A mosaic and the remains of a building uncovered recently in excavations on the Megiddo prison grounds may belong to the earliest church in the world, according to a preliminary examination by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
One of the most dramatic finds suggests that, instead of an altar, a simple table stood in the center of the church, at which a sacred meal was held to commemorate the Last Supper.
Photographs of three Greek inscriptions in the mosaic were sent to Hebrew University expert Professor Leah Di Segni, who told Haaretz on Sunday that the use of the term "table" in one of them instead of the word "altar" might lead to a breakthrough in the study of ancient Christianity. It is commonly believed that church rituals based on the Last Supper took place around an altar.
Making headlines all over (e.g., here, here, and here).
Seems to be some controversy about whether it can actually be called a "church" (this is strictly Christian, btw), which seems to imply that a church is defined as a public structure which was only legitimized by Constantine in the 4th century. Probably one of those cases where a find challenges the traditional definition of what a particular word means by being in some way a hybrid entity. This goes on in archaeology/anthropology all the time. Eg.: Amongst Egyptian archaeologists there has been a great deal of discussion on to what extent Egypt represented a "civilization without cities", since Egypt didn't really have the large urban centers common in Mesopotamia. Egypt seems to have had a more dispersed population with only a few concentrations of elites in Memphis and some other, largely ceremonial centers (Thebes, Kahun). These centers didn't appear to have the wide variety of economic functions (e.g., craft production) present in the urban cities of Mesopotamia. Thus, they weren't really regarded as true "cities".
But, as usual, we go back to how we defined "city" in the first place, which basically entailed looking at what we think of as cities from our western European experience and thinking everything ought to be the same as that.
Socio-cult anthropology has gone through this as well, during one period (probably still continuing) expending enormous amounts of intellectual capital debating the meaning of the term "culture". Kluckohn, I think, came up with something like 116 different definitions. Archaeologists have also debated what culture is. Dunnell probably had the most succint, just calling it "shared ideas". It's an important topic, although perhaps somewhat misdirected. Dunnell attempted to operationalize "culture" within a given theory (Darwinian evolution) to give it more of a purely ideational definition (as opposed to an empirical one of just listing all the ways we've used the term). Whatever theory one uses will define what terms you use and what their explicit definitions are. Lack of formal theory hurts us in this regard, though we ought to take some comfort in the fact that evolutionary biologists still have a lot of discussion on what constitutes a "species".
All that from a stupid church story. . . . .
Update: Israeli Antiquities Authority site is here and they have a little tiny blurb on the Prison site here but we can't find anything substantial on the church story.
Also:
Lost
French diving archeologists have discovered the foundation of the ancient lighthouse of Pharos in Alexandria, the seventh wonder of the world.
The director of the Alexandria national museum, Ibrahim Darwish, said Sunday that the lighthouse, which was destroyed by two earthquakes in the 11th and 14th centuries, had occupied an area of 800 sq m north of the city's eastern harbor.
THe French have been diving in the Alexandria harbor for many years now and have been finding a lot of the stuff submerged from the earthquakes that sunk much of the land near the shore. This should be interesting to see what the size and shape of the foundation is and how it compares to descriptions and illustrations of the lighthouse. It just might shed some light (heh) on which are the most probable representations.