The Home Stretch

June 5 - We have had a steady barrage of company the last six weeks.  Our daughter Michelle, her husband Mike, and Kaitlyn Weiweck flew in on April 29.  One of Denita's co-workers at Fred Meyer also came while she was back in the States.  The five of us - Mike, Michelle, Kaitlyn, myself, and Judy Lawson - took a day ferry over to Patmos.  We split up, and they took a taxi up the hill to the castle monastery and did the usual touristy stuff.  I hired another taxi, and over the course of three hours explored every nook and cranny on the island.

Denita flew back to Samos on May 8, and Judy left the following day, so they had one evening together.  The next day, we all flew to Cappadocia.  We had six glorious days in the center of Anatolia.  Kaitlyn left us and flew to Israel.  The rest of us trekked across half of Turkey by car, stopping to see Konya, Antioch of Pisidia, the pools of Pamukkale, the Colossian mound and the sparkling ruins of Laodicea.

After getting home, Denita's mother Marlys Enge, and her great niece Anna Rutherford, came on May 25, and our son Brian and Tiffany Anderson a couple of days later.  We made a quick trip across the waters to Turkey so everyone could see Ephesus.  We spent the night on the shores of Lake Bafa, which was like stepping back 200 years in time.  It was a primitive village with cows in the road, chickens everywhere, and Turkish women in their traditional pajama-like pantaloons.  The kids love it!  The next day we visited the ancient cities of Didymus, Melitus, and Priene in rapid succession.  Mike and Michelle left the following morning and drove down the coast to scuba dive.  The rest of us returned to Samos, where we learned how to cram six people into one tiny car for meetings and beach days.  Brian and Tiffany flew out the morning of June 4th, and Marlys and Anna took off later that night.  

Whew!

It looks like we will have a quiet week or so until we exit.  There is a couple coming to the Gospel meeting here, and we have been invited to their house tomorrow night along with Vasili, Irene, and the workers.  We leave Samos on June 14, immediately after Sunday morning meeting.  I am not looking forward to our last days as our hearts have become knit together in love.

We plan to fly to Munich, Germany, rent a car, and take the Romantic Highway north from the Alps.  We will start at the castle of Mad Ludwig - Neuschwanstein - and take in the medieval walled towns of Dinkelsbuhl and Rothenburg.  We will stay with my German buddy Roland and his family for a day near Hamburg, and then it's off to LA to see the grandkids and home!

Anna Economides and Anna Rutherford, 

an old Greek sister and a worker-to-be

Mike Robinson and Brian Oakes,

holding up the Temple at Didymus

The pillars at Didymus are massive

I got to the Ephesus Museum for the first time, 

and met Dianna of the Ephesians.  In my

humble opinion, she was not all that great!

Mike and Michelle above the amphitheater at Melitus

Dinner at Lake Bafa in Turkey.  Notice the cute

little island in the background

The cascading pools of Pamukkale.

The ladies at Kokkari

Catal Huyuk

May 17 - We left Goreme this morning and headed west toward Konya.  This was the Iconium of Paul and Barnabas' day.  Just south of Konya, not all that far from the village of Lystra which the two apostles Paul also visited, lies the archaeological mound of Catal Huyuk.

Catal Huyuk is one of the oldest and largest Neolithic cities ever unearthed.  It is roughly the same age as the lower levels of Jericho.  It captures the time when man was just transitioning from hunting and gathering to farming with livestock.  These people planted wheat and barley for sustenance, but they also hunted wild game.  The city is estimated to contain in its heyday about 5,000 people living in 1,000 houses.  Back then, the town lie on the banks of a vast marsh populated with ducks and other wild life.

The city must have looked a bit like the Zuni pueblos of the American southwest.  The square mud-brick houses were built hard up against each other.  Curiously, the houses had no doors, with only small windows place high on the walls.  They all take access from a hole in the rooftop.  Each house in Catal Huyuk has its own oven for baking bread, placed just underneath the ladders leading to the rooftop, allowing the smoke to escape.  The walls and the floors were covered in plaster, and the walls decorated with panels of red.  Rush mats were used on the floors.   The furniture was built-in, with brick platforms for sitting on, working on and sleeping on.  They buried their dead under these platforms.

