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In seminary, we learned that the Roman Christians didn't start erecting public church buildings until after Constantine legalized their faith in 313 A.D. As a result, almost all evidence from the first three centuries of the church has come to us in the form of manuscripts, not architecture or furnishings. Now archaeologists have uncovered a building in the northern Israeli city of Megiddo, near the biblical site of Armageddon, that challenges the conventional wisdom.

Imagine the scene. Prisoner Ramil Razilo, serving two years for traffic violations, is carefully removing rubble in a last-minute archaeological test dig before destroying the ground to expand their prison. Suddenly, his shovel hits the edge of an elaborate mosaic. As workers uncover first the tiled floor, then remnants of a table, and then a set of Greek inscriptions, signs increasingly indicate that this is the first pre-Constantinian church ever discovered.

No important antiquities discovery seems to go undebated, however. Evidence favoring the early date include the fish symbol, used by persecuted Christians; some older potsherds; the style of Greek writing in the inscriptions; the geometric patterns used in the mosaics; and the style of the building itself.

Among those scholars arguing against the conclusion that this as a pre-Constantinian church is Joe Zias, anthropologist and ex-curator with the Israel Antiquities Authority. Though Zias believes the building may date back to the third century, he suspects it was converted to a church later. For one thing, one of the inscriptions names a Roman officer as a benefactor. "If I were a Roman soldier in the third century," said Zias, "I certainly wouldn't want my name on [a church]. … This would not have been a good career move. In fact, it sounds like the kiss of death."

(Our thanks to CTI staffer Rich Tatum, who gathered much of the above information on his blog: Google "blogrodent and Megiddo" for more.)

A new crop of feature films draws from Christian history for story material—and hopefully will draw viewers to dig into their history books to learn more.

Fifty years ago, five young missionaries flew into a remote jungle in Ecuador and were killed by the Waorani tribe, then called the "Auca" Indians. In the years that followed, members of the tribe converted to Christianity and repudiated their violent ways. Just released in theaters, End of the Spear tells the story from the viewpoint of the Waorani. The studio (Every Tribe Entertainment) has also made available on DVD its award-winning documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor. For a historian's commentary on the events that inspired the film, see Long and Nystrom's article, "Martyrs to the Spear," on p. 43 of this issue.

Another upcoming film, Amazing Grace, currently being shot by Walden Media (the company that partnered with Disney to produce The Chronicles of Narnia), will tell the story of hymnwriter/abolitionist John Newton and his protégé William Wilberforce, who campaigned for three decades to end the slave trade in England. [See CH&B Issue 81 on Newton and Issue 53 on Wilberforce.]

Also drawing from Christian history is Martin Scorsese's next movie: an adaptation of Shusaku Endo's Silence. The novel follows a pair of 17th-century Portuguese missionaries into Japan, where preaching Christianity was punishable by death.

"Forced religion stinks in the nostrils of God." Saved from the flames of religious repression over 350 years ago, a rare first edition of the revolutionary book bearing these words recently resurfaced.

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