006. Chapter 4 - The Catacombs

Chapter 4 - The Catacombs The word “catacomb” comes from the Greek kata (down) and kymbe (hollow). The catacombs of Rome were vast quarries and underground passages where the early Christians buried their dead and took refuge when persecuted. Christian abhorrence of cremation, which was practiced by the lower classes of Romans, led to burial in cemeteries which were the property of wealthy members, or purchased for the purpose. Where the rock was easily worked, underground quarries for burial purposes developed. Such catacombs have been discovered in Crimea, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Malta, Sicily, and Italy. The catacombs of Rome are by far the most important.

Origin and Nature The old theory of the origin of these catacombs was that they were sand pits or rock excavations by the Romans, which were appropriated by Christians for burial and refuge. But the archaeologists Marchi and De Rossi exploded this theory and proved that they were dug by the Christians themselves. Some wealthy Christian would start a small catacomb for the members of his family, which was gradually developed and extended to accommodate a multitude. The small galleries, at first, had loculi running out in various directions, some of which were large enough for a group of bodies; others were made for some distinguished person alone, often some martyr. Gradually a confusing maze of galleries running in all directions was excavated. The galleries were arranged on floors, sometimes four or five, connected with staircases. When the fierce persecutions arose, the Christians began to take refuge in the catacombs. Burial places had the right of asylum by law, and, when the churches were closed in the city, the Christians met here underground. About the middle of the third century the persecutors began to violate the catacombs, and the Christians then destroyed the old entrances and dug new and secret ones. The persecutions ceased with Constantine, and Bishop Damascus restored the catacombs to something of their original character. Through the fourth century the Christians still buried their dead here from the desire to rest beside the martyrs. The Pictures and Inscriptions

There are about sixty of these catacombs, all outside the city walls. They came to be connected and interwoven with all sorts of secret passages. It is estimated that more than 174,000 Christians have been buried here. De Rossi estimated that originally as many as one hundred thousand inscriptions were carved on the walls. Some fifteen thousand have been discovered. Wilpert has deciphered over ten thousand. The chambers where the most distinguished were buried bear pictures, inscriptions, decorative works of various kinds. We get here our first picture of early Christian art. The burial chambers of the common people were left undecorated, and the earlier burials bore the simpler inscriptions — the name, or the simple epitaph: “In Christ.” The symbolic pictures cover some 132 themes — twenty of these come from the first century, and three are Biblical: “Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” “Noah,” and “The Good Shepherd.” The great appeal which Daniel and Noah, or the protecting care of Jesus as the good Shepherd, made to Christians dying in the arena by wild beasts or crucifixion or fire is evidenced by these catacomb pictures. In the second century a great many pictures refer to Christ in some fashion. We see the Wise-men presenting gifts to the infant Jesus, Jesus healing the paralytic, Jesus and the woman with the issue of blood, Jesus breaking bread in the upper room, the feeding of the five thousand, the last judgment, the resurrection, the life of the blessed in eternity. The catacomb evidence has been the subject of much controversy. De Rossi tried to use the inscriptions and pictures to establish the teachings and claims of the Roman Catholic Church. He was vigorously answered by the archaeologist Schultre. Various attempts have been made by pedobaptists to use the catacomb pictures as proof that the original action was sprinkling or pouring. But the very fact that the catacomb pictures are filled with heathen figures and conceptions intermingled with the Christian, shows that the simple faith had already begun to be corrupted, and that too much weight can not be attached to pictures which combine the Good Shepherd with flying genii, heads of the seasons, doves, peacocks, vases, fruits and flowers.

Evidence on Baptism

Dr. Bennett, a Methodist author, in his work on “Archaeology” shows that a heathen god is in the only picture of early Christian art where pouring is used for baptism. Dean Stanley says: “It is astonishing how many of these decorations are taken from heathen sources and copied from heathen paintings. There is Orpheus playing on his harp to the beasts; there is Bacchus as the god of the vintage; there is Psyche, the butterfly of the soul; there is the Jordan as the god of the river. The classical and the Christian, the Hebrew and the Hellenic elements had not yet parted. The strict demarcation, which the books of the period would imply between the Christian church and the heathen world, had not yet been formed, or was constantly effaced. The catacombs have more affinity with the chapel of Alexander Severus, which contained Orpheus side by side with Abraham and Christ, than they have with the writings of Tertullian, who spoke of heathen poets, only to exult in their future torments, or of Augustine, who regarded this very figure of Orpheus only as a mischievous teacher to be disparaged, not as a type of the two forms of heathen and Christian civilization. It agrees with the fact that the funeral inscriptions are often addressed dis manibus: “to the funeral spirit” (Inst., p230; cf. J. T. Christian’s Immersion, pp. 146ff.). The catacomb pictures, with their conglomeration of the heathen and the Christian, reveal the tendency of the masses to combine and compromise — to drift back into the heathen conceptions from which they had been called forth. The sturdy Christian scholars of the early period protested against this tendency of the common people as they did against the Apocryphal Gospels, another product of the imagination of the masses, but these tendencies still persisted and led to the corruption of Christianity. But the fact that early Christian art of the third and later centuries combined heathen conceptions and figures with the Biblical does not destroy the fundamental testimony of the catacombs to the historic reality of Jesus and His followers in this early period. It is thrilling to witness carved here in the rock the testimony of the early Christians, some of whom had listened to the preaching of the apostle Paul in Rome, to their undying faith in Jesus their Lord and Saviour. Who can read the simple inscriptions of the first century, “In Christ,” and not be forced back anew to the Gospels to perceive the power of this Personality that could stir the ancient world through the fiery proclamations of His followers, and bring together even here in Rome such a multitude of followers? Although their faith, as witnessed on the walls of the catacombs, was imperfect, and at times confused, the modernists will have to chisel off these pathetic and challenging inscriptions before they can ever convince the world that Jesus of Nazareth is a myth.