The uncovering of a Mithraeum, synagogue and Christian house church in the excavations of Dura Europos remains a monumental discovery for understanding religion in classical antiquity, and with the latter building, a crucial piece of evidence concerning at least one Christian congregation in the outbacks of the Roman Empire. The removal of the frescoes to Yale University Art Gallery, their deterioration through humidity, their storage for some thirty years, and their new curation at Yale make an additional saga in its own right. What has been a frequent discussion point amongst art historians and scholars of classical antiquity has been the interpretation of the frescoes in the house church and their relation to the baptistery and the ritual of baptism. This is the focus of Michael Peppard's elegant, insightful and imaginative study, combining archaelogy, art history, liturgy and early Christian studies.

Peppard begins this study with a review of Dura or Europos (the name depending on which empire controlled it), and the unearthing of the frescoes by British soldiers, and the subsequent archaeological investigations by the French and Americans. He raises the question of how Christians came to be at Dura, and deduces that at least some of them actually became Christians at Dura. This points to baptism and the baptistery, and what the world's oldest church offers as regards imagining early Christian initiation. Much of this study is a discussion about the meaning of the frescoes and how they relate to what we know of baptism in Syria. Carl Herman Kraeling had indeed explored some of the liturgical literature relevant to Syrian baptismal practices in relation to Dura but, as Peppard observes, much has changed since 1967 when Kraeling wrote, and particularly in the area of art history. All this means that it is time for a new look since, as Peppard notes, the paintings are not allegorical treasures unlocked by one hermeneutical key – the right biblical text; instead, multiple texts ‘fit’, and each opens up a different aspect of a graven image.

One of the central frescoes is of David and Goliath, and another is of the good shepherd. David is the Lord's anointed (and was a shepherd) as is Jesus the Christ, and so also Christians are anointed in baptism. But the scene also reminds us that this was a garrison settlement, and frequently engaged in defending itself. Thus as a flock looks to their shepherd and an army to its hero for protection from enemies, so did the Dura community ‘craft the memory of David as the anointed victor whom they hoped also to be’. Ephrem is called as a witness to this motif in the Syrian tradition. ‘The Lord and Shepherd of the water’ forms the title of chapter iii, and indeed the importance of the term ‘rushma’ (mark, brand) in the Syriac tradition as well as the stamping of sheep (Theodore of Mopsuestia) witness to the importance of this motif too. Much ink has been spilt over the procession of the women on the north wall of the baptistery. Are they the women visiting the empty tomb, or are they en route to the bridal chamber? For support of the latter, Peppard appeals to Aphrahat: ‘All the pure virgins who are betrothed to Christ shall light their torches and with the Bridegroom shall they go into the marriage chamber’, and John Chrysostom speaks of baptismal preparation as for the ‘days of spiritual marriage’.

Peppard takes up a suggestion of this reviewer that, pace Gabriele Winkler, the pattern of the Syrian baptismal ritual was based on the account of Jesus' baptism; the incarnation with the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit and birth of the Son of God makes a better pattern for the Syrian ritual preference for anointing with oil (for the Spirit) and then baptism. This plays into Peppard's interpretation of the fresco of the woman with water by a well, namely that this is not the Samaritan woman of John's Gospel, but the Virgin Mary as described in the Protoevangelium of James: ‘And she took the pitcher and went forth to draw water’. To my knowledge, this interpretation was first argued by Dominic Serra in a much neglected paper in Ephemerides Liturgicae (2008). Peppard acknowledges Serra's insight and expands this argument, and I think it is totally convincing. Peppard concludes his excellent re-imagined ritual at Dura with an important warning: ‘The attempt to find the right texts and images, the hermeneutical keys that unlock the meaning of this church and baptistery, will continue to enhance our understanding. But it would be foolish, once inside, to use those same keys to lock the door behind us.’ That, of course, is applicable to all our endeavours to reconstruct the past.