1st Christians Emerge From Egypt’s Shadows : Archeology: Research is seeking answers in the area where many Western religious beliefs originated.

Egypt was an ancient, religious land under the stranglehold of Nero’s Rome when the first strains of Christianity came quietly and swiftly across the Sinai Desert from Judea.

How did the new religion arrive, who were the first Christians, what were the early teachings and how did the message spread and change? Legends and stories are far more plentiful than facts.

German archeologist Peter Grossmann, who specializes in early Christian sites of the Near East, is trying to unlock the mysteries. His expeditions often take him into the Sinai and to the Oasis of Firan.

For five seasons, Grossmann has dug in the ruin-rich hillsides above Firan, where pagans who drifted there 1,700 years ago became Christian converts.

Most archeologists prefer to bypass Christian relics in Egypt for more lucrative digs seeking relics of the Pharaohs.

British archeologist Michael Jones, who is based in Cairo, says that Grossmann’s work is important because “everything we believe as Western Christians, everything we know about early Christianity, began in places like this. And yet we know so little.”

Old Testament scholars know the oasis as Paran, where Hagar and her son Ishmael found refuge after they were banished by Abraham, and as the Vale of Elim, a welcome stopover for the children of Israel during the Exodus.

At Firan, a haven of date palms and wells in the stark Sinai, a crumbling mud-brick cathedral dominates the ruins of an ancient settlement.

Grossmann, supervising diggers who extracted a toppled column, took a break to climb toward the crumbling walls of the ancient basilica. The mountains overlooking the oasis contain more ruins, including hermitages and monasteries.

Although the pagans-turned-Christians left evidence of their years at Firan, much of it was destroyed by Bedouin raiders or washed away by frequent flash floods.

Egyptian Christians date their church to the 1st Century, when tradition says St. Mark brought the new religion to Alexandria. Few records exist because many of the earliest converts were poor, with little more than their faith to pass down.

Third-Century Roman emperors persecuted Egypt’s Christians. Church records were destroyed, but the religion was kept alive from wilderness caves by hermits and monks preaching the virtues of sacrifice to flocks of believers.

Early hermits who sought to communicate with God in Egypt’s deserts by practicing a life of self-denial, called the Desert Fathers, lived on Mt. Serbal, which rises above the oasis, and on Mt. Sinai, a few miles away.

At one time, both mountains were reputed to be the site where God gave Moses the 10 Commandments, but by the 4th Century, most Christians believed that they were handed down on Mt. Sinai.