Pauls 2nd Mission Journey
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The places along Paul's journey to preach the Gospel to Gentiles and Jews on his 2nd trip.
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Pauls 2nd Mission Journey
- 1. Paul’s Second Missionary Journey Acts 15-18
- 3. Second Missionary Journey Antioch Philippi Tarsus Thessalonica Derbe Beroea Lystra Athens Iconium Corinth Troas Ephesus
- 6. Antioch Split with Barnabas “The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out... He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.” (Acts 15:39-41)
- 8. Cilician Gates Strategic passage through the Taurus mountain range
- 9. Derbe and Lystra Paul and Silas Joined by Timothy
- 10. Derbe and Lystra “Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.” (Acts 16:3)
- 11. Through Asia Minor to Troas
- 12. Through Asia Minor to Troas “They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia…They attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so… they went down to Troas.” (Acts 16:6-8)
- 13. Excavations at Ancient Troy Gateway between East and West
- 14. Troas The “Macedonian Call” “During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” (Acts 16:9)
- 15. Macedonia “We immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia... We set sail from Troas and ... the following day we came to Neapolis.” (Acts 16:10-11)
- 16. Macedonia First of the “We-passages” in Acts (Acts16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16) Does this indicate: • Participation of author? • Use of a first-person source? • Vivid style often used in sea voyage accounts?
- 17. Philippi Paul’s First Church in Europe
- 19. Philippi “… a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.” (Acts 16:12)
- 20. Philippi
- 21. Philippi
- 22. Philippi • Conversion of Lydia.
- 23. Philippi • Conversion of Lydia. • Exorcism of slave-girl.
- 24. Philippi • Conversion of Lydia. • Exorcism of slave-girl. • Conversion of jailer.
- 25. Philippi “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God... Suddenly there was an earthquake… and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened.” (Acts 16:25-26)
- 26. Egnatian Way Major Route between Rome and Eastern Provinces
- 27. Thessalonica Recipient of Paul’s Earliest Letter
- 28. Thessalonica Arch of Galerius Capital of Macedonia (305 - Galerius made it capital of Eastern Empire)
- 29. Thessalonica
- 30. Thessalonica • Preached 3 weeks in synagogue.
- 31. Thessalonica • Preached 3 weeks in synagogue. • Forced out by Jewish opposition.
- 32. Thessalonica • Preached 3 weeks in synagogue. • Forced out by Jewish opposition. • Soon sent earliest preserved letter.
- 33. Beroea
- 34. Beroea • Well received in synagogue. • Forced out by opposition. • Abandons Egnatian Way.
- 35. Athens Center of Classical Greek Culture
- 37. Athens Parthenon “So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons…” (Acts 17:17)
- 38. “Paul… was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” (Acts 17:16)
- 39. Athens Roman Agora “…also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.” (Acts 17:17)
- 40. Athens Colonnade in Stoa of Attalos “Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him…” (Acts 17:18)
- 41. Athens Colonnade in Stoa of Attalos “Some said, ‘What does this babbler want to say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.’” (Acts 17:18)
- 42. Athens Areopagus “So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus.” (Acts 17:19)
- 43. Athens Areopagus Sermon “I found… an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’” (Acts 17:23)
- 44. Corinth • Strategically located • Transportation center • Commercial/ industrial city • 18-month stay dominates Second Journey
- 45. Corinth Strategic Transportation and Commercial Center Diolkos Ships and cargo were hauled across the isthmus over this stone-paved sledway.
- 46. Corinth Modern Canal • Begun by Nero in 67 with Jewish Prisoner of War labor. • Completed by French in 1881-93.
- 47. Corinth: Road from Port, Forum, and Acrocorinth “I came to Corinth in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” (1 Cor. 2:3)
- 48. Corinth Temple of Apollo Cosmopolitan Syncretistic Notoriously immoral
- 49. Corinth Votive Offerings to Asklepios Many cultures and religions mingled.
