The Bible and Culture

Ann and I decided to take a day trip on a bus to Saltzburg. Now ordinarily, I'm not enamored of canned bus tours, but this one turned out o.k., and Saltzburg was well worth the journey. The town is named after the fact that it had a salt mine as its major source of employment at one point in its history. Hence--- Salt town became its name, and there is still salt to be had there, as we shall soon see. If you saw the excellent movie Monuments Men, you will remember that the Nazis hid things in … [Read more...]

Vienna is a big city, with a river running through it, a famous river, the Danube (hence the Blue Danube waltz by Strauss). Christa decided to take us outside the city to see it from above, from the last slopes of the Alps which sort of end at Vienna....What you should notice about these pictures is 1) basically the river separates the older city, from some of the newer parts of the city; 2) that the river actually splits in Vienna, and there is a long canal for a good long way; 3) notice … [Read more...]

If you love horses, and you're going to Vienna, then seeing the Lipizzaners is a must. They live in downtown Vienna!! They have their own stables and exhibition hall as an extension of the royal residence buildings right in the heart of the old city. These are no ordinary, or even Kentucky special, horses. These are world famous horses, bred by the Hapsburgs since the 16th century. The name is actually Hungarian, so they are horses from this region, but the school is called the Spanish Riding … [Read more...]

After WWII, there was a lot of reconstruction in Vienna. But the town fathers decided they wanted to rebuild in a classical style. And so, we have an Austrian Parliament building modeled on a building you should recognize---- the Parthenon!!Here's the view from the top of arch looking past Athena.... Interestingly, this building is actually smaller than city hall... which you can see here at the end of the street with the spires....A walk through old Vienna is very pleasant … [Read more...]

One of the regular things one is often told is don't miss the opera house tour, when one comes to Vienna. The opera house had to be reconstructed after WWII because the front one third of it was blown up by an Allied bomb. All is well now however, and the tour is indeed worth it. Opera was out of due season when we were there, so we did not take in a performance.First of all this opera house rivals La Scala in Milan in size, number of balconies, and its degree of ornamentation. As you … [Read more...]

Vienna is a town of endless cafes, restaurants, sweet shops, curiosity shops, and culture of all sorts. For example.....Even Mozart is trying to talk you into eating sweets!! And if you don't Mozart gives you his bitter beer face.I'd be fibbing, ala Pinnochio, if I told you these desserts weren't good....Shoot there is even a Mozart cafe on the back side of the opera house which will serve you these things..and a Viennese coffee....This cafe is also right across … [Read more...]

There was not world enough and time to visit all the significant churches in Vienna, not even all of the ones in the old city. So we had to settle for a few. Let's start with the one our friend and former student Christa Abhar took us to for a delightful Mozart Requiem concert.....The name of this church is Karlskirche, and it was built by Franz Joseph the Emperor, who loved both Greco-Roman architecture and Christian architecture so he decided to mix the two together, hence the weird two … [Read more...]

This shot looks down the wing of the museum from the Temple front back towards the bronze statue of the athlete and gives you some sense of the size of the hall, and the length of the friezes. These remains were transported from Ephesus to Vienna between 1878 and 1906. Our guide stressed it was done legally and with permission of the government at that time (Sultan Abdul Hamid in this case). Whether it was ethical is another matter. But in any case, the Austrians have been doing archeological … [Read more...]

The problem with ginormous museums is it takes several visits to soak it all in. After two or three hours you begin to glaze over and not take in the remarkable things to see. Sometimes you end up dashing around to no good end. In our case, we had to visit the museum several times between sessions at the University of Wien (Vienna) for the SBL International Meeting where I gave a lecture on Jesus the Sage. Wien is the largest university in all of Europe with 92,000 students, and over 8,000 … [Read more...]