{"id":71348,"date":"2025-06-26T01:20:29","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T05:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=71348"},"modified":"2025-06-10T13:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T17:01:20","slug":"how-mobile-were-the-ancients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2025\/06\/26\/how-mobile-were-the-ancients\/","title":{"rendered":"How Mobile were the Ancients?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

There used to be a time when skeptical scholars asserted that it is unlikely Paul travelled as much as Acts suggests he did.\u00a0 Ancient people, it was assumed were too sedentary, and apart from the Roman army, they did not take long trips by land or sea.\u00a0 Unfortunately for this theory, the evidence suggests something else.\u00a0 For one thing, Jews in the \u2018western\u2019 diaspora, were not simply carted off as slaves by Alexander and the Romans. Yes, the Romans did cart off some Jews to work outside of their native land, but any honest assessment of how many Jews there were in Anatolia, and in the great cities of the Empire, including Alexandria, Ephesos, Pergamum, Rome, and many other lesser Roman colony towns shows that many Jews moved of their own accord, partly for business reasons, partly to get away from turmoil, partly because they had relatives elsewhere, and partly to go back to Jerusalem for the festivals. One estimate suggests that the city of Jerusalem went from 25,000 to 250,000 at Passover time.\u00a0 No wonder Roman governors got nervous during such times and brought extra soldiers to Jerusalem from Caesarea Maritima during festivals.<\/p>\n

And then there is the evidence of genuine entrepreneurs\u00a0 like Flavius Zeuxis of Hierapolis.\u00a0 Clearly a wealthy man, he had his mausoleum erected right next to the Frontenus gate into the city.\u00a0 The massive necropolis was not good enough for him.\u00a0 And on his tomb he had inscribed the following: \u201c\u201cFlavius Zeuxis, merchant, who sailed seventy-two trips around Cape Malea to Italy, built this.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Cape Malea is at the southern tip of Greece, and sailing around it was so dangerous that there were proverbial sayings about it\u2013 for instance \u201cLet him who sails round Malea forget his home,\u201d and, \u201cLet him who sails round Malea first make his will.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0No wonder Flavius bragged on his tombstone about how many successful trips he made to Italy on business.\u00a0 No doubt this was exceptional, but the point to be made is that motivated persons, like a successful businessman, or like a man on an evangelist mission to save non-Jews , such at St. Paul, had every reason to travel great distances to fulfill their purposes in life.\u00a0 \u00a0Here below is the original inscription and the sign next to the tomb, but first a shot of the city gate, and the tomb itself.<\/p>\n

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The epitaph is in the small gray rectangle above the door of the tomb. As many have pointed out, this tomb is more elegant and ornate than almost all of the ones in the necropolis.\u00a0 Notice the faux pillars and the ornate lintel on top.\u00a0 If Flavius can make 72 trips to Italy around Greece (and in a boat that was obviously too big to be dragged across the 2 mile isthmus like small boats were in the first century), then there is no reason to think Paul could not have made even dangerous journeys like the one described in the last chapters of Acts, to fulfill his mission, nevermind land journeys all over Turkiye and Greece.\u00a0 Paul was not merely an evangelist, he was a church planter with an urban missionary strategy focusing especially on Roman colony cities like Philippi, Corinth, Psidian Antioch, and Iconium as well as major Greek cities like Ephesos or Thessalonike.<\/p>\n

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There used to be a time when skeptical scholars asserted that it is unlikely Paul travelled as much as Acts suggests he did.\u00a0 Ancient people, it was assumed were too sedentary, and apart from the Roman army, they did not take long trips by land or sea.\u00a0 Unfortunately for this theory, the evidence suggests something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":71354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15566],"class_list":["post-71348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-on-the-road-again"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Mobile were the Ancients?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There used to be a time when skeptical scholars asserted that it is unlikely Paul travelled as much as Acts suggests he did.\u00a0 Ancient people, it was\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, 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