Amazing things

One of the great privileges of studying at a world-class university is the access to things I could not imagine seeing or even perhaps knowing about otherwise. This afternoon, some of us from patristics class went on a field trip over to Yale's West Campus to participate in a private viewing of ancient Christian art that is under restoration. Dura-Europos was a 3rd century C.E. garrison city on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire on the Euphrates in modern-day Syria. There was a house church there, the ruins of which were discovered in the 1920's and excavated in 1932. Yale partnered on the financing and excavation so has in its possession the fragment paintings from the baptistery in this house church. These paintings are the oldest surviving Christian monumental art known to historians. And we got to just walk around them and photograph them with our phones and talk with the curator and professors who know more than a little bit about this place. Go look in an art history book and you'll see Dura-Europos in there. It's staggering to the imagination!

The art contained in the baptistery - a separate room from the assembly because people were baptized in the nude - contained paintings on plaster of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, Peter going out to Jesus on the water, the healing of the paralytic, David and Goliath, and five women processing toward what looks like a sarcophagus. We (or the experts) don't know if this is actually the wise virgins who trim their lamps as they wait for the bridegroom (Matthew 25:1-13) or the women going to the tomb on Easter (Mark 16:1). There are no Gospel accounts of five women going to anoint Jesus' body, but who knows how biblical passages were interpreted on the edge of the empire? Some of the images are extremely vague and are awaiting the restorers touch. Some are clear and have already been restored. The painting of one of the virgins reveals a beautiful young woman with a veil, her lamp in her hand and some sort of bowl or vessel in the other. Her lips are painted, her eyes are deep, and her expression is one of placidness as well as expectation. And this painting is over 17 centuries old! It's humbling to see.

For a change, I am not on my way home on a Friday afternoon as Tim is bringing my car up to me. I flew home from a NC wedding last Sunday and have been happily carless all week. We'll be going to the Yale-Penn football game tomorrow, followed by watching the Phillies tomorrow night in Game 6. And of course, there will be more mid-term studying as all of this is happening.

It is fall in New England. The leaves are putting on quite a display and there is a nip in the air. It's a beautiful time of year here, and I am warmed by the friends I have met and the work we have all accomplished in this first semester of the year. It's flying by!