¹ Thomas, J. P., Private religious foundations in the Byzantine Empire, Washington, DC 1987, esp. pp. 141–3, 161–3Google Scholar.

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⁵ Bourdieu, P., Outline of theory and practice, trans. Nice, R., Cambridge 1977, 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁰ Yizhar Hirschfeld, in his comprehensive study of rural settlement in Palestine in the Byzantine period, discussed the difficulty of creating a typology of rural churches: ‘Farms and villages in Byzantine Palestine’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers li (1997), 60Google Scholar. An expression of the variety of church buildings in and outside of the village can be found, for example, in Ramathaniya in the Golan, where a community church was discovered, as well as a monastery, whose construction was funded by a private donor: Gregg, C. and Urman, D., Jews, pagans and Christians: Greek and other inscriptions of the Roman and Byzantine eras, Atlanta, Ga 1996, 188–90Google Scholar.

¹¹ With regard to the regularity of ceremonies in churches of the type discussed here see Leah Di Segni's comment in her analysis of the inscriptions in the northern church at Shiloh: ‘Greek inscriptions from the early northern church at Shiloh and the baptistery’, in Carmin, N. (ed.), Christians and Christianity, III: Churches and monasteries in Samaria and Northern Judea, Jerusalem 2012, 216–17Google Scholar.

¹² According to the apostolic canons (viii. 28), a deacon is forbidden to celebrate the eucharist or to baptise: Funk, F. X. (ed.), Didascalia et constitutiones apostolorum, i, Paderborn 1905, 530Google Scholar.

¹³ Gorny, D. and Aviam, M., ‘Ḥorbat Kenes’, Hadashot Arkheologiyot ciii (1995), 21–3 (Hebrew)Google Scholar.

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¹⁵ I would like to thank Leah Di Segni for reading the inscriptions and for her important and illuminating comments. Of course, the analysis of, and conclusions concerning the inscriptions presented in this article are my sole responsibility.

¹⁶ Musurillo, H., The acts of the Christian martyrs, Oxford 1972, xxxii–xxxiiiGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ For local cults of saints see Yasin, A. M., Saints and church spaces in the late antique Mediterranean: architecture, cult, and community, Cambridge 2009, 252–3Google Scholar.

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²⁰ Rudolph Cohen believes that the church was a monastery church and that Theodoros was its abbot: ‘A Byzantine church and its mosaic floors at Kissufim’, in Y. Tsafrir (ed.), Ancient churches revealed, Jerusalem 1993, 277–82. In contrast, Di Segni stresses that the church was a rural church and that Theodoros was an abbot of a nearby monastery. According to Di Segni, this was a small village church headed by a deacon, and the priest, who conducted prayer services there, arrived from a nearby community or from the bishopric to which the village church belonged: ‘Dated Greek inscriptions from Palestine from the Roman and Byzantine periods’, unpubl. PhD diss. Jerusalem 1997, 678–9.

²¹ Di Segni, ‘Dated Greek inscriptions’, 685.

²² Weitzmann, K., Late antique and early Christian book illumination, New York 1977, 60–1Google Scholar.

²³ See, for instance, Nathan, G., ‘The Vienna Dioscorides’ dedicatio to Anicia Juliana: a usurpation of imperial patronage?’, Byzantina Australiensa xvii (2011), 95–102Google Scholar.

²⁴ Di Segni, ‘Dated Greek inscriptions’, 685.

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²⁷ This study is in preparation. For the beta site see <http://huji.hagitbagno.co.il/users/guest>.

²⁸ There are no saints commemorated on the mosaic flours of the community churches at Suhmata (M. Avi-Yonah, ‘The Byzantine church at Suhmata: the inscriptions’, Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine iii [1934], 92–105), Ḥorbat Bata (Tzaferis, ‘Greek inscriptions from Carmiel’), Anab el Kabir (Magen, Y., ‘A Byzantine church at ‘Anab el-Kabir’, in Carmin, N., Christians and Christianity, IV: Churches and monasteries in Judea, Jerusalem 2012, 331–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar) or at Evron (Tzaferis, V., ‘The Greek inscriptions from the early Christian church at Evron’, Eretz-Israel xix [1987], 36–53Google Scholar).

²⁹ For example, see the church in Anab el-Kabir, where a tomb was hewn in the southern end of the narthex: Magen, ‘A Byzantine Church at ‘Anab el–Kabir’.

³⁰ Like the church at Kissufim: Di Segni, ‘Dated Greek inscriptions’, 678–9.

