Church of Zion, Jerusalem


Church of Zion, Jerusalem, also known as the Church of the Apostles on Mount Zion, refers to the remains of a Roman-era church or synagogue on Mount Zion in Jerusalem that some historians speculate may have belonged to an early Jewish-Christian congregation.

History

The remains of the church or synagogue date back to the 2nd-5th century, when Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina by the Romans. The reference to such a congregation is from the Bordeaux Pilgrim, Cyril of Jerusalem and Eucherius of Lyon, but in academia the theory originates with Bellarmino Bagatti, who considered that a Jewish Christian synagogue existed in the old "Essene Quarter".
In 1951, archaeologist Jacob Pinkerfeld interpreted the lower parts of the Mount Zion structure known as David's Tomb, as the remains of a synagogue which, he concluded, had later been used as a Jewish-Christian church. Emmanuel Testa's support for Bagatti's view led to the "Bagatti-Testa school", which believes that a surviving Jewish-Christian community existed in Jerusalem, and that many Jewish-Christians returned to Jerusalem after the wars and established themselves on Mount Zion. Bagatti's theory is supported by Bargil Pixner who argues that the 6th-century Madaba Map shows two churches - the Basilica of Hagia Sion and the "Church of the Apostles," the putative Jewish-Christian synagogue of Mount Zion.
The problem with the thesis of Bagatti, Testa, Pinkerfeld and Pixner is that the layers indicate a Crusader structure built on top of Roman layers.