It is certain that Edessa [Urfa] had a church very early, and the city chronicle reports that it was destroyed by the great flood of 201. Thus the church of Edessa would have been the first historically verified Christian house of worship, even earlier than the chapel of the border city of Dura Europas, on the Euphrates, which was built between 232 and 256.
Baumer, The Church of the East, p. 16
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