Tile (c. AD 200–256) from a ceiling in Dura-Europos with image of Heliodoros, an actuarius.
There is something in Christianity that makes the idea of the persecuted Christian so attractive, as though persecution and martyrdom somehow validates the belief. A cynic might conclude that there is so much that doesn't make rational sense in the religion that it needs this constant reinforcement and reassurance.
American Christians in particular are notorious for seeing a 'war on Christianity' or a 'war on Christmas' at every turn. Even measures to protect society and save lives by mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were claimed to be a plot to prevent people from going to church - a conspiracy theory swallowed by enough people for churches full of people 'defending their right to pray' to become major super-spreader events every Sunday.
In the UK, the far right has had some success recently by appealing to Christian persecution paranoia by presenting an influx of asylum-seeking refugees from wars in Syria and Afghanistan as part of a sinister plot to impose 'Sharia law' on British society and replace the national religion by Islam.
The need for martyrs has meant Christian churches across Europe are full of the body-parts of various early Christian 'martyred saints' who contrived to die in a manner that provided a plentiful supply of these body-parts. No European Catholic cathedral would be complete without it's reliquary, and bits of dead saint that, if they were to be reassembled into a single corpse, would often be that of a monstrous being with multiple legs, dozens of fingers, a couple of heads, and more teeth than a crocodile and multiple bodies so that several churches can each have a whole one.
Early Christianity traces its origins back, not so much to the persecution of Jesus but to the alleged arch-persecutor, who later became a persecutee, Saul of Tarsus, and of course everyone knows how the early Roman Christians were fed to the lions in the colosseum by Nero, don't they? Er... well, the Romans at the time didn't seem to know about it as they left no record of it. The one single reference to it was written by Tacitus in about 117 CE.
What can you tell me about the history of the town of Dura-Europos in eastern Syria during the Roman era? Dura-Europos, often referred to as the "Pompeii of the desert," is an ancient city located on the western bank of the Euphrates River in modern-day Syria. It holds significant historical importance due to its well-preserved ruins, which provide a remarkable glimpse into the life of a multi-cultural frontier town during the Roman era.It was against this background of eagerness for evidence of the 'well known' persecution of Christians by the Roman state prior to Constantine that a house in the eastern Syrian town of Dura-Europos was greeted as an example of a 'house church' or domus ecclesiae where Christians met in secret to avoid persecution when it was excavated in 1928.
Early History and Foundation
Dura-Europos was founded around 300 BCE by the Seleucid king Seleucus I Nicator, who named it Europos after his hometown in Macedonia. The city was strategically located on a plateau overlooking the Euphrates River, making it a key defensive and trade site in the region. Initially, it served as a military colony and trading post along the Silk Road, connecting the Mediterranean with the Near East and beyond.
Parthian Rule
In the 2nd century BCE, Dura-Europos came under the control of the Parthians, who ruled it for about three centuries. During this period, the city became a melting pot of various cultures, with a population that included Greeks, Romans, Persians, Jews, and indigenous Semitic peoples. This cultural diversity is evident in the city's art, architecture, and religious practices, which show a blend of Hellenistic, Parthian, and local traditions.
Roman Era
Dura-Europos was captured by the Romans around 165 CE during the reign of Emperor Lucius Verus, as part of Rome's efforts to expand its influence in the East. Under Roman rule, the city was heavily fortified and served as a key military outpost on the empire's eastern frontier, guarding against incursions by the Parthians and later the Sassanid Persians. During the Roman era, Dura-Europos continued to thrive as a multicultural hub. The Romans reinforced the city’s fortifications, adding massive walls and towers, and the city became home to a large Roman garrison. The presence of the Roman military significantly influenced the city's architecture and urban layout, with the construction of military barracks, a praetorium (military headquarters), and other administrative buildings.
Religious Diversity
One of the most fascinating aspects of Dura-Europos during the Roman period is its religious diversity. Excavations have uncovered temples dedicated to various deities, including Greek gods such as Zeus and Artemis, Roman gods like Mithras, as well as local and Mesopotamian deities. The city also housed one of the earliest known Christian house churches, and a well-preserved synagogue, both of which contain some of the oldest Christian and Jewish art known to historians.
