Debating the Domestic at Dura-Europos: The Christian Building in Context

مناقشة المسائل المحلّيّة في دورا-أوروبوس: العمارة المسيحيّة في السياق

Camille Angelo and Joshua Silver

At the ancient city of Dura-Europos, private homes were architecturally adapted across the late second and third century by different religious groups to serve the needs of their communities. Although the Christian Building, Synagogue, and Mithraeum all began as domestic structures and share a similar architectural development, the former’s domestic origins have received unique attention and ongoing emphasis. This has been cultivated and maintained across decades of scholarship, both through the use of terminology that presupposes a quasi-domestic character for the building, and in the efforts to situate the structure within a model of Christian architecture that endorses a direct progression from house-church to basilica. Through a critical reexamination of the archeological and material evidence for the architectural adaptations made to the building by a Christian community in the third century, this paper argues that the emphasis does not align with material reality, but is a product of modern assumptions about ancient space. A quantitative analysis of the architectural adaptations indicates that, following its renovation to accommodate Christian community use, the building did not bear a material relationship with the specific domestic structure that had preceded it. Comparison of three-dimensional reconstructions and daylight simulations of the structure before and after renovation reveal that the architectural adaptations reconfigured the space such that visitors could use and experience it in ways that were categorically different from its domestic antecedent and, importantly, effectively divested it of the key architectural features that constituted Durene household space. Disentangling the material reality of the structure from modern imaginings, the Christian Building emerges a product of its unique built environment. The long-held view of the structure as occupying a pivotal place in a seamless trajectory of Christian architectural development is thereby shown to be untenable, while the contextual approach emerges as fruitful not only for fresh consideration of early Christianity and ritual space, but for understanding religion and the built environment at Dura-Europos more broadly.