A couple of months ago, I blogged effusively on the recent excavation of third-century inscriptions in the Basque Country of Spain (e.g., here, here, and here). Among the finds was the world’s oldest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ — and the most ancient examples of Basque language ever found. European archeologists said it was the most important excavation since Pompeii. Independent labs in Germany and France confirmed the Spaniards’ estimated dates. The Vatican sent a representative, who was duly impressed.

And the mainstream media … wondered why they weren’t getting any follow-up stories on the Gospel of Judas or on Mary Magdalene’s genotype. Alas.

One of the Spanish papers recently ran a feature that filled in some of the blanks on the digs. For example, why was everything so well preserved, just as it had been in the third century? The initial reports were vague. Now we find out that the area had been sealed off suddenly by massive landslides. So there had been no time to pack a bag or grab a spare tunic. Everything was left in place for us to find and ponder. And ponder our Spaniard author does, as he tries to imagine what life was like in the bustling provincial city in those days before disaster struck.

There’s no English translation yet. But journalese is journalese. With my dim recollection of high-school Spanish and a little help from Babelfish, I could limp through it. Maybe you can, too.

Let me know if you hear anything more on these very important digs.

Picked this up from the Courier-Mail of Brisbane, Australia, via a tip from Archaeology magazine.

Using satellite photographs of Syria taken by the CIA in the 1960s, an Australian team has located a Byzantine basilica, an Early Bronze Age fortified town, Early Islamic pottery factories, a complex of megalithic tombs, and tools from the Palaeolithic period.

The photographs were taken by United States military surveillance satellites operating under the CIA and defence-led Corona program in the late 1960s.

I’ll bet the late Tom Lawler would be pleased. A great patrologist and translator of St. Augustine, Tom earned his daily bread as an executive for the CIA. I wonder how many other convergences of vocation and avocation he was not at liberty to tell us about.

Today is the feast day of the Invention of the Relics of St. Stephen. Now, “invention” here does NOT mean “fabrication,” but rather “discovery.”

The Church is one place on earth that pays profound respect to the work of archeologists. We even have feast days in honor of their greatest digs, as in the feast of the “Invention of the Cross.” In the preface to his great novel Helena, Evelyn Waugh tells of a British aristocrat who vents her hostility to Christianity by saying “I got the real lowdown at last. The whole story was made up by a British woman named Ellen. Why, the guide showed me the very place where it happened. Even the priests admit it. They call their chapel the ‘Invention of the Cross.'” (If you haven’t read Helena, do yourself a favor and start it today.)

Well, the Invention of the Relics of St. Stephen (the martyr of Acts 6-7 in the New Testament) might seem like a relatively minor discovery, but in its day (415 A.D.) it was instant news, worldwide. Augustine reported it breathlessly and stayed on the story as the relics were distributed throughout the empire.

The body was exhumed in a field outside the village of Caphargamala, near Jerusalem. A priest named Lucianus was an eyewitness at the discovery and sent off a letter detailing the moment of the find: “At that instant the earth trembled and a smell of sweet perfume came from the place such as no man had ever known of, so much that we thought that we were standing in the sweet garden of Paradise. And a that very hour, from the smell of that perfume, seventy-three persons were healed.” Immediately came a downpour, which ended a long drought in the region.

St. Augustine was thrilled that the body had been found after more than three and a half centuries. “His body lay hidden for so long a time. It came forth when God wished it. It has brought light to all lands, it has performed such miracles.” (You can find the Latin text of Augustine’s sermon on Stephen, Sermon no. 319, right here.)

Some of the relics came to rest quite near Augustine, in the town of Uzalis, outside Carthage. Many miracles followed. Here’s our preacher again, this time from his City of God, book 22.8:

When the bishop Projectus was bringing the relics of the most glorious martyr Stephen to the waters of Tibilis, a great concourse of people came to meet him at the shrine. There a blind woman entreated that she might be led to the bishop who was carrying the relics. He gave her the flowers he was carrying. She took them, applied them to her eyes, and forthwith saw. Those who were present were astounded, while she, with every expression of joy, preceded them, pursuing her way without further need of a guide.

Lucillus bishop of Sinita, in the neighborhood of the colonial town of Hippo, was carrying in procession some relics of the same martyr, which had been deposited in the castle of Sinita. A fistula under which he had long labored, and which his private physician was watching an opportunity to cut, was suddenly cured by the mere carrying of that sacred fardel,21 -at least, afterwards there was no trace of it in his body.

Eucharius, a Spanish priest, residing at Calama, was for a long time a sufferer from stone. By the relics of the same martyr, which the bishop Possidius brought him, he was cured. Afterwards the same priest, sinking under another disease, was lying dead, and already they were binding his hands. By the succor of the same martyr he was raised to life, the priest’s cloak having been brought from the oratory and laid upon the corpse.

