A Via sacra or sacred road went right past this site, and on to Ephesos (which by the way is the Greek name of the city, with Ephesus being the Latin name). Along the road there would be kora and kore statues, idealized representations of males and females, which may be copying some of the similar statues in Egypt. The statue immediately above is of Aphrodite. Generally, the statues in the nude were of gods, goddesses, or idealized human... Read more
Seeing the lay of the land helps to explain the eventual demise of these temples. It was of course partly because in the fourth century A.D. Christianity had mostly won the battle against paganism, and these temples ceased to function, but it was also because in the case of the temples at Claros and the Artemis temple at Ephesos they were on flat ground which could be flooded and become marsh land. Consider the following pictures/ To say the least,... Read more
The story of the excavations at Claros is interesting, and here is a sign explaining it….. The Honorific columns that are part of the temple of Apollo are important. The first is the one honoring Polemos, presumably because he was a patron of the temple of Apollo… Then there is the honor column for Sextus Appuleius… But by far the most imposing of the monuments at Claros are the three 25 foot tall statues (original height), of Apollo, Leto,... Read more
One of the unique features of this site is that it has two adytons, the below ground chamber under the platform of the temple where the prophet received inspiration after drinking some of the river water. When I was there the chambers were filled with water, and the only living things in them were frogs. Here’s a picture…. Another unique feature is the sundial that was found there which has been removed. This is the likely spot where the... Read more
A There were many temples of Apollo, as the chart above shows, and for that matter many temples of Artemis as well, and Claros, near Ephesos has both. In fact it is one of the most ancient Greek prophetic sites anywhere. It is very well worth exploring, and I finally got to go there on June 5th, and the next few posts will be about this important site. Here’s some helpful info from wikipedia accessed June 8th. “The Temple... Read more
Clifton Black, Mark’s Gospel. History, Theology, Interpretation, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2023), pp. 556, $46.00 hardcopy. The blurbs for this book are stellar, and do not involve the usual hyperbole. This is probably the best monograph all around I’ve ever read on the Gospel of Mark, and worth every penny it costs. What we have in this book is the collected essays over various decades of Clifton Black on this earliest of Gospels. Unlike some collections of essays, which are... Read more
Q. The catena of quotations in Rom. 15 includes the exhortation at the very outset to ‘welcome one another’ after the word ‘therefore’ and means surely there is a connection with what came before in Rom. 14. The phrase itself implies a group of people Paul is here addressing, indeed he is referring to two groups, just as we see in the following chapter Rom. 16. In light of the mention of both ‘the circumcision’ and Gentiles in what follows... Read more
Q. You argue that Christ as the telos of the Law in 10.4 means that Christ is the goal and completion of the Law for Gentiles in Christ. This is not Paul’s view. Paul believes the coming of Christ has inaugurated the eschatological and messianic age for Jew and Gentile alike and so the Gospel about this is for everyone. Christ is the goal, fulfillment completion of the law for anyone, but only if they are in Christ. Paul sees... Read more
Q. On p. 126 you suggest that what dikaiosune theou means, at least primarily, is God’s covenant fidelity to Israel. What is odd about this assertion is that not only is Paul mainly addressing Gentiles and talking about right standing or rectification for them, but also interestingly, this is what Brueggemann and others have asserted hesed means in the OT— and they are wrong. The term hesed is even applied to Rahab and Ruth in the OT and has the... Read more
Q. Here are some thoughts about some of the major building blocks of your argument and my issues with how you read the text of Romans. I don’t really think you can get around the universalism of 3.20 ‘by works of the law ‘all flesh’ which includes Jews cannot be set right with God’. This is so for two reasons: 1) Paul believes in the universality of sin and of all being sinners, and that all need Christ, the Jewish... Read more
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