Prologue: A Catacomb Discovery in Rome

What is it about?

For the period covered in this study, no other geographical area outside Israel could come close to providing the same amount of archaeological evidence of Jews in the Roman era as Rome itself. It comes as little surprise that these findings became the subject of an ecumenical dialogue among members of various Christian churches. The speculative foundations of this shared interest are described in the introduction to the present work, “A Catacomb Discovery in Rome.”

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Photo by Jordan Grider on Unsplash

Photo by Jordan Grider on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Despite a lack of knowledge about the newly rediscovered Jewish cemetery on the Via Appia, Burgon and several other dedicated historians of antiquity anticipated many of the issues that its discovery would later present. Already a few years before, in 1853, the English press had leaked information about Jewish catacombs in Italy’s Deep South—at Venosa and Oria. Artifacts of ancient Diaspora Judaism had also appeared in other parts of Europe, notably Spain, Greece, Sicily, and Sardinia. There was so much that was new and unexpected about the ancient civilizations just then coming to light that these “reminders” of Judaism were welcomed as intellectual beacons to “clear the darkness that has covered the history of the Jews and their faith among the civilized peoples of the West.”

Perspectives