The Fall of Dura-Europos
The city's fortunes changed in the mid-3rd century CE when it came under attack by the Sassanid Persians. Around 256 CE, after a prolonged siege, Dura-Europos was captured and sacked by the Sassanids. The city was abandoned shortly thereafter and never reoccupied, which contributed to the exceptional preservation of its ruins.
Archaeological Significance
Dura-Europos remained largely forgotten until it was rediscovered in the early 20th century. Excavations, primarily conducted by French and American teams in the 1920s and 1930s, revealed a wealth of artifacts, buildings, and artworks. These findings have provided valuable insights into the life and culture of a Roman frontier city, as well as the interactions between different cultural and religious groups in the region. Among the most significant discoveries are the well-preserved wall paintings in the synagogue, which depict biblical scenes and are among the earliest known examples of Jewish figurative art. The Christian house church contains what is possibly the oldest known depiction of Jesus Christ.
Modern Challenges
In recent years, the site of Dura-Europos has faced significant threats due to the ongoing conflict in Syria. Reports of looting and destruction have raised concerns about the preservation of this important historical site. Despite these challenges, the legacy of Dura-Europos as a unique crossroads of cultures and religions during the Roman era remains an invaluable part of our understanding of ancient history.
It has since been regarded as the earliest (and only) example of such a structure, and, apart from the reference by Tacitus, the only evidence outside the Bible of that craved for persecution of early Christians in the Roman state.
But now, in an open access paper by two archaeologists, Camille Leon Angelo, a Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Dr. Joshua Silver, a researcher with the Manchester Architectural Research Group, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK., cast considerable doubt on that interpretation. They have just published their findings in the Cambridge University Press Journal of Roman Architecture. They also explain it in a Yale University News release.
It seems the matter all hinges on the precise interpretation of an imprecise Greek text - not for the first time in Christian mythology:
House call: A new study rethinks early Christian landmark
An ancient building in modern day Syria has long been considered an example of what is known as a domestic “house church.” But a new study challenges this idea.
Since its discovery by modern researchers a century ago, an ancient structure known as the “Christian building” has become widely considered the cornerstone of early Christian architecture. Constructed around 232 C.E. in the ancient city of Dura-Europos, a Roman garrison town in what is now eastern Syria, the building is the only example of a “house church,” or domus ecclesiae, a domestic space that was renovated for worship by Christians at a time when the open practice of their faith is thought to have made them subject to persecution.
But a new study published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology challenges that conventional belief, arguing that the building was almost certainly not domestic in form or function after undergoing renovations to accommodate religious rituals. The findings call into question the validity of the category of the domus ecclesiae in its totality.
A careful comparison of the building’s later architectural features with those of other domestic structures in Dura-Europos — and an analysis of the way renovations impacted natural light flow within the building — provide considerable evidence that it was not a house church at all, said Camille Leon Angelo, a Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and one of the researchers.
Dialogues within the academy as well as in popular culture give the impression that Christians had, prior to Emperor Constantine, gathered and worshipped in pseudo-domestic spaces, but if this is the only securely dated example we have, and it wasn’t in fact particularly or even somewhat domestic, then why do we keep up that perception?
Camille Leon Angelo, first author
Department of Religious Studies
Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Her co-author on the study is Joshua Silver, a postgraduate doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester with the Manchester Architectural Research Group.
‘How domestic was it?’
It was during a 10-year excavation of Dura-Europos in the 1920s and ’30s that the Christian building, along with a synagogue and a Mithraeum, was unearthed by a team of scholars from Yale and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Their excavation journals and photographs (along with thousands of artifacts) are archived at the Yale University Art Gallery.
It was believed that the structure was originally a private residence but was renovated around 234 C.E. to make it suitable for Christian worship. Scholars came to consider it an architectural steppingstone — the domus ecclesiae — connecting the private homes used for Christian worship that are referenced in the New Testament (e.g., Acts 12:12) with the basilicas constructed under Constantine.
It remained in use until around 254-56 C.E., when Sasanians besieged the city and the Romans attempted to fortify the city’s western fortification wall with a massive earthen embankment that sealed off many buildings. After the city was conquered and abandoned, the remaining embankment served to preserve the structures extraordinarily well over centuries.
The Christian building was on the same street as the synagogue and Mithraeum, both of which also began as private homes that were later renovated, Leon Angelo said.