- 50. Corinth
- 51. Corinth • Worked as tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla.
- 52. Corinth • Worked as tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla. • Preached in synagogue until forced out.
- 53. Corinth • Worked as tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla. • Preached in synagogue until forced out. • Stayed 18 months.
- 54. Corinth • Worked as tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla. • Preached in synagogue until forced out. • Stayed 18 months. • Wrote 1 Thessalonians.
- 55. Corinth • Worked as tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla. • Preached in synagogue until forced out. • Stayed 18 months. • Wrote 1 Thessalonians. • Appeared before proconsul Gallio (51-52 A.D.).
- 56. Corinth Erastus Inscription “Erastus” funded this pavement in exchange for office of Commissioner of Public Works. Paul, writing from Corinth says, “Erastus, the city treasurer, greets you” (Rom. 16:23; cf. Acts 19:22; 2 Tim. 4:20). Is this the same Erastus?
- 57. Corinth Gallio’s Bema “But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal (bema).” (Acts 18:12)
- 58. Ephesus • Left Aquila and Priscilla in Ephesus. • Promised to return.
- 59. Return to Antioch • Sails for Caesarea • Greeted Jerusalem Church. • After some time in Antioch, started out again.
Notes de l'éditeur
- The jagged peaks of the Taurus Mountains in Cilicia presented only the first—and perhaps the least—of the many challenges Paul was to face on his second missionary journey. Starting out ostensibly only to revisit churches he and Barnabas had founded on their earlier journey into Asia Minor, on this trip Paul proceeded on his own initiative, to carry his new “gospel” across the Aegean Sea to Greece.Rising to great heights (sometimes more than 10,000 feet), these forbidding, snowcapped, sawtooth ridges in present-day southeast Turkey had for centuries effectively insulated the steppes of Asia Minor to the west from the regions of ancient Syria and Phoenicia to the east. But two great empire builders had successfully penetrated the narrow passes through these mountains—Cyrus the Persian and Alexander of Macedon. Paul certainly must have given some thought to the conquerors who had marched their armies through these chilly heights before him on their quest for worldly kingdoms as he began a journey on which he would seek to conquer a whole new continent for Christ.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- The main pass through the Taurus range is known as; the “Cilician Gates.” This view shows the pass from the north side. The modern road to the right of the stream follows the course of the ancient path, squeezed here between towering walls of rock.Accompanied by his new traveling companion, Silas, Paul undoubtedly went by way of his hometown, Tarsus (NT108: Tarsus, “Cleopatra’s Gate”), and then probably joined a traders’ caravan to go north through this pass (Acts 15:36–41).Paul revisited the churches at Derbe and Lystra in Galatia, but was prevented from returning to the other churches already established in Asia Minor for reasons not clearly indicated (Acts 16:1–8). We also are not told just what caused him to press farther west than he had previously gone—until he reached Troas on the Aegean coast. Perhaps he was drawn there by a conviction already taking shape in his mind that his mission was to carry his gospel to the western world beyond.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- At Roman Troas, Paul reached the western limits of Asia. On this hill 10 miles north of Troas, above the coastal plain lay buried ruins of a more ancient Troy, where east and west had met in a dramatic encounter centuries earlier. As a boy growing up in Tarsus, Paul would have heard many times how Greeks and Trojans had fought here for ten long years in the war immortalized in Homer’s epic, The Iliad. Excavations by Schliemann and Dorpfeld a century ago showed that the ruins on this hill belonged to the successive ancient citadels of Troy, which guarded the nearby entrance to the Hellespont for over 2,000 years. More recent investigations in 1932–38 by Carl Blegen identified these fortifications as the ones fought over in the celebrated Trojan War.This view shows the walls and gateway of Level VI at Troy, mused in the 13th century B.C.E. Level VIIa—probably Priam’s Troy. Beyond the defense tower in the left foreground can be seen an entrance path, which runs parallel to the city wall and between the city and the protruding salient wall at the right edge of the photo. The path then takes a sharp left turn to go through the city gate. This was a characteristic gateway arrangement at the end of the Bronze Age.Ancient Troy, even in ruins, represented a symbolic gateway linking east and west, a threshold crossed by several would-be world conquerors before Paul’s time. In 480 B.C.E. the Persian emperor Xerxes stopped here to sacrifice 1,000 buffs at Athena’s temple just before sending his armies across the nearby Hellespont in his unsuccessful attempt to conquer Greece. Alexander stopped here in the next century to make sacrifices to the same goddess as he crossed from Europe into Asia on his crusade to subdue the eastern world. Paul may have seen the temple later erected on the site to commemorate that event.In Paul’s day, the seaport of Alexandria Troas on the coastal plain provided a practical gateway connecting the western and eastern worlds. From there Paul was only a day’s sail from Europe.