Modern day Izmir is in fact Biblical Smyrna, where Polycarp was martyred and died in about 155 A.D., and before that we hear about the troubles of the church there in Rev. 2.8-10 speaks already in the 90s A.D. about the suffering of this church which is financially strapped, but spiritually rich.  Today, the most important dig is at the ancient agora, and we will visit it now. Izmir today is a large port city of about 4.5 million people. ... Read more

There are plenty of other things to see in the Istanbul Museum besides sarcophagi.   There are massive column heads, this one is Ionic… There are interesting bas relief on stone, like this one with women riding horses… There are cupid like figures preparing their roosters for a cockfight… We have incredibly decorated columns…. We have grave steles which would have been erected by mausoleums, presumably this sailor died at sea, and perhaps his body was  not recovered so the family... Read more

In the courtyard of the Istanbul Museum there are various things to see, including Aslan!  Yes, the Turkish word for lion is aslan, and C.S. Lewis used it in his Narnia tales. In fact this is a Sam’al lion statue, from 10,000 B.C.  Made of dolemite, it comes from near Gaziantep. One of the major kinds of the some 60,000 holdings this museum has is sarcophagi.  This one is interesting not only for the family scene on its side, but... Read more

The Istanbul Archaeology Museum is a goldmine of antiquities and treasures of various sorts, including things collected over many years by the Ottomans from their Empire. There are two major problems with this museum: 1) it has nowhere near enough space to properly display its holdings (much like the problem at the old Museum of Egyptology in Cairo), and 2) also like the old Cairo museum it is not climate controlled.  Part of the result is that like other such... Read more

Right next to the Blue mosque in the central region of old Istanbul stands a long oblong corridor where the hippodrome once was.  No, a hippodrome is not a race course for hippos!  Hippus is a Latin word for horse, and there were chariot races here. We have learned from studying the original ancient descriptions of this site that there were four bronze horses at one end, which were pilfered from here and taken to Venice where they are stored... Read more

This post will focus on two of the most important churches in Istanbul, neither of which are active churches.  The one of course is Hagia Sophia, the other St. Irene (i.e. Eirene). Hagia Sophia was originally built in 360 A.D. by Emperor Constantius, the son of the famous Constantine.  Almost nothing remains of this original church (but see below) and so the building you now see was built between 532 and 537 A.D.  It did not become a mosque until... Read more

The following post involves shots I took from the top of the beautiful old hotel, the Marmara, which not surprisingly is on the small sea of Marmara, and affords some of the best views of the center of the city and its relationship to the water. In this shot you see across the Marmara sea both the Hagia Sophia on the left and the Blue Mosque on the right. You also see the Black Sea in the distance.  Closer by... Read more

There is a lot to show and tell in regard to the remarkable land we today call Turkey (which actually should be properly pronounced as a three syllable word, Turk-i-ye) and it’s going to take many, many posts to cover all the fertile ground of Turkey, and they will run surely right into 2023.   Furthermore, I’ll be combining insights from the two separate times I spent in Turkey last summer, once in late May, and a second time in late... Read more

There are many good reasons to go to see the man-made marvel that is the harbor at Caesarea Maritima. Along with the Temple in Jerusalem, the Herodium, and Masada, this was the fourth of Herod the Great’s unbelievable building projects and this one had to be the most challenging, carving a harbor out of the ocean where there wasn’t one before. He forgot one thing— the need for fresh water, so the Roman engineers and the legions had to build... Read more

We have done various posts on Capernaum, yet another site maintained by the Franciscans, so we will focus on some of the things seen under and outside the modern boat-shaped church.   First, underneath we have preserved an ancient early church site where a home was converted into a meeting room. We know early Christians met and worshipped here from some of the graffiti, but what we don’t know is whether this goes all the way back to the time of... Read more