Many houses have religious shrines, and it is clear that bulls were sacred.  Bulls' heads and horns project from the walls and altars of their temples.  I have always wondered if the bull worship of early man didn't derive from the zodiac.  The earth moved through the constellation Taurus from about BC 4100 to BC 2200, and the ancients believed the planets and stars were gods.  Catal Huyuk has been carbon dated from roughly BC 7400 to BC 6200, so this theory would greatly compress the conventional C14 dating.

The Catal Huyukians were a fierce and bloodthirsty lot, as you can see. The oven to bake bread lie just below the ladder, and the smoke exited through the same hole in the roof.

This picture shows the excavations at the southern part of the mound

This picture shows the northern excavations.

This wall shows some of the artwork found at the settlement.

This beautifully worked flint knife reminded me of Abraham and his son.

Colossae

May 19 - We drove from Egirdir, in the Turkish Lake District, to Pamukkale, the gleaming white cliffs with the blue pools of water cascading down.  Last August, when we were here, we visited the newly excavated ruins of Laodicea, which are located near the freeway interchange.  This time, we decided to hunt up what remained of Colossae.

The ancient city of Colossae is located just east of the modern town of Honaz, about 10 miles south of Laodicea.  It rests at the foot of 8,000' Mt. Cadmus, the highest mountain in western Turkey.  The Lycus River, little more than a creek by our standards, runs to the north.  The old Greek city has never been excavated, so all we see today is a huge 100' high mound with a dirt road along one side and small vineyards and cherry orchards on the other.  It is a very fertile nook of this valley due to the abundant water.  We bought a kilo of cherries from a roadside farmer for 6 Turkish lira, or about $2.00 US.

Colossae was the preeminent city in the upper Lycus Valley throughout the Persian era, 600 BC to 350 BC.  Xerxes stopped here for several days in BC 480 on his way to the Greek settlements along the Aegean coast.  After Alexander the Great conquered the region around BC 330, the Greeks started constructing cities further up the river valleys of western Anatolia, including the cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis.  They soon eclipsed Colossae, and by the time Paul was preaching in Ephesus, Colossae was a cultural backwater.  

Paul wrote to the Colossian saints from his imprisonment in Rome shortly after AD 60.  Tacitus records in the Annals that Laodicea had been destroyed by an earthquake in the 7th year of Nero, who reigned from AD 54 to AD 68 (Chapter 14).  This would be approximately AD 61 by our reckoning.  It appears that the neighboring city of Colossae was also toppled by the same earthquake but, unlike Laodicea, it was never rebuilt.  When John received his revelation in the later years of the 60's, he lists Laodicea among the seven Christian churches in Roman Asia but he did not mention Colossae, which no longer existed.

We read about a church in Colossae, which met in the home of Philemon, and another in nearby Laodicea (Col. 2:1, 4:16, Phil. 1). There were also a few believers in Hieropolis, the holy city that lies directly above the travertine pools of Pamukkale (Col. 4:13).  These Christians had been exposed to the Judaizing of the Galatians who lived less than 100 miles to the east.  "Let no man therefore judge you in meat , or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath day ........." (Col. 2:16).  They also had been influenced by the angelology of Jewish mysticism. "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind ....." (Col. 2:18).

Denita photographed the only ancient artifact to be found on the surface

The ruins of Colossae lie under the green mound in center right. 

Mt. Cadmus is the snowy mountain in the background.

The mound of Colossae as viewed from the vineyard directly east.

The top of the mound with Mt. Cadmus in the background.

The town of Honaz can be seen at the base just above my hat.

This picture views north and west from the top of the mound.

