Today is a good day to die.
I didn't say for whom.
Posted on 02/02/2011 2:37:27 PM PST by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
HIRBET MADRAS, Israel – Israeli archaeologists presented a newly uncovered 1,500-year-old church in the Judean hills on Wednesday, including an unusually well-preserved mosaic floor with images of lions, foxes, fish and peacocks.
The Byzantine church located southwest of Jerusalem, excavated over the last two months, will be visible only for another week before archaeologists cover it again with soil for its own protection.
The small basilica with an exquisitely decorated floor was active between the fifth and seventh centuries A.D., said the dig's leader, Amir Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority. He said the floor was "one of the most beautiful mosaics to be uncovered in Israel in recent years."
"It is unique in its craftsmanship and level of preservation," he said.
Archaeologists began digging at the site, known as Hirbet Madras, in December. The Antiquities Authority discovered several months earlier that antiquities thieves had begun plundering the ruins, which sit on an uninhabited hill not far from an Israeli farming community.
Though an initial survey suggested the building was a synagogue, the excavation revealed stones carved with crosses, identifying it as a church. The building had been built atop another structure around 500 years older, dating to Roman times, when scholars believe the settlement was inhabited by Jews....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Thank goodness the church is in Judea. If it were in the west bank the ancient tiles & bricks would already be on sale in the building materials department of the Palistinian equivelent of Home Depot.
Active from the 5th to the 7th centuries. 400s to 600s. Hmmmmmmmmm. Wonder what happened in the 600s to render it inactive? Probably the arrival of a bunch of Amish or some other religion of peace that peacefully persuaded the Christians to join a new religion. Peacefully.
the peaceful prophet of the religion of pieces.
They uncovered a building. The church is the assembly of believers in Christ. Too much attention paid to architecture...not enough to the message.
Islam is a blast, isn't it? ;-)
Right. In think it was Luther who insisted that the message in the architecture was blasphemy or something like that.
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The floor looks really beautiful, though. Can’t wait to see good pictures of it.
This site is just beautiful. Go to the source for pictures.
More like Luther objected to the selling of indulgences to fund said message-in-the-architecture churches.
ping
LOL. Which assembly?
The article indicates that the church is Byzantine, but they’d more likely be Monophysites, no?
The actual irony is that the Byzantine suppression of the Monophysite Christians caused their defection to Mohammed.
They’d repulsed the eastern tribes and later the Muslims and protected the trade routes of the Levant which the Mohammedans so desperately wanted to loot. The buffer they formed protected the Christian west.
If only the Byzantines had shown a little tolerance for that belief or at least a little political prudence Islam would have remained a tribal religion delimited to Saudi Arabia. Instead Constantinople fell to treachery before a Muslim army and Anatolia went the way of Islam.
Yes.
Yeah, blame the victims. Played a role, yes. Caused it all, no. Were it not for the nasty Byzzies, Muhammed would’ve been a choirboy.
All the Christians fault. They made Muzzies bad. Muzzies wanted so hard to be nice but nasty Byzzies left them no choice but to be bad.
Bad bad Byzzies.
Yes, all of them?
It’s simple historical fact, not a political perspective. Muslims weren’t the only violent people in history held at bay by client states acting as buffers.
The Byzantines and the Persians both persecuted the buffer states between them and Islam, nearly at the same time. That, more than anything, allowed Islam to spread beyond its original, parochial limits.
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