Church of Zion, Jerusalem

Church of Zion, Jerusalem, also known as the Church of the Apostles on Mount Zion, refers to the remains of a Roman-era church or synagogue on Mount Zion in Jerusalem that some historians speculate may have belonged to an early Jewish-Christian congregation.

The remains of the church or synagogue date back to the 2nd-5th century, when Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina by the Romans. The reference to such a congregation is from the Bordeaux Pilgrim (c.333), Cyril of Jerusalem (348) and Eucherius of Lyon (440), but in academia the theory originates with Bellarmino Bagatti (1976), who considered that a Jewish Christian synagogue existed in the old "Essene Quarter".

In 1951, archaeologist Jacob Pinkerfeld discovered the remains of a synagogue on Mount Zion which, he concluded, had later been used as a Jewish-Christian church. Emmanuel Testa's support for Bagatti's view led to the "Bagatti-Testa school" which believes that a surviving Jewish-Christian community existed in Jerusalem, and that many Jewish-Christians returned to Jerusalem after the wars and established themselves on Mount Zion. Bagatti's theory is supported by Bargil Pixner (May 1990 Biblical Archaeology Review) who argues that the 6th-century Madaba Map shows two churches - the Basilica of Hagia Sion and the "Church of the Apostles," the putative Jewish-Christian synagogue of Mount Zion.

The problem with the thesis of Bagatti, Testa, Pinkerfeld and Pixner is that the layers indicate a Crusader structure built on top of Roman layers.

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