BEN: Let’s talk about apotropaic symbols, symbols meant to either ward off evil spirits and bad luck, or to encourage good luck to happen at a particular venue, or for particular people. Christians will immediately think of the blood on the lintel in the Exodus, or even the hex signs on barns in Amish country, when they think of warding off bad things. To what degree do you think devout Christians continued to carry forward such practices as they became... Read more

BEN: Early on in your book, you have some important things to say about how apologetics can get in the way of careful accurate interpretation of historical data, including the kind of data you are focusing on in The Crosses of Pompeii. Say some more about this. BRUCE: Well, I share one particular concern with those who advocate the consensus view regarding Christianity and Pompeii – that is, archaeology should not be used as a vehicle to bolster religious agendas.... Read more

BEN: One of the topics broached at length in this study is the issue of syncretism. In fact a good deal of what you say reminds me of the interesting study by Ramsay McMullen, one of his last books entitled The Second Church, where, instead of going with the ‘multiple Christianities’ model of Ehrman, he argues instead, and I think rightly for a two levels sort of early Christianity– at the lay level there was considerable syncretism, especially as seen... Read more

BEN: Bruce you’ve now written two books The Cross before Constantine (Fortress, 2015) and The Crosses of Pompeii (Fortress, 2016) about the early Christian use of the cross symbol. What prompted your extensive interest in this particular subject? BRUCE: Having written a book on “Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World” (the subtitle of my book Remember the Poor from 2010), the historian in me wanted to press further into the first-century world in order to expand my reach regarding the... Read more

According to the Bible, two of the rivers that flowed from or by Eden were the Tigris and the Euphrates, both of which are in the very area of eastern Turkey we were visiting….. above are the pictures of the Euphrates today, post the building of the Ataturk dam. And here’s my friend Meltem stepping in the river, followed by a picture of somebody else’s foot in the river… (guess who). Here is the dam that made possible the regulating... Read more

The climb up Mt. Nimrud is breath-taking, quite literally, and for some reason it was harder for me this time than five years ago. Surely it couldn’t be because I’m older now— could it? But even more breath-taking is the view in all directions from the top of Mt. Nimrud. When one approaches this peak from a distance it stands out from the range it is in, not least because of its artificial top, which may or may not contain... Read more

It is hard for me to stress enough how beautiful a country Turkey is. And the Commagene kingdom which includes Arsemeia, Zeugma, and Mt. Nimrud, the mount Olympus of Turkey is some of the most beautiful. Arsemeia is on the back side of Mt. Nimrud and on the way to it. King Antiochus Commagene was a remarkable fellow, not only claiming direct descent from Darius the Persian, but also the inheritor of the Alexandrian legacy, and so like Alexander he... Read more

The phrase ‘built to last’ gets thrown around a lot in our time, but frankly we ain’t got nothing on the ancient Romans. When they built a bridge or a road, or an aqueduct, or a theater or a coliseum, well at least some of it is still around in most cases. As for us, we can’t even make asphalt last three years without cracking and potholes. You get the picture. One such bridge is the bridge pictured above which... Read more

Without question, the mosaic depiction most commented on by scholars, and rightly so is the so-called Zeugma Mona Lisa, or more commonly called the gypsy woman. So celebrated is this mosaic that it garners its own dark room for display. Look for a while into these eyes… what do you see? Many of the other mosaics are less skillfully rendered than this one, but they are still impressive whether depicting a god like Dionysius, or Helios riding his sun chariot... Read more

I flew directly from Istanbul to Gaziantep to meet my friend Meltem Chiftchi (my usual superb guide) and a couple of others to tour the new Zeugma museum there with its fabulous mosaics extracted from Roman villas in Zeugma before that part of the land was submerged by the new Attaturk dam waters. What was Zeugma? Actually it was twin towns on the Euphrates (on which more anon). A zeugma is actually a term for a rhetorical device, but there... Read more