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- Paul’s short sail from Troas to this harbor on the coast of Macedonia in northern Greece marked a major new development in his missionary travels and in the direction that the Christian movement was to take in the years to follow.According to Acts 16:9, at Troas Paul had a night vision of a man from Macedonia calling to him to come over and help his people. The very next verse begins one of several sections of Acts written in the first person plural; scholars have speculated that Luke, the author of Luke—Acts, may be drawing upon his own travel diary in these sections, and that he may be the “man from Macedonia” who was responsible for convincing Paul to board ship at Troas to travel westward. When Paul did so, he entered a crucial new phase in his missionary activity. From this point on he devoted his energies to planting the seed of his new gospel on purely Gentile soil and to founding churches with predominantly Gentile membership. And from here on he acted without permission from the church at Antioch or the apostles in Jerusalem; he was now an ambassador for Christ without portfolio from any human authority (see Galatians 1:1).Kavalla is the modern name of this harbor city of ancient Neapolis, where Paul first set foot in Macedonia (Acts 16:11). The small natural harbor has made this an attractive seaport since the Classical Age. The fortifications on the hill in the background at right have guarded the harbor during most periods of its use. The Greek flag now flies at the top of the hill above a citadel with towers and crenellated walls dating from the Byzantine age.(The smaller fishing boats in the foreground have fights for attracting fish at night. Nets are draped from the masts of the boats farther along the harborfront.)The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- Paul immediately headed for Philippi, described in Acts 16:12 as “the leading city of the district of Macedonia, and a Roman colony.” In doing so, he was following the same pattern he and Barnabas had set during their first missionary journey, concentrating his time and energies on the main city of a region.Archaeological excavations have confirmed that here at Philippi, where only a small town had existed in earlier periods, the Romans created a major administrative center. The reason for the site’s importance was that, at this point, the Romans’ main east-west highway, the Via Egnatia, was constricted between the hill of the earlier settlement on the right of this aerial view and an adjacent marsh to the left. Indeed, the present road, seen here, has no choice at this point but to follow the same line as the ancient Roman highway. Doing so, it cuts directly through the middle of the modern excavations. To the right of the road in the foreground can be seen the theater and a large later Christian church. To the left of the road is the Roman-period forum and another major church; these two features are shown in NT126: Philippi, Forum and Christian Basilica.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- This view is across the Roman forum to the remains of a 6th-century C.E. basilica church, one of three large churches uncovered at the site. These churches provide visible reminders of the Christian congregation that Paul founded at Philippi and to which he later wrote the warmest of his letters preserved in the New Testament. Looking from the forum to the church we also are reminded of the growing confrontation with the Roman authorities that Paul’s missionary activity was to generate on this second journey. According to Acts 16:16–24, Paul was dragged before the Roman magistrates in Philippi by the owners of a slave girl he had converted. It was perhaps in this forum that Paul and Silas were flogged before being thrown into prison by Roman judges who cared little about Paul’s religion, but who dealt harshly with anyone they regarded as a disturber of the peace.