Archaeologists in Jordon have claimed to have unearthed the world's oldest church dating back 2,000 years, but the claim was received with caution.
The underground church was below the ancient Saint Georgeous Church, which itself dates back to 230 AD, in Rihab, northern Jordan near the Syrian border.
"We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD," said Abdul Qader al-Husan, head of Jordan's Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies.
"We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ," he was quoted as saying by the Jordan Times newspaper.
The early Christians, described in the mosaic inscription on St. Georgeous floor as "the 70 beloved by God and Divine," are said to have fled from Jerusalem during the persecution of Christians, to the northern part of Jordan, particularly to Rihab, scholars said.
The cave also embraces the living place of the first Christians. "A wall with an entrance is the only partition separating the altar from the living area," he said, adding it is believed that Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary passed through this area.
S. Thomas Parker, a historian at North Carolina State University who led the team that discovered the church in Aqaba, said that while he hadn't seen the Rihab site, any such claim should be taken with a degree of caution.
"An extraordinary claim like this requires extraordinary evidence," he said. "We need to see the artifacts and dating evidence to suggest such an occupation in the 1st century AD"
Parker asked how archeologists could be certain whether the "cave was actually a center of Christian worship."
"It's quite possible that there was a cave with earlier occupation which was later converted to Christian use. But to make the jump that this was actually used by Christians fleeing Jerusalem in the 1st century AD seems like a stretch to me," Parker said.
Also, Australian archaeologist Kate da Costa of the University of Sydney, who works in northern Jordan where the cave was found, said the evidence needs to be confirmed by other archaeologists.
Source: Xinhua\agencies
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