A Digital Corpus of Early Christian Churches and Monasteries in the Holy Land

The study of Early Christian churches and monasteries of the Holy Land has a great appeal for both scholars and the general public. More and more new structures are uncovered each year, augmenting the list and rendering the available synthetic studies outdated. This electronic corpus enables continuous updating in years to come. Being open to all via the internet, it will constitute not only a useful source of information but also a research tool for scholars throughout the world.

See here for site updates. The six-years project is carried out on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Institute of Archaeology. It started in Oct. 2014 with a budget allotted by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). When completed, the database and the application is to be placed on a server of the Israel Antiquities Authority and will be fully open to the public via the internet. The chronological framework will include the Early Muslim period (up to the Abbasids). The geographical framework pertains to the three provinces of Palaestina, excluding sites that at present are within the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but including Western Galilee, which belonged to Phoenicia in antiquity.