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- The small crypt beneath this structure has been suggested as the cell in which Paul and Silas were imprisoned at Philippi. As reported in Acts 16:25–40, an earthquake at midnight sprang open the prison doors and broke the prisoners’ shackles. Paul and Silas refused to take the opportunity to escape, however. Instead, they spent the remainder of the night converting the prison guard and his family. In the morning, when the Roman magistrates learned what Paul and Silas had done (and discovered, moreover, that they were Roman citizens), the magistrates apologized to them. Still anxious to keep the peace, however, they asked the Christian missionaries to leave the city.The crypt beneath this doorway was originally a cistern. The suggestion that it served as Paul and Silas’s prison cell is based on its location next to the forum, where prisons normally were located (according to the Roman author Vitruvius) and because paintings were on the walls of the chamber depicting Paul and Silas’s imprisonment and their other adventures in Philippi. The wall paintings date from the 7th century C.E., after the room apparently had been turned into a Christian shrine.On the hill in the background is the acropolis of the ancient city. Excavations have uncovered the theater, remodeled in the Roman period, and a sanctuary to Egyptian gods—a common feature of Roman cities on major trade routes of the empire.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- Paul and Silas traveled west from Philippi along the Via Egnatia, the highway that stretched across Macedonia and Thrace, all the way from the Adriatic coast to Byzantium, to link Rome to its eastern provinces. This well-preserved portion near Philippi shows the typically level, gently curving and well-paved character of roads constructed by the Romans to provide quick communication by chariot between outposts of their empire.Roads such as this one constructed in the 2nd century B.C.E. helped to create and maintain the “Pax Romania” (Roman Peace). They also created a new condition in the ancient world that Paul soon learned to exploit to great advantage. Ideas as well as people, messages as well as missionaries, could now travel quickly and safely between the Roman provinces along these roads. As Paul now pressed on to take his gospel to still another district and another city, he felt a growing concern to keep in touch with those newly founded congregations he had been forced to leave behind so abruptly. In the years that followed he would make increasing use of these roads to carry letters of encouragement and admonition back to churches founded in Galatia during his first missionary journey and to the church he had just begun at Philippi.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- After leaving Philippi, Paul now headed straight for Thessalonnica, the capital city of the Roman province of Macedonia (Acts 17:1–9). (The city’s name was shortened to Salonika in the Middle Ages; the modern Greek city over its ruins is named Thessaloniki.)Thessalonica stood at a major crossroads of the empire. Its strategic position is symbolized by this arch, erected after the Emperor Galerius made the city his capital for the eastern half of the empire in 305 C.E. The arch straddled the Egnatian Way at its midpoint. (The main east-west street of modern Thessaloniki that passes next to this arch is still called the Odos Egnatia, although some scholars now think that recently discovered Roman milestones indicate the ancient road passed somewhat north of this spot.)West from here (symbolically, if not exactly) the road led to the Adriatic Sea and on to Rome; to the east the road led to Byzantium and on to Asia. North from Thessaloniki a major pass leads through the mountains to the regions of the Danube; its route is still marked by a modern auto road and railway line, which fink northern Greece to Yugoslavia and to Europe beyond. To the south, from the harbor only a few hundred feet away from the Arch of Galerius, ships continue to carry goods between those northern regions and ports wound the Mediterranean. As it appears today, so was Thessalonica in Roman times, a bustling cosmopolitan center. The Greek geographer Strabo, writing a century before Paul, described the city as “populous, easy-going, open to everything new—good or bad.”The remains of Galerius’s Arch seen here constitute only one portion of a tetrapylon, four great connected arches thrown over the intersecting roadways, along with one of the two smaller arches for pedestrians that once flanked the central span on either side. The friezes decorating this central arch celebrate Galerius’s victories and show the emperor making a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Zeus.According to the pattern established in his first missionary journey, Paul went directly to the synagogue of the Jewish community in Thessalonica and began to proclaim his new gospel, thus giving the Jews of the city the first opportunity to accept Jesus as Messiah. However, as had been happening in the other cities Paul had already visited, more Gentiles than Jews responded to Paul’s message, and this in turn alienated many of the Jews (Acts 17:4).Most probably, Paul would have liked to stay in this strategic city for a while in order to be certain that a strong and enduring church was founded, which could then continue to witness to the many travelers who passed through here every day. After only three weeks, however, some of Paul’s new converts were hauled before the Roman authorities, this time by a mob raised by Jewish leaders who charged that “these men who have turned the world upside down” were acting against Caesar’s decrees and were putting Jesus forward as a new king (Acts 17:6–9). Paul was again forced to leave town.