A mosaic called the earliest Jesus as God

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Capturing Christianity presents a mosaic under the Megiddo prison in northern Israel as the earliest archaeology of Christians calling Jesus divine. The floor is dated around 230, nearly a century before Nicaea. Critics of the Trinity, the host says, treat that belief as a late political addition. This pavement is his answer. A 2004 salvage dig, led by Yotam Tepper, found a prayer hall inside a home, abandoned rather than reused, from before formal churches of the fourth century. A Greek text read by Leah Di Segni records a woman donor giving the communion table to Jesus under the title of God. Fish in the design are tied to an old acrostic and to the call of Peter and Andrew. The host links them, and the feeding of the five thousand, to authority over creation rather than a picnic. Believers cut the confession, he says, in a time of risk. Prisoners helped until the building overhead was moved and work could continue. The channel treats the stones as support for a trinitarian reading of the earliest church.

Key points

• The host presents the Megiddo prison mosaic, about 230, as the earliest archaeology of Christians naming Jesus as God.
• He aims that date at the claim that divine status for Jesus was invented only at later church councils.
• The floor belonged to a house prayer hall found in a salvage dig before a new prison wing, under Yotam Tepper.
• A Greek dedication by a woman donor gives a table to God Jesus Christ for the community meal.
• Fish on the mosaic are read through the ichthys acrostic, the call of the fishermen, and the feeding story as signs of divinity.
• The channel treats the inscription as support for trinitarian reading and for the credibility of the New Testament.

Short quotes

this is the first known archaeological evidence of the early Christian belief that Jesus was divine

Capturing Christianity, Mosaic evidence for Jesus as God

He calls this the earliest dug proof that early Christians took Jesus to be divine. Watch at 2:39

here in a prayer Hall buried beneath what's now an Israeli prison we find Christians boldly affirming Jesus's Divinity

Capturing Christianity, Mosaic evidence for Jesus as God

Under the prison, he says, a buried prayer hall still spells out the divinity of Jesus. Watch at 6:44

Video by Capturing Christianity. Watch on YouTube.