October 2014
Our work in Warm Springs was winding up. In August and September we had been training the local couple who had been hired to take our place and it was time to let them do it on their own for a while. Rather than hide in our room we flew to Istanbul and boarded a cruise ship to visit historic sites in Turkey and Greece.
Ephesus was a 1st century port city but the bay has silted up so you bus up there from the coast. You enter on the uphill side and walk down through the excavated portion of the site and connect with your bus below.
In this photo we are starting our visit.
Walking down hill through the main drag, I guess, toward what was an agora or market place.
This is the Library of Celsus. We believe this facade has been erected as part of a partial restoration of the site.
Here is a tourist near the Great Theater. In Chapter 19 of the Book of Acts we read that Paul spent two years in Ephesus. His teaching lead to conflict with the silversmiths who made statutes of the Goddess Artemis (Diana). Two of Paul’s companions were seized by the crowd in the theater and Paul was urged to not go there.
Who hasn’t seen the photos of Santorini, a city build on the edge of a sunken volcano cauldera. Such beauty but so sad that they have only inches of rainfall and mostly undrinkable well water. Coming from the NW where cool water is plentiful I could not live here.
Athens is a long story that cannot be told here. Our cruise ended here so we stayed three nights to see a greater portion of the ancient city.
The Parthenon, in the photos above and below, is located on the Acropolis Hill. When built around 432 BC I learned that the cost was the equivalent of the cost to build nearly 500 of the most advanced war ships of the era.
Below the Areopagus: a rocky place below the Parthenon seen above and the Agora, marketplace, downhill from this photo spot. Here in Acts 17 we read (see below the photo)
"Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he beheld the city full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with them that met him. . . And they took hold of him, and brought him unto the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new teaching is, which is spoken by thee? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears:we would know therefore what these things mean. (Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.)
And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men of Athens, in all things, I perceive that ye are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you. . . we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man. The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked; but now he commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent . . . Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, We will hear thee concerning this yet again.” Acts 17:16-32 (ASV)
In the photo below you are looking uphill from the Agora toward the Areopagus. You can see all the people. Its importance is shown by the large number of people who want to see what is basically just a rocky bluff without a single structure.
