Michael Peppard's exciting new book offers a fresh reappraisal of the church found among the ruins of Dura-Europus in Syria. Sealed in the debris of the city's sack by the Sassanians in 256 c.e., the church complex and its baptistery is, as Peppard points out, the oldest extant Christian church. Peppard's reappraisal of the church, focusing particularly on the art found on the walls of the church's baptistery, offers an excellent example of interdisciplinary scholarship that brings together literary materials, archaeological remains, and an attention to ritual practice. Further, Peppard places the site in the context of Syria and Syrian Christianity, particularly emphasizing the location of the city on the borderlands of the Roman Empire with a large military population. Contrary to many earlier interpretations of the artistic program of the church, Peppard shows convincingly that attention to the local Syrian context offers new insights for how to understand the art and ritual found sealed in the desert sands.

In chapter 1, Peppard provides an introduction to the city, its place along the borderlands between the Roman and Sassanian Empires, and a history of both the excavation of the site and its early interpretation. We are also introduced to the methodology for the book, which attempts to bring together not just archaeological evidence and artistic interpretation, but also an attention to the way in which space and ritual affect and were affected by the artistic program. It is this tripartite approach to the space that makes Peppard's work both an extension of trends in the larger study of ancient art and an innovative model for historians of early Christianity. Peppard also makes two clarifications that add to the strength of his approach. First, he limits his primary literary and artistic comparanda to Syria and the Roman East, a corrective that many historians of early Christianity have yet to heed. Second, Peppard rightly cautions scholars from making one-to-one interpretations of art, by which he means the tendency to isolate the exact textual parallel for each piece of art. Such parallelomania on the part of modern scholars ignores the fact that by 256 c.e. there was as yet no fixed biblical “canon.” Christians would have interacted with a wide variety of literary sources in their formation and initiation and would have interpreted the art on their church walls in the context of both literary memory and ritual practice.

Chapters 2 through 5 of the book offer individual studies of each of the artistic images found in the church. In chapter 2, Peppard argues that an image of David and Goliath below a niche for storing oil in the southern wall need not be surprising in a baptistery, as it has been for many interpreters. That David appears in this context makes sense because of his connection to themes of kingship, anointing, and shepherding that were part of baptismal practice and Syrian liturgy. Important too are that Dura-Europos was a town with a large military population, who may have felt a kinship with the warrior king David, and that David was the purported authorship of the Psalms, which were used liturgically in both East and West and also bring together imagery that would have resonated in baptismal practice. Chapter 3 looks at depictions of Peter walking on water, Jesus's healing of the paralytic, and the good shepherd. Attention to local Syrian traditions allows Peppard to reinterpret these images in insightful ways. For example, he shows that the depiction of Peter does not focus, as do interpreters in the West, on Peter's faltering due to lack of faith, but on Peter's initial miraculous steps, a theme that is found regularly in Syrian texts.

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on images of women. In chapter 4, Peppard argues that the images of women bearing torches on the east and north walls do not depict the women who went to anoint Jesus's body in the tomb, but rather a procession of women to a marriage celebration, akin to Jesus's parable of the wise and foolish virgins. While western theologians and interpreters have often read baptismal imagery according to the Pauline tropes of participatory suffering and death (hence the assumption that the women are going to the grave of Jesus), Peppard rightfully points out that other early Christian authors and communities often spoke of baptism with the imagery of marriage and the bridal chamber. This new literary context dovetails with the procession itself, which depicts the women in ways similar to traditional wedding rituals. In chapter 5, Peppard argues that a small image in the southwest corner of the room depicts not the Samaritan woman at the well, but the Annunciation to Mary. This would make the Dura-Europos image the earliest extant depiction of Mary, but also reframes the baptismal space from a place where sin is forgiven to a place where rebirth occurs. The baptistery is not, then, simply a site for forgiveness, but a womb offering rebirth.

In a concluding chapter, Peppard looks back over the baptistery with two final interlocutors. First, he suggests that a later addition of an image of Adam and Eve to the artistic program fits within the broader themes of the space, namely that the baptistery does not merely offer a solution to the problem of original sin, but also rebirth and new life. Finally, Peppard listens to the Odes of Solomon, and hears resonances in this popular Syrian text of many of the themes he has shown were also seen upon the walls of the baptistery. Peppard's book represents an excellent example of what careful and imaginative interdisciplinary scholarship on early Christianity can look like. It is also, to the great credit of its author, easy to read and elegantly crafted.