Talk:Caesarea Maritima

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.

	Israel Portal Caesarea Maritima is part of WikiProject Israel, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to Israel on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, visit the project page where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. This template adds articles to Category:WikiProject Israel articles.
Project Israel To Do (Drop-Down Menu): edit purge watch Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages#Hebrew, Road signs in Israel, Chiloni, Vehicle registration plates of Israel, Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Area A, Area B, Area C Copyedit: Palestinian views of the peace process Merge: Rechov Sumsum & Rechov Sumsum Shara'a Simsim Cleanup: Media Coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Agricultural Research In Israel, Cyprus internment camps, Carmel Winery Expand: Category:Companies of Israel, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Category:Israeli songs, Port of Haifa, Allon Plan, Israel Antiquities Authority, Goldstar, Cellcom, Bezeq, Diamond industry in Israel, Geneva Accord, Zman Tel-Aviv, Haifa Airport Stubs: Israel stubs Update: National Religious Party NPOV: Israeli military action in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, Six-Day War, Ashkelon Other: Assess: Translate from Hebrew: He:אותיות השימוש, He:כתיב חסר ניקוד, He:האקדמיה ללשון העברית Translate to Hebrew: Gemara, Chief Rabbi, Palestinophilia, David Gans, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, David Bar Hayim, Jacob of Lissa, Nosson Zvi Finkel, Bezalel Ashkenazi, Solomon Schechter, Av Beit Din, Howard Fast, Guardian of Zion Award, Martin Gilbert, Hasbara, Israeli wine, Pierre van Paassen, Uri Davis, Aaron Valero
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.

It was a far from universal practice to build Christian churches on the sites of pagan temples. It sometimes happened because the temple occupied the most prominent spot in a city which the Christian community would naturally feel to be more suitable for a church, or because a temple's podium was a convenient pre-built foundation. Some of the more exceptionally beautiful pagan temples, such as the Pantheon in Rome or the Parthenon in Athens, were simply taken over intact. But the Christians of the time were more likely to regard a pagan temple site as accursed. They never regarded it as sacred because of its former use. Csernica 09:26, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is uninformed, as everyone who knows any details of the founding of any Christian church in the first five or six hundred years will immediately realize. Think of any church, large or small, founded before ca 800. A large class of exceptions, however, are churches built on the sites of shrines over the tombs of prominent figures (the Basilica of Saint Peter etc) or developing from abbeys. This is a historical phenomenon not without interest. There is no need to disguise it. --Wetman 15:26, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I can think of a great many churches founded before that date that were not founded on the sites of pagan temples. As I said, some were, but this was because of the desireable location and not because the site was thought to be sacred somehow. Primary sources such as we have evince quite the opposite attitude about pagan temples. By your logic all the holiest pagan places ought to have been Christianized -- yet the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Oracle at Delphi, the temple of Zeus at Olympia, the temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and even the temple to the same god on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, were all allowed to simply fall into ruin along with the vast majority of other less magnificent shrines. There are far more counterexamples refuting your notion than examples supporting it.

I'm aware that your POV is a popular one in some circles, but the preponderance of the documentary and archaeological evidence does not support it. Csernica 18:43, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Taking the above with a grain of salt, the informed reader might want to add a further category, of early Christian churches that were adapted from the basilicas of private individuals to the categories of those founded on consecrated pagan sites or to mark shrines. --Wetman 05:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC))

The current edit is perfectly acceptable. Csernica 22:30, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge tag

I have remove the mergeto tag. They shouldn't be merged. One is an archaeological site, the other a modern city. Cheers, Tewfik^Talk 17:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Golan Heights dispute

According to the Caesarea Philippi article, Caesarea Philippi is in the Golan Heights which is disputed between Israel and Syria. Saying that it is in Israel is not NPOV. Sowelilitokiemu 03:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Israel holds the Golan Heights. Syria has sour grapes about losing a war they started; that doesn't make their whining fact. Regardless, this is not the article on Caesarea Philippi, so why mention it here? Rogue 9 14:45, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Caesarea photos & review

I recommend that an external link will be added to http://www.biblewalks.com/sites/caesarea.html The site adds many original photos, information, references, which will be useful for the readers.