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- Paul certainly would have climbed at least once to the Acropolis (literally the “high city) of Athens to view the crowded buildings on its summit.In the upper center of this photo (taken from the west), we see the Acropolis, topped by its Classical monuments, rising some 300 feet from the surrounding Attic plain. In the foreground, the lesser hill of the Pnyx is accented by the silver dome of a modern observatory. Directly above the dome can be seen a small gray knob of bedrock the Athenians called the Areopagus, “hill of Ares” (see NT137: Athens, Areopagus). The agora lies to the left of the photo.The steep sides of the Acropolis are bedrock outcroppings that provided defensive protection for the earliest inhabitants of Athens. In the 14th century B.C.E. thick stone walls had turned the rock into a formidable citadel on which the Mycenaean king of Athens built his palace. The hill remained a royal fortress until the end of the 6th century B.C.E. when, with the expulsion of the last of the tyrants and the establishment of democracy, this became the public shrine area of the city, devoted exclusively to temples, altars and cult buildings of the Greek gods, particularly Athena, the patron goddess of Athens.NT135: Athens, Aerial View of Acropolis will provide a closer view of the Acropolis buildings from the air and from the opposite side.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- This aerial view from the east shows the four ancient structures that remain on the Acropolis, all of them from the 5th century B.C.E. and all of them of gleaming white marble from nearby Mount Pentelli. The Parthenon, dominating the south (left) side of the summit, was the city’s foremost shrine to Athena. In the Erechtheum opposite it on the north (right) side, Athena was also worshipped, along with Poseidon and Zeus. At the far end of the hill can be seen the Propylaea, the ceremonial entranceway to the Acropolis. Just beyond to the left is still another temple to Athena, a small shrine to the goddess as Nike (Victory). The roof in the foreground is of the modern museum.Just beyond the Propylaea at the top of the photo is the bare gray hill of the Areopagus. The agora lies at the foot of the slope beyond it, off the upper right corner of the photo.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- The Parthenon has been the most impressive building on the Acropolis ever since its construction in the 5th century B.C.E. Built in only nine years, the temple provided a glorious replacement for the temple of Athena that had been recently destroyed by the Persians. It thus celebrated Athens’ success in driving the Persians out of Greece and its subsequent rise to power as head of the Delian League. Indeed, the temple’s construction was paid for with funds appropriated from Athens’ allies in the Delian League, which Athens sought to convert into an empire.Athens’ imperial pretensions crumbled less than a generation after the temple was built, however, and Paul no doubt saw the Parthenon as a monument to the vain pretensions of human kingdoms. He certainly reacted to the monumental ivory and gold statue of Athena inside this temple as he did to the many other images of gods he found crowded around him in Athens. To Paul they were blasphemous violations of God’s law and offensive symbols of false worship. In the sermon he delivered nearby at the Areopagus (see NT137: Athens, Areopagus), he told the Athenians, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being lord of heaven and earth, does not five in shrines made by man, … we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man” (Acts 7:24–29).Several centuries after Paul, this temple to Athena the virgin goddess (Greek: parthenos) was to be transformed into a Christian church and eventually rededicated to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- By Paul’s time, Athens had acquired a Roman agora, seen in the foreground of this photo, near the earlier Classical agora partially visible in the background. Recent excavations by the American School of Classical Studies have uncovered the broad paved street that connected the two market areas, visible directly to the right of the yellow building in the center of the picture.Paul might have admired the aesthetic beauty of the Tower of the Winds in the near foreground, if not the mythological subject matter of its friezes. Built in the 1st century B.C.E. as a combination sundial, waterclock and weathervane, each face marks a cardinal point of the compass and displays a personification of the wind that blows from that direction.The mosque at the right side of the Roman agora near the edge of the photo probably is the Fetihie Cami, “Victory Mosque,” erected to celebrate the Ottoman Turks’ 15th-century conquest of Constantinople and of the Greek territories. It is now an archaeological storehouse.