But we don’t say ‘house synagogue,’ or ‘house Mithraeum.’ We allow them to stand on their own. So if we have a building that follows the same architectural trajectory in the city, why are we emphasizing the structure’s domestic origins? We wanted to know, how domestic was it, and how would it have been seen by the community?
Camille Leon Angelo
Understanding a community and its story
To answer these questions, the researchers pored through all the archived excavation reports to understand what houses in Dura-Europos looked like, what they contained, and the functions they served. After gaining a thorough understanding of what constituted domestic space for that community, they juxtaposed it against the features of the Christian building. And they found significant differences.
For example, the building as it was preserved had figural wall paintings, a courtyard staircase, and no cistern for storing water. No other house in the researchers’ data set had such a combination of features.
The removal of the cistern, as well as the building’s food preparation area, also suggested that people interacted differently with the space than with their dwellings.
Its ground-floor rooms were modified to create one that was uncommonly large and another, used as a baptistery, that was uncommonly small, relative to other homes in the city.
In addition, researchers studied changes in how people circulated through the rooms, and the use of different surfaces and seating formations, which suggested moving away from a domestic environment. They used simulations of changing sunlight to determine that certain renovations to the building meant that a greater area of the rooms off the courtyard could be used at more times throughout the day without needing a lamp or candle.
The Christian building had little akin to any domestic space at Dura, and therefore calls the narrative of early Christianity’s material origins into question.
Camille Leon Angelo
She said she fully expects pushback against such a bold challenge of entrenched understandings of what early Christianity looked like.
Those understandings hold a lot of weight and power. We are deeply interested in early Christianity too. But we want to do justice to Dura’s Christian community and their story and try to understand them on their own terms, rather than through assumptions that scholars have projected onto their space.
Camille Leon Angelo
Scholarship around Dura-Europos is ongoing. The recently launched International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive, or IDEA, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, aims to reassemble and provide digital access to the artifacts and archival documentation derived from excavations of the city and now housed at various museums across the world. The initiative was founded by Anne Hunnell Chen, a former postdoctoral associate at Yale who is now an assistant professor of art history and visual culture at Bard College.
In fact, the reassessed evidence shows that, far from being persecuted, Christians in Dura-Europos were as accepted as any other religion in a pluralist, polytheistic society. If anything separated them from the rest of Roman society, it was their insistence that they, and they alone, had the one true god and the one true religion, as monotheistic religions such as, Christianity, Judaism and Mithraism were producing the divisions and mutually hostile cults that characterise multicultural societies today in place of the pluralist, tolerant, polytheist religions of the old Greek and Roman Empires.AbstractAt the ancient city of Dura-Europos, a Roman garrison town located along the southwestern bank of the Euphrates (near the modern-day village of Salihiyeh in Syria), private homes were architecturally adapted across the late 2nd and 3rd c. CE by different religious groups to serve the needs of their communities.1 The products of such adaptation include the city's Mithraeum, Synagogue, and Christian Building. All three buildings remained in use until the mid-250s CE, at which time the Sasanians lay siege to the city, the population was displaced, and the site was buried.
At Dura-Europos, homes were architecturally adapted across the late 2nd and 3rd c. CE by different religious groups to serve the needs of their communities. Although the Synagogue, Mithraeum, and Christian Building all began as domestic structures and share a similar architectural development, the origins of the latter have received unique attention through its classification as a domus ecclesiae or house church. This (hyper)focus on the structure's past use as a house does not do full justice to the archaeology of the building. Through an analysis of architectural adaptations, including before-and-after 3D reconstructions and daylight simulations, the authors show how the renovations significantly differentiated the Christian Building from its domestic antecedent and from Dura's houses more broadly. This approach is meant to shift attention away from more generalized, translocal, evolutionary models of Christian architectural development to micro-level archaeological analysis that situates structures within the spatial vernacular of their local contexts.
