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 The Church
The church consists of a
rectangular hall laid out in an east/west
direction, with a semicircular apse to the
east. There is an entrance to the west
which is not in the center of the western
wall. West of the entrance is a narthex or
porch. To the north is a cave and, to the
south, a rectangular room which may have
led to a second entrance into the
church.
The main
hall is divided into three parts by two
rows of three columns standing on square
bases. The columns are of a conglomerate
stone and were topped with Corinthian
capitals. Both the columns and the
capitals were obviously reused from an
earlier Roman monument. The hall of the
church measures ca. 14.8 meters by 12.5
meters, while its central part (the nave)
is about 6.8 meters wide and the two side
aisles are about 3 meters wide.
Normally
in such churches the spacing between the
columns is equal, but in this case it is
not. The first two columns at the east (in
front of the cave) are 6.8 meters apart
while the distance between the columns to
the west is 4 meters.
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The
eastern part of the church was separated
from the rest of it by a chancel screen
running the whole width of the church and
attached to the two eastern columns. The
chancel, which is about 3.4 meters deep,
is divided into three sections. The
central part has colored marble tiles,
while the side ones have the remains of
mosaic floors. The semicircular apse has a
diameter of about 5.8 meters.
South of
the apse is a room which was probably a
sacristy. It measures 3 meters by 3.3
meters and had a mosaic floor. North of
the apse, and at about 4.3 meters east of
the chancel screen, there is a plastered
surface which seems to be covering the
wall of another cave which was left
unexcavated due to the presence of a
modern terrace and staircase.
In the
western part of the northern aisle there
is a baptismal font. The location of this
font is unique as fonts are normally
located either in apsidal spaces or
towards the ends of rooms (Ben-Pechat
1989: 170). It consists of an oval cut
into the floor and has some plaster
remains within.
A fragment
of mosaic remains just north of it. The
font measures 1.5 meters by 0.8 meters. A
similar oval font is found in a church in
Kursi (Ben-Pechat 1990: 502) and it is
dated to A.D. 585 by an inscription in the
mosaic floor.
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The cave
to the north has four niches, one in its
eastern wall, another in the northern one,
while the remaining two are in the western
wall. The northern niche of this wall is
broad, shallow and taller than the others,
whereas the southern niche, the largest of
the four, has what may be the remains of a
sarcophagus. The cave measures about 8
meters east/west and 8.7 meters
north/south. About 2.2 meters inside of
the cave, there are two steps going down
to the main part of the cave. Within the
cave, there is a room built of
rectangularly cut stone blocks and
measuring about 2 meters by 4 meters
(walls included). The western wall of this
room is aligned with the eastern columns
in the church proper. In front of the
cave, there is a mosaic floor. In the
mosaic, a squarish outline, devoid of any
tesserae, can be traced. This may mark the
position of the pulpit.
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The
rectangular room on the opposite side of
the church measures about 3.7 meters by 6
meters and apparently had a mosaic floor.
Only a small sectionof this richly-colored
pavement was found in the northeast corner
of the room.
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The
narthex to the west is about 13 meters
wide and 2.8 meters deep, with a colonnade
to the west. Again, there are remnants of
a mosaic floor.
At first
glance, the church appears to be of the
basilica type with the standard division
into nave with two aisles and an apse to
the east. On closer examination, however,
we see more than a basilica since a cross
shape is given to the structure by the
alignment of the cave, the southern room,
and the wide spaces between the first and
second columns. The intercolumnar spacing
was determined by width of the cave. In
order to have the transept as a
uniformly-shaped rectangle, the walls
inside the cave were built, so that the
structure would be more or less
symmetrical. This north/south axis creates
an emphasis on the northern part of the
structure, an emphasis which is further
enhanced by the presence of the ambo or
pulpit as well as the baptismal font in
the northern aisle.
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