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- The doorways of one-room shops can be seen at the left side of this photo, lining the back wall of the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos. The long double colonnade stretching in front of the shop entrances provided shade from the summer sun and shelter from the winter showers—for shoppers; and for citizens discussing new philosophies and religions. One of the “schools” of philosophers that sprang up in Athens, the Stoics, even derived their name from their use of another stoa in the agora as a gathering place. We are told specifically that Paul met here with “some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” (Acts 17:18).The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- The doorways of one-room shops can be seen at the left side of this photo, lining the back wall of the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos. The long double colonnade stretching in front of the shop entrances provided shade from the summer sun and shelter from the winter showers—for shoppers; and for citizens discussing new philosophies and religions. One of the “schools” of philosophers that sprang up in Athens, the Stoics, even derived their name from their use of another stoa in the agora as a gathering place. We are told specifically that Paul met here with “some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” (Acts 17:18).The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- While he was in Athens, Paul preached a sermon at this hill called the Areopagus, on the slope ascending from the agora to the Acropolis (Acts 17:19–31).The name Areopagus generally has been understood to mean “hill of Ares” and may derive from the ancient legend that Ares, the Greek god of war, was tried here by the other gods on a charge of murder. That tradition may also explain why Athens’ oldest court was established here. The court met in a building no longer preserved that may have stood on the summit of the hill where there are some foundation cuttings in the bedrock, or nearby at its base.Paul was brought before the Court of the Areopagus by some of the philosophers with whom he had been talking in the agora, and was invited to explain his “new teaching.” The text of Paul’s sermon, as reported in Acts, is inscribed on a metal plaque visible on the side of the hill, just above the trees at the middle of the lower edge of this photo. At the base of the hill, around the corner to the right, excavations have uncovered the foundations of a later Christian church dedicated to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, a member of the court whom Paul converted (Acts 17:34) and who subsequently became the patron saint of Athens. Some scholars think that the church foundations may locate the exact spot where Paul preached to the court.Paul began his sermon at the Areopagus by saying he had noticed among the many shrines in Athens an altar inscribed “to an unknown god” (Acts 17:23). No such altar has been uncovered at Athens, but the Roman traveler Pausanius and others made reference to Greek worship of “unknown gods,” and an altar “to unknown gods” has been discovered at Pergamum on the coast of Asia Minor.Paul did not stay in Athens long enough to found a church. Nor, to our knowledge, did he ever write a letter to the Athenians. The only mention he made of the city in my letter was the wistful comment that he was alone there (1 Thessalonians 3:1). Paul left Athens without even waiting for his friends to catch up with him (Acts 18:1, 5). Probably he was impatient to press on to Corinth.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- While he was in Athens, Paul preached a sermon at this hill called the Areopagus, on the slope ascending from the agora to the Acropolis (Acts 17:19–31).The name Areopagus generally has been understood to mean “hill of Ares” and may derive from the ancient legend that Ares, the Greek god of war, was tried here by the other gods on a charge of murder. That tradition may also explain why Athens’ oldest court was established here. The court met in a building no longer preserved that may have stood on the summit of the hill where there are some foundation cuttings in the bedrock, or nearby at its base.Paul was brought before the Court of the Areopagus by some of the philosophers with whom he had been talking in the agora, and was invited to explain his “new teaching.” The text of Paul’s