Another Christian family in Rome has left a relic of its house as a centre of worship in the church of San Clemente. This now consists of three structures, one above the other ; the highest, now level with the ground, is mediaeval, but con- tains the Byzantine furniture (ambones, rails, etc.) ; the middle one is of the 4th cent. (?) and used to contain this furniture ; while underneath is the old house, now inaccessible through the invasion of water. This last building, there is little reason to doubt, was the meeting-place of the Christians of the 1st cent., and though now far beneath the sur- face, was once level with the ground. Local tradi- tion makes it the house of St. Clement the Bishop, and it is highly probable that he worshipped in it ; but it is not unlikely, as Lightfoot suggests, that it was the house of Flavins Clemens the Consul, whom tradition declares to have been buried in it, and who was perhaps 'patron' to his namesake
the Bishop (Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, pt. i. : ' Clement/ 1890, vol. i. p. 91 ff. ). The Consul was a near relative of the Emperor Domitian, and was put to death by him, perhaps because he was a Christian ; at least his Avife Domitilla was a be- liever (ib. p. 53), and it is quite probable that their household became a Christian e/cKXijcria.
A further illustration of the ' family ' as a Chris- tian community is furnished by the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in Rome. The present church is built above the house of the martyrs so named, who perished, according to tradition, in the reign of Julian the Apostate. The house was probably used at that time for Avorship.
On the other hand, Ro 16^* does not refer to a numberof ^/c/cXTjo-i'atatEphesus. St. Paul here speaks on behalf of the whole of the communities of Chris- tians which he had evangelized, or perhaps of all throughout the world, as in 16*, 1 Co 7'^. It should be noticed that the word iKKk-qaia is not used for a church building till a much later date.
In two places we read of private prayers at fixed hours in houses: Ac 10* (Peter at the sixth hour, on the flat roof : see HOUSE) and 10^'- ^ (Cornelius keeping the ninth hour of prayer in his house). But these were private prayers, not family worship. Before public daily worship became generally customary, in the 4th cent, after the cessation of persecution, these and other hours of prayer, taken over from the Jews, were frequently observed by Christians, apparently in their families. See the present writer's Ancient Church Orders, 1910, p. 59 tf.
LiTBRATURB. — This is given in the course of the art., but special reference is due to the Prolegomena to J. B. Lightfoot's Colossians and Philemon (1900 ed.) and Philippians (1903 ed.). For other aspects of the subject see artt. on ' Family ' by W. H. Bennett in HDB and E. G. Romanes in SDB (these both deal almost exclusively with the OT) ; by C. T. Dimont in DCG (especially for the teaching: of our Lord in the Gospels) and J. Strahan in ERE (' Family, Biblical and Christian,' dealing chiefly with the OT). There are several articles on the ' Family ' in ERE from the point of view of other nations of the world- A. J. MACLEAN.
FAMINE. — ' Famine ' is used throughout in the RV to translate Xi/i6y, having taken the place of 'dearth' in Ac 7" and 11^ (AV). The remaining passages are Ro 8'', Rev 6^ 18*. The most im- portant of these references is Ac 1 1^, where fMeydXriv, followed by i?Tij, the reading of the best MSS, pro- claims the noun as feminine. In Lk 15^^ it is of the same gender, but in i^ it is masculine. In Josephus, Ant. XX. v. 2, t6v iiiyav \ifj.6v appears.
We deal first with the great famine which seems to be common to Josephus and the Book of Acts. As it is spoken of in both places in the same terms, so both passages are taken to refer to one and the same event. Uncertainty attaches to the scope of the famine, which, according to St. Luke, was spread over the whole world as then known, but which, according to Josephus, was restricted to Judsea. Schurer (GJV^ i. [1901] 567) is inclined to regard the statement of Acts as unhistorical generalization, and for this he compares Lk 2^ The Bible historian is defended by W. M. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveller, 1895, p. 49): 'he merely says that famine occurred over the whole (civilized) world in the time of Claudius : of course the year varied in ditferent lands.' As a matter of fact, local famines did frequently occur during that reign (see Schiirer, loc. cit., and HDB, s.v. 'Claudius') in lands other than Judaea. The date of the Judsean famine may be approximately determined by Herod Agrippa I.'s death, which took place in A.D. 44 (cf. Ac U^-^o and 12^-^-^). The dates assigned by chronologists range from that year up to A.D. 46 (see HDB v. 480, and Ramsaj% op. cit. 68, 254). For the actual situation in Palestine compare Josephus, Ant. III. xv. 3, XX.
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FAST, THE