The Mithraeum, Synagogue, and Christian Building all began as private residences and share a similar architectural development. Yet, the Christian Building's domestic origins have received unique attention and form the subject of ongoing emphasis. This attention has been cultivated and maintained across decades of scholarship in two ways: first, in efforts to situate the structure within a developmental model of Christian architecture that endorses a material progression from the private homes described in the New Testament to basilica;2 and second, through the use of terminology that presupposes a quasi-domestic character for the building.3
Through a critical reexamination of the archeological and material evidence of the architectural adaptations made to the building at Dura by a Christian community in the 3rd c., this article contends that this emphasis does not do full justice to the archaeology of the structure. In fact, acts of architectural differentiation, enacted during the building's renovation to accommodate Christian community use, crucially distinguished the Christian Building from the domestic structure that had preceded it and from Dura's houses more broadly. Drawing upon quantitative analysis and comparison of three-dimensional reconstructions and daylight simulations of the structure before and after renovation, we show how these acts of architectural differentiation reconfigured the space such that visitors could use and experience it in ways that were categorically distinct from its domestic antecedent. The changes effectively divested the building of the key architectural features that constituted Durene house space and disrupted habituated patterns of occupying the city's residences. Disentangling the material reality of the structure from modern imaginings, the Christian Building emerges as a product of its unique built environment. Thus, we show the long-held view of the structure as occupying a pivotal place in a seamless trajectory of Christian architectural development is untenable. The contextual approach that takes seriously practices of architectural and embodied differentiation emerges as fruitful for understanding religion and the built environment at Dura more broadly. It also calls on us to reconsider the material origins of early Christianity and the domus ecclesiae as a category of ritual space.
The Christian Building in the context of Dura
In the city of Dura, the Mithraeum, Synagogue, and Christian Building were all located on the same street, along the western fortification wall (Fig. 1). The three structures share a similar story, having origins as private houses that were later architecturally adapted to accommodate community use. The Mithraeum underwent two major building phases between the late 2nd and early 3rd c.4 The first, undertaken sometime around 169 CE, consisted of razing portions of the existing house and installing an engaged altar, raised podium, and benches. Then, sometime around 209–211 CE, the podium was extended, and an entranceway was cut to provide access between the sanctuary and a suite of chambers to the north.The Synagogue followed a similar pattern of adaptation.5 Little about the first phase is archaeologically discernible. In the second phase of adaptation, which took place sometime in the late 2nd c., walls were removed to create a hall of assembly and a small Torah niche. Most of the structure's eastern portion, which included several chambers and the triclinium, remained untouched. During the third phase of renovation, in 244/45 CE, these chambers were removed to accommodate the expansion of the forecourt and sanctuary. The house to the east, House H, was also annexed into the synagogue complex, and four of House H's chambers were left untouched. This change prompted the expedition's architect, Henry Pearson, to hypothesize that House H's chambers were needed to rehouse people who lived in the original building, after the structure's chambers were removed.6Fig. 1. City plan of Dura by A. H. Detweiler (Dura-Europos Collection, YUAG, neg. Y-733), annotated with names of structures and blocks by J. A. Baird. (Courtesy of J. A. Baird.)
The house that became the Christian Building is widely thought to have been constructed sometime around 232/233 CE (Fig. 2a).7 This date is suspect, however, as it is primarily (and problematically) based on an inscription in an undercoat of plaster in Room 4B, rather than on the construction of the building itself.8 About a decade later, the structure underwent numerous architectural adaptations, both internally and externally (Fig. 2b), and these are discussed in detail later in this article. Like the city's Synagogue and Mithraeum, the Christian Building remained in use until sometime between 254 CE and 256 CE, when the structure was sealed beneath the rampart and the city besieged by the Sasanians.9 The nature of the site's abandonment thus provides it with a firmly pre-Constantinian terminus ante quem and makes the Christian Building at Dura the archaeological record's only securely dated example of a pre-Constantinian Christian community space.10Of the three structures, only the Synagogue is thought to have continued to house people after it was converted into a community cult space.11 There is no evidence indicating that the Christian Building ever simultaneously served as a domicile and a Christian community space after the renovations were completed. Nevertheless, since its excavation in the early 1930s by a joint team from Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, scholars have attributed special importance to the domestic origins of Dura's Christian Building.Fig. 2. Plan-perspective of the Christian Building (M8-A): (a) prior to its renovation for Christian community use; (b) following its renovation for Christian community use. (C. Leon Angelo and J. Silver.)