sermon, as reported in Acts, is inscribed on a metal plaque visible on the side of the hill, just above the trees at the middle of the lower edge of this photo. At the base of the hill, around the corner to the right, excavations have uncovered the foundations of a later Christian church dedicated to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, a member of the court whom Paul converted (Acts 17:34) and who subsequently became the patron saint of Athens. Some scholars think that the church foundations may locate the exact spot where Paul preached to the court.Paul began his sermon at the Areopagus by saying he had noticed among the many shrines in Athens an altar inscribed “to an unknown god” (Acts 17:23). No such altar has been uncovered at Athens, but the Roman traveler Pausanius and others made reference to Greek worship of “unknown gods,” and an altar “to unknown gods” has been discovered at Pergamum on the coast of Asia Minor.Paul did not stay in Athens long enough to found a church. Nor, to our knowledge, did he ever write a letter to the Athenians. The only mention he made of the city in my letter was the wistful comment that he was alone there (1 Thessalonians 3:1). Paul left Athens without even waiting for his friends to catch up with him (Acts 18:1, 5). Probably he was impatient to press on to Corinth.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- In Paul’s day a stone-paved sledway, called the Diolkos, was used to haul ships and their cargoes across the isthmus. At both ends of the road the pavement continued down beneath the waterline, allowing the shallow-draft ships to be floated onto and off of the sleds. The sleds were then pulled out of the water and across the isthmus by mule-power.This view of the Diolkos is near the western end, looking beyond to the Gulf of Corinth (and the mountains along its northern coast sheltering the oracle shrine of Apollo at Delphi). At the right can be seen the western outlet of the modern canal. The stone pavement of the Diolkos clearly shows the ruts formed by sled runners over centuries of use. Corinth, of course, controlled the Diolkos traffic. Moreover, since ship crews and passengers using this route had to leave their vessels temporarily at Corinth anyway, they had less reason to make an additional port-call at Athens’ harbor on the Piraeus. Thus, many more travelers of the Roman era passed through Corinth than through Athens.Paul quickly realized that at Corinth he could spread the Christian gospel faster by remaining stationary himself. The converts he made here would carry the Christian gospel with them to the far corners of the Mediterranean world. At Corinth, Paul also discovered that he could be in frequent and efficient communication with the churches he had already founded. It was apparently at Corinth that Paul began the letter-writing activity that was to become his greatest contribution to the Christian movement in the years to follow. The earliest of Paul’s letters preserved for us—and thus the oldest document in the New Testament—was written from here to the church he had founded in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians).The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- A fishing boat is seen here dwarfed by the massive, gradually tapered walls of the canal that now cuts through the isthmus of Corinth. No canal existed in Paul’s day, although the idea for one had emerged as early as the Greek Archaic age. Periander, who ruled Corinth at the end of the 7th century B.C.E., is given credit for first conceiving the plan for a canal here. Alexander the Great considered a canal, and the Emperor Nero revived the idea. In 67 C.E., 15 years after Paul came here, Nero arrived in Corinth to turn over a ceremonial spadeful of soil in a groundbreaking for a canal to be dug by 6,000 Jewish prisoners brought here from Judea by Vespasian after the outbreak of the Jewish Revolt. The project was abandoned, however, and a canal was finally completed by French engineers in 1881–93.The canal dramatizes, however, how narrow and low the land strip is that separates the western and eastern waters. At this point the isthmus is only four miles wide.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- The Romans had shown their appreciation of Corinth’s strategic position, first by destroying it in 146 B.C.E. when it posed a threat to Rome’s expansion eastward, and then by rebuilding the city in 44 B.C.E. and establishing it as capital of the Roman province of Achaia. In the present century, American excavators have been uncovering the center of the bustling city the Romans rebuilt. This is the view that would have greeted Paul as he arrived in Corinth. In the foreground we see the end of the Lechaion Road, the broad, marble-paved street that connected Corinth with its nearby port on the Corinthian Gulf. Shops and public buildings fine both sides of the processionway as it approaches