Grain of salt

I didn't immediately post on the recent claim by Jordanian archeologists to have identified the oldest known place of Christian worship. All reports indicated that while the claims were dramatic, the supporting evidence was rather less so. Here's a more critical writeup, via Fox News:

Thomas Parker, a historian at the University of North Carolina-Raleigh, 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 A.D."

Parker asked how archaeologists 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 A.D. seems like a stretch to me," Parker said.

Posted by David on June 14, 2008 2:38 PM