There was there an old nobleman named Martial, who had a great aversion to the Christian religion, but whose daughter was a Christian, while her husband had been baptized that same year. When he was ill, they besought him with tears and prayers to become a Christian, but he positively refused, and dismissed them from his presence in a storm of indignation. It occurred to the son-in-law to go to the oratory of St. Stephen, and there pray for him with all earnestness that God might give him a right mind, so that he should not delay believing in Christ. This he did with great groaning and tears, and the burning fervor of sincere piety; then, as he left the place, he took some of the flowers that were lying there, and, as it was already night, laid them by his father’s head, who so slept. And lo! before dawn, he cries out for some one to run for the bishop; but he happened at that time to be with me at Hippo. So when he had heard that he was from home, he asked the presbyters to come. They came. To the joy and amazement of all, he declared that he believed, and he was baptized. As long as he remained in life, these words were ever on his lips: “Christ, receive my spirit,” though he was not aware that these were the last words of the most blessed Stephen when he was stoned by the Jews. They were his last words also, for not long after he himself also gave up the ghost.

There, too, by the same martyr, two men, one a citizen, the other a stranger, were cured of gout; but while the citizen was absolutely cured, the stranger was only informed what he should apply when the pain returned; and when he followed this advice, the pain was at once relieved.

Audurus is the name of an estate, where there is a church that contains a memorial shrine of the martyr Stephen. It happened that, as a little boy was playing in the court, the oxen drawing a wagon went out of the track and crushed him with the wheel, so that immediately he seemed at his last gasp. His mother snatched him up, and laid him at the shrine, and not only did he revive, but also appeared uninjured.

Augustine’s telling, while marvelous, is still on the sober side. You’ll find the tradition at its most fanciful in the late-medieval Golden Legend.

Here’s an interesting study of how Christianity gradually took over the suburbs of Rome, beginning in the third century. “During the mid-Imperial period this area was characterized by a complex system of roads, residential districts, farms, and funerary monuments. Starting from the late second century, it was increasingly devoted to the creation of ‘Christian spaces,’ first in the form of surface and subterranean funerary complexes, and later with churches and monuments associated with the presence of the martyrs’ tombs. In the fourth and early fifth century, the presence of Christian cemeteries, between the Aurelian Wall and the third milestone, contributed also to the growth of secondary access roads to the funerary complexes.”

I guess you could call that urban renewal.

The article, “The Christianization of Space along the Via Appia: Changing Landscape in the Suburbs of Rome,” is by Roman archeologist Lucrezia Spera, and it appeared (well illustrated) in the American Journal of Archaeology. You can download it for free right here.

Julian the Apostate has made several appearances on this blog. Raised a Christian, he was a schoolmate of the great Cappadocian Fathers. Eventually, he led the charge to re-paganize the empire. Not too long ago, we observed the anniversary of his battlefield death at the hands of the Persians. Turns out that the Persians preserved that Kodak moment, which you can glimpse at the blog of Julian’s most recent (and very sympathetic) biographer, Adrian Murdoch.

Jim Davila at Paleojudaica reports on the reprehensible behavior involved in the trafficking of the Gospel of Judas.

So not only did National Geographic practice shameless and tasteless hucksterism by foisting the bogus gospel on the world during Holy Week — in an unprecedented media campaign — it also tacitly promoted the mishandling and mutilation of irreplaceable artifacts — another country’s cultural heritage. All of its editors’ protests of scholarly intention ring rather hollow just now.

You don’t have to be a Christian to be grossed out by the whole matter, as Adam Gopnik demonstrated so well in the New Yorker.

Zahi Hawass is the guy you see in the foreground whenever the news crews or documentary makers are training their cameras on Egypt’s archeological digs. He’s secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo. This week he told USA Today that at least a third of his country’s ancient heritage is still waiting to be unearthed.

Maybe it’s hype. Very few people on earth can work the media the way Zahi Hawass can. But imagine the possibilities. The city of Alexandria was the site of many great events and home to great saints and sages of Christian antiquity. Think of the hundreds of lost works of Clement, Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril that might be found.

It’s been a little more than half a century since the discovery of the gnostic library at Nag Hammadi. In the last few weeks alone, this blog has reported the finding of several ancient apocryphal and pseudonymous texts and a complete copy of the Psalms in Coptic, along with ancient Coptic fabrics, and underwater buildings, and assorted Christian artworks and artifacts.

Heck, Egypt is where we got the Gospel of Judas. The country’s climate is singularly suited to the preservation of ancient Christian history. Readers of this blog should wait in joyful hope for what might be discovered.

As if to celebrate the feast of St. James of Nisibis, archeologists announced the discovery of ancient Syriac Christian inscriptions in Uzbekistan! One inscription includes Chinese hieroglyphs — an extremely rare find, but not entirely unprecedented, as the Chinese were very early evangelized by Christians of the East Syrian tradition.

The BBC reports the discovery of a sixth-century church in Scotland. The ancient cemetery is also intact, and more than 300 skeletons have been found.

Oooh, this is nice. PhDiva has posted a pile of good links related late-antique Jewish mosaics, mostly Italian, mostly in excavated synagogues and catacombs. As she points out — and as Rodney Stark demonstrates in The Rise of Christianity — these finds show the close ties of early Christians and their Jewish cousins.