the Roman forum just beyond the ceremonial stain to be seen at the end of the street. Against the sky in the background can be seen the hill of Acrocorinth. The walls now visible at its top date to the Byzantine and medieval periods, but this easily defensible height had provided protection for the city since its earliest settlement.A famous temple to Aphrodite had stood on the summit of Acrocorinth in the Classical Age, near the left end of the peak as seen here. It had fallen into ruins by Paul’s time, but successors to its 1,000 cult prostitutes continued to ply their profession in the city below. Many of them were no doubt housed in the lofts above the 33 wine shops uncovered in the modern excavations. Corinth was a city catering to sailors and traveling salesmen. Even by the Classical Age it had earned an unsavory reputation for its libertine atmosphere; to call someone “a Corinthian lass” was to impugn her morals. It may well be that one of Corinth’s attractions for Paul was precisely this reputation of immorality. Paul still had to convince some of the Apostle-leaders of the church in Jerusalem that Christian converts did not need to undergo circumcision and accept obedience to the laws of the Jewish Torah (see Galatians 2–3). If Paul could establish in this city a church composed of Christian Gentiles who could commend themselves to the Jerusalem leadership by their high moral standards without the imposed discipline of Torah observance, they would stand as living witness to his new convictions. This would explain the special fervor with which he later wrote back to the Christians at Corinth concerning lapses in their moral conduct that had been reported to him (see I Corinthians 5–6).The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- The Temple of Apollo at Corinth was 700 years old by Paul’s time. On the hill directly overlooking the Roman city’s main forum, its sturdy Doric columns served as a dramatic reminder of Corinth’s ancient grandeur. But the temple was already in ruins; to Paul it would have served merely as a sermon illustration of the impotence of the Greeks’ “pagan” gods.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- Corinth contained a shrine to Asklepios, an ancient Greek who had been deified because of his legendary powers of heating. Crowded into this back room of the small museum at Corinth are hundreds of terra-cotta votive offerings presented to Asklepios at Corinth by pilgrims who sought a cure or who wanted to thank the god for a healing they attributed to him. Among these votives can be seen limbs, hands, feet, breasts and genitals. In a time-honored tradition, suppliants to the healing god had dedicated replicas of the particular parts of the body in which they were afflicted.The Asklepieion at Corinth was another feature that attracted visitors to the city. Paul may also have felt that its presence here provided him with a special opportunity to proclaim Christ as the one who brings true healing to the soul, rather than merely to the body.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- This inscribed paving block next to the theater at Corinth indicates that Erastus provided the pavement at his own expense in return for receiving the position of Commissioner of Public Works. This is probably the same Erastus who was Paul’s disciple and co-worker (Romans 16:23; Acts 19:22).The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society
- Along the south side of the forum at Corinth stands the bema (platform) on which Roman officials stood when making public appearances. Acts 18:12–17 reports that, while in Corinth, Paul was hauled before the Roman proconsul Gallic, by irate members of the synagogue. Since the American excavations uncovered remains of a later church built over the ruins of this structure, some scholars have concluded that this is the spot where that episode occurred.An inscription at the shrine of Delphi provides us with the dates of Gallio’s proconsulship at Corinth. The inscription reproduces a letter of Emperor Claudius that refers to Gallic, as proconsul of Achaia in 51–52 C.E. We can thus pinpoint Paul’s time at Corinth to that period, and we can date the rest of his ministry with a fair degree of certainty by calculating backwards and forwards from this secure date provided by archaeology.When Paul finally left Corinth after 18 months, he probably intended to return after only a brief journey to Jerusalem to confer with church leaders. Setting sail from Cenchreae, a small harbor on the eastern shore of the Corinthian isthmus, his ship took a direct route across the Aegean Sea to Ephesus (Acts 18:18–20). Paul was invited to stay there; while he would not give up his plan to travel on to Jerusalem, he promised his new friends in the Ephesus synagogue that, if possible, he would return.The Biblical World in Pictures;BAS Biblical World in Pictures. 2002;2002. Biblical Archaeology Society