sion in Jerusalem when Hadrian visited the city in 130 
(Clemens Kopp, The Holy Places of the Gospels, p. 323). What the 
questioner was asking for was a church not in someone's house but I 
suppose that a building converted to a church would qualify.
   Vinton Dearing.

---

From: Jack Kilmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 16:01:49 -0600

> suppose that a building converted to a church would qualify.

      I assume that the question of the first "church" would make a
distinction between the synagogues in which the original Yeshuine
Jews met and the "Ekklesia" of gentile Christians.  If there was an
actual building dedicated solely as a Christian meeting place
(probably a dangerous enterprise in the ante-Nicene period), I
would highly suspect it would have been in Ephesus or Antioch
and would have come about as a result of the expulsion of the
"minim" from the synagogues.  This was a time when gentile
participation was growing (80-85ish CE) and Jewish participation
declining..probably sufficient to stimulate the Matthean scribe to
write his gospel.  I would bet the olive grove that the first "churches"
as meeting places for gentiles began at this time.

Jack

---

From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 12:14:59 +000

The place to begin inquiries about church-buldings in the early 
centuries is now L. Michael White, _Building God's House in the Roman 
World_ (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1990; reprinted Trinity Press 
Internatl., 1996).

L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  [email-masked]