Evolutionary models and the limits of language: critiquing the category of domus ecclesiae
The discovery of Dura's Christian Building and its initial publication occurred in a period of scholarship invested in tracing an evolutionary progression from the private homes described in the New Testament to later Christian community architecture.12 The category of domus ecclesiae emerged from these discussions as a technical designation for homes architecturally adapted for Christian use in the ante-pacem period, conceived of as a sort of architectural intermediary that still maintained domestic associations.13 Understood as emblematic of the presumed house-based nature of early Christian gatherings,14 Dura's Christian Building served as the prime example of this architectural phenomenon.15 Even as later scholars have refined the definition of the domus ecclesiae,16 two misleading assumptions from that period have persisted: first, that houses renovated for Christian community use were ubiquitous across the Roman Empire in the 3rd c.; and second, that such houses at that time would have been designated domus ecclesiae or οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας.17 However, neither the archaeological nor the literary evidence supports these assertions.
Dura's Christian Building is the only Christian community building previously identified as a domus ecclesiae that remains securely dated to the ante-pacem period; all the others have been securely re-dated to after the Edict of Milan.18 Archaeologists and art historians working more recently in the fields of Roman and Late Antiquity have moved away from evolutionary models of architectural development;19 Kristina Sessa's survey of the literary evidence has demonstrated that the term domus ecclesiae and its Greek equivalent οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας are not attested before the 4th c. and that ancient authors did not use the term to denote a specific architectural category.20 Nevertheless, the terms domus ecclesiae and “house church” are still widely invoked in relation to Dura's Christian Building as a way of emphasizing its domestic origins.21 New Testament and early Christian scholars in particular routinely uphold the building as critical evidence for continuity in the evolutionary development of early Christian church architecture from private home spaces.22 However, as we will show, a closer examination of the earliest uses of the phrase domus ecclesiae's Greek equivalent, οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας, reveals that it did not denote a building architecturally adapted for Christian use. Here, we build upon Sessa's findings regarding the architectural indeterminacy of Eusebius's use of the phrase.23 In doing so, we seek to highlight how dissimilar the structures Eusebius refers to as οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας were from Dura's Christian Building.24
Books 7, 8, and 9 of Eusebius's 4th-c. Ecclesiastical History (Hist. eccl.), as well as a passage in his Martyrs of Palestine, contain the earliest undisputed attestations of the phrase οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας.25 In both works, Eusebius uses the phrase τῆς ἐκκλησίας οἶκου to denote a physical building occupied by Christians without offering any qualification for the materiality of the structure to which he is referring.26 For instance, in Hist. eccl. 7.30.19, he uses it to describe the 3rd-c. Christian space in Antioch from which Paul of Samosata is evicted after being deposed as bishop of Antioch.27 In 8.13.13, the phrase τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν τοὺς οἴκους denotes the buildings belonging to Christians that Constantius I did not destroy.28 In Hist. eccl. 9.9a.11 and the Martyrs of Palestine 13.1, Eusebius's use of the phrase is similarly enigmatic: in the former, he uses οἴκους ἐκκλησιῶν to refer to the structures that Maximus did not prohibit Christians from holding meetings in or “building” (οἰκοδομɛῖν);29 in the latter, he employs οἴκους ɛἰς ἐκκλησίας δɛίμασθαι to denote the structures that Christians built themselves (δɛίμασθαι).30 In both these passages, οἴκους τῆς ἐκκλησίας is the direct object of a verb (either οἰκοδομɛῖν or δέμɛιν) that can mean either to build a new structure or to revamp an existing one. As such, it is unclear whether the structures Eusebius is referring to are domiciles that served as spaces where Christians assembled (like the meeting houses described in the New Testament), purpose-built constructions, or preexisting spaces that were architecturally adapted to accommodate Christian community use. Consequently, Hist. eccl. and the Martyrs of Palestine do not provide conclusive evidence that Eusebius is employing the phrase οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας to describe constructions that are akin to the Christian Building at Dura.31