³¹ This is demonstrated in the inscriptions discovered in the excavated village churches at Suhmata, Horbat Bata, Anab el Kabir and Evron (see n. 28 above). A similar example outside Palestine can be found in the church at Hass in the Idlib region in north-west Syria: Donceel-Voûte, Les Pavements des églises byzantines, 117–19.

³² Tzaferis, ‘Greek inscriptions from Carmiel’, 133–7.

³³ There were no such installations in the sample of village community churches (Bata, Anab el Kabir and Suhmata).

³⁴ Segni, L. Di, ‘Christian presence on Mt. Carmel in late antiquity’, in Dar, Shimon (ed.), Shallale: ancient city of Carmel, Oxford 2009, 217–35Google Scholar.

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³⁶ Y. Peleg, ‘A Byzantine church at Khirbet Ein Dab’, in Carmin, Christians and Christianity, iv. 37–60.

³⁷ Y. Magen, ‘The northern church at Beit Ἀnun’, ibid. iv. 177–84.

³⁸ Thomas, Private religious foundations, 5.

³⁹ Bowes, K., Private worship, public values, and religious change in late antiquity, Cambridge 2008, 69–70, 124Google Scholar.

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⁴¹ Bowes, Private worship, 158.

⁴² Thomas, Private religious foundations, 37–41.

⁴³ An example of a landowner who built a church on his land, although it is difficult to know whether the church was constructed in the built area of the village or nearby, is the church at Khirbet Tawas, where an inscription mentions one Orestes the γεοῦχος (landowner) indicating the latter's involvement in the construction of the church: Leah Di Segni, ‘Greek inscriptions from the church at Khirbet Tawas’, in Carmin, Christians and Christianity, iv. 241–6.

⁴⁴ Thomas, Private religious foundations, 41–2.

⁴⁵ Bar, D., ‘The Christianisation of rural Palestine during late antiquity’, this Journal liv (2003), 410–11Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Gatier, P. L., ‘Villages en proche-orient proto-byzantin (4e–7e siècle): étude régionale’, in King, G. R. D. and Cameron, A. (eds), The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East, ii, Princeton, NJ 1994, 17–48Google Scholar. The rural aristocracy, or the rural leadership (πρωτοκωμῆται), in Byzantine Palestine is mentioned in a number of texts and inscriptions: Di Segni, ‘Dated Greek inscriptions’, 120. Despite the information that we have about city-dwellers who owned extensive estates, and sometimes even entire villages (Ashkenazi, J. and Aviam, M., ‘Monasteries and villages: rural economy and religious interdependency in late antique Palestine’, Vigiliae Christianae lxxi [2017], 130–2Google Scholar), most of the land in the hinterland of the provinces in the Oriens in late antiquity was owned by free farmers, from whom the rural aristocracy emerged: Wickham, C., Framing the early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800, Oxford 2005, 454–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This issue has recently been discussed by I. Taxel, who examined social stratification based on the finds from the excavation at Ḥorvat Zikhrin in western Samaria: ‘Identifying social hierarchy through house planning in the villages of late antique Palestine: the case of Ḥorvat Zikhrin’, Antiquité tardive xxi (2013), 149–66Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Leclerq, H., ‘Periodeute’, Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie xiv (1939), 369–79Google Scholar.

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⁴⁹ Di Segni, ‘Dated Greek inscriptions’, 581–4.

⁵⁰ Avi-Yonah, ‘The Byzantine church at Suhmata’.

⁵¹ An example for such initiative, though in a city, can be found in the private monastery built by the Lady Mary in Scythopolis: G. M. Fitzgerald, A sixth century monastery at Beit-Shan (Scythopolis), Philadelphia 1939.

⁵² Segni, L. Di, ‘The territory of Gaza: notes of historical geography’, in Bitton-Ashkeloni, B. and Kofsky, A. (eds), Christian Gaza in late antiquity, Leiden 2004, 56–8Google Scholar.

⁵³ On church-owned lands in Palestine in general and in the Gaza area in particular see Avi-Yonah, M., ‘The economics of Byzantine Palestine’, Israel Exploration Journal viii (1958), 39–51Google Scholar. A parallel case may be the church dedicated to St Christopher that was discovered by Ernest Renan in the mid-19th century in Kabr Hiram near Tyre. The magnificent mosaic of the church, now on display at the Musée du Louvre, contained a dedication inscription that mentions the chorepiscopos and archdeacon George, the deacon Cyrus and the priest Zachary in whose time the church was built for the farmers and the labourers of an estate – probably an ecclesiastical estate. See Renan, É, Mission de Phénicie, Paris 1864, 613Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Banaji, J., Agrarian change in late antiquity: gold, labour, and aristocratic dominance, Oxford 2001, 98Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Bourdieu, ‘Symbolic capital’, 300.