Hans Rustad 
Arkeologer har funnet en hule under en kirke i Rahab i Nord-Jordan som kan være fra det første århundre e. Kr. dvs. den kan ha blitt grunnlagt og bebodd av Jesu egne disipler.
Fagfolk advarer mot å ta alt for god fisk, men arkeologene på stedet tror det kan ha gjort et stort funn. Over bakken ligger St. Georg-kirken, som man hevder er fra 230 e. Kr. Det gjør den til en av de tre eldste i verden. Under kirken har man oppdaget et underjordisk religiøst rom, med en tunnel til et bokvarter. Det sies at 70 av Jesu etterfølgere bodde og tilba her. I mosaikken i kirken over, står det inskripsjoner om at den er til minne om de 70.
Archaeologist Abdel-Qader al-Housan, head of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, said this week that the cave was unearthed in the northern Jordanian city of Rihab after three months of excavation and shows evidence of early Christian rituals.
The cave is under St. George’s Church, which some believe was built in the year 230, though the date is widely disputed. That would make it one of the oldest churches in the world, along with one unearthed in the Jordanian southern port of Aqaba in 1998 and another in Israel discovered in 2005.
Al-Housan said there was evidence that the underground cave was used as a church by 70 disciples of Jesus in the first century after Christ’s death, which would make it the oldest Christian site of worship in the world.
He described a circular worship area with stone seats separated from a living area that had a long tunnel leading to a source of water. He said the early Christians hid there from persecution.
A mosaic inscription on the floor of the later church of St. George above refers to «the 70 beloved by God and the divine» who founded the worship there.
Thomas Parker, a historian at the University of North Carolina-Raleigh, who led the team that discovered the church in Aqaba, said that while he hadn’t seen the Rihab site, any such claim should be taken with a degree of caution.
«An extraordinary claim like this requires extraordinary evidence,» he said. «We need to see the artifacts and dating evidence to suggest such an occupation in the 1st century A.D.»