Indeed, in his later works, Eusebius uses the phrase to refer to entirely new constructions, not architecturally adapted ones. In the Life of Constantine (Vit. Const. c. 337 CE), Eusebius designates two post-Constantinian Christian buildings erected by imperial powers οἶκοι τῆς ἐκκλησίας.32 In Vit. Const. 3.43.3, he identifies the structure Constantine's mother, Empress Helena, “raised” (ἀνɛγɛίρασα) on the Mount of Olives as a “sacred house of the church” (ἱɛρὸν οἶκον ἐκκλησίας).33 In Vit. Const. 3.58.3, he attests to Constantine's construction of “a very large church building” (οἶκον ɛὐκτήριον ἐκκλησίας μέγιστον) in the place of the Temple of Aphrodite at Heliopolis (Baalbek).34 In both instances, Eusebius pairs οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας with a verb that is typically used to connote the construction of a new structure, not the adaptation of an older one. In Vit. Const. 3.43.3, the verb is ἀνɛγɛίρɛιν, which means “to raise a new structure.”35 In Vit. Const. 3.58.3, the verb governing the sentence is ἐπάγɛιν, which often implied a colonial action or bringing something unfamiliar to a community.36 Moreover, Vit. Const. 3.58.3 describes Constantine as “setting in their midst (καταβαλλόμɛνος) also a very large church building for worship,” which implies that it was a new structure.37 Further confirming that Eusebius is not referring to a renovated structure in Vit. Const. 3.58.3 is the later church historian Sozomen's account of Constantine's actions at the Temple of Aphrodite. Sozomen describes Constantine as first destroying the Temple of Aphrodite, then erecting a new ἐκκλησία on its ruins.38
Admittedly, we can only speculate as to what architectural form Eusebius imagined each time he described a Christian space as an οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας. Yet Helena's and Constantine's imperial constructions occupied landscapes long treated as sacred, such as the Mount of Olives, where they purportedly attracted people away from competing cults. It seems improbable that Eusebius would have considered them architecturally analogous to the structures that the martyrs built near the copper mines of Palestine “to serve the assemblies” that he mentions in Martyrs of Palestine 13.1.39 Consequently, it appears that Eusebius indiscriminately applied οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας to Christian space regardless of architectural form.40 This would explain why Eusebius retrospectively applied it to Paul of Samosata's οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (Hist. eccl. 7.30.19), even though it predated Constantine's imperial constructions.41 As Sessa has argued, this was likely because Eusebius was writing at a time when there was not an established terminology for Christian architecture.42
In our view, the continued reference to Dura's Christian Building as a domus ecclesiae or house church, terminology that emerged out of evolutionary understandings of early Christian material origins, has created blind spots in scholars’ interpretations of it. Even as scholars using domus ecclesiae as a category have considered renovation a requisite characteristic, they have presumed an underlying continuity between the domus ecclesiae and the structure that preceded it, regardless of the degree of renovation it underwent.43 The idea that the Christian Building maintained its domestic function and associations has also been bound up with other problematic assumptions about the threat of persecution in pre-Constantinian Christianity in ways that have implicitly marked such Christian structures as different from other renovated private spaces, such as the Mithraeum and Synagogue at Dura.44 As a result of such macro-historical and translocal assumptions, scholars have not trained their attention on how practices of architectural differentiation operated on a local scale or considered the implications of these changes for the Christian Building at Dura.
In fact, a critical reexamination of the architectural adaptations made to the structure indicates that the renovations to the Christian Building designed to accommodate new patterns of community use set it apart from Dura's houses in both form and function. Such practices of architectural differentiation disrupted habituated patterns of residential occupation characteristic of domestic space at Dura, engendering new ways of accessing, using, and moving within the building. Taken together, the accumulation of these differences – both to the structure itself and to how bodies inhabited it – reshaped the building's function to such an extent that labeling it a “house church” is misleading on several levels.
In making this argument, we do not mean to imply that ancient buildings were either “domestic” or “cultic,” or that they can or should ever be neatly categorized as one to the exclusion of the other. Indeed, in antiquity, there was fluidity and overlap between private and public, cultic, commercial, and household spaces.45 This was particularly true at Dura, where structures were not only regularly readapted, but also often served multiple functions simultaneously.46 Rather, we want to highlight the ways in which the adaptations to the Christian Building reflect an intentional move away from household space and to raise questions about how Durenes might have experienced the space from a locally situated perspective.47 In doing so, we seek to integrate the Christian Building more fully within Dura's wider adaptive built environment, showing how a deeply contextual approach sheds new light on this much discussed structure.
Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.
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