Cappadocia Part 6 Antioch

TMay 15 - The first cities Paul visited on the Anatolian plateau were Antioch and Iconium.  One of the objectives of this mission was to tell the Jewish community that the Messiah, the hope of Israel, had come.  Paul and Barnabas therefore visited the synagogues in each city, where they got a hearing after the reading of the Law and Prophets on Shabbat.  But it was immediately clear that the Jews did not accept the Good News, and so they turned to the God-fearing Gentiles.  They responded enthusiastically, and on their trip home Paul and Barnabas organized the believers into little home-churches and appointed elders.

Iconium is now called Konya, a city of about one million people.  It is the center of the Mevlevi Order, the sect of the whirling dervishes.  Antioch, on the other hand, is a heap of ruins.  The pictures below are from Antioch near modern Yalvac, Turkey.

I was surprised at the size of Antioch.  In Paul's day, it must have had 50,000 or 60,000 inhabitants.  The amphitheater itself held 15,000 spectators.  The city is built on a gentle hill which faces the south.  There is a high, snow-covered mountain to the southwest.  It had two main streets which still have the original paving stones.  At the top of the city, overlooking everything, was a Roman temple.  The main square was just below it, and the temple was accessed by 12 steps.  One of the early excavators believed the synagogue Paul preached in lay at the bottom of this square.  There are remains of a Catholic Church at that location, and they found several Jewish artifacts there.  The amphitheater was cut into the natural hillside just below the synagogue.  Antioch had a large Jewish population and the Romans had encouraged soldiers to settle there as well.

Acts 13:14  "But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and sat down.  And after the reading of the law and the prophets the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.  Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience.  The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an high arm brought he them out of it................  And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath.  Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.  And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.  But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.  Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.  For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.  And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed."

William Ramsey thought the synagogue of Paul's day lie beneath the ruins of this Catholic Church.

This picture was taken just above the 12 steps that led to the Temple of Zeus.  The broad area beyond is the main public square, and the synagogue lie at the far end.

This picture shows the public pool where people went every day for water.

The amphitheater stood in the center of Antioch

This was the plumbing supply shop of Antioch.  Smile.

The aquaduct leading to the city

Cappadocia Part 4 Ballooning

"Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon, 

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon, 

We could float among the stars together, you and I
For we can fly, we can fly
Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon
The world's a nicer place in my beautiful balloon
It wears a nicer face in my beautiful balloon
We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky"

(Apologies to the Fifth Dimension)

May 14 - We talked about doing a ballon ride, but when it actually came time to buy tickets, I decided not to go.  We learned that you have to get up at 4:30.  In the morning.  Even the sun isn't up that early.  But then we heard that the weather would be better than it had been all week.  Perfect, in fact.  I got to thinking about all of the wonderful pictures one could take with the right light.  All of a sudden, 4:30 AM didn't seem so unreasonable............

One cannot describe the ride.  It is smooth beyond belief.  You don't feel a thing as the balloon silently starts to take off from the ground.  You have to look down to confirm you are moving.  Our driver took us to 1000', and then slowly turned the basket in every direction.  He took us over the Rose Valley, the very place we had just hiked two days before.  We could see the rope we had climbed to get up on the bluff; the place where we had lunch.  He took us down to within 3' of the ground several times.  I could have picked flowers from the basket.  We counted over 60 balloons in the air.

They carefully blow in the hot air until the balloon stands up

This was the basket they put us in.  

The crew and Achmet, the driver

You can see where they just added hot air to this balloon to get it to rise.

There were balloons EVERYWHERE.

Cappadocia Part 5 Baglidere Valley

May 14 - We hiked Baglidere Valley today, which runs directly west of Goreme.  Later, the kids went four-wheeling, including a section of this valley.

Mike and Michelle went four wheeling 

The crew in front of the little restaurant

We enjoyed lunch in the hut in the background

Denita took this picture while four wheeling on the cliff above the valley

Cappadocia Part 3 - The Underground Cities

May 12 - The high plains of central Anatolia have been invaded from east and west many times over the millennia.  Instead of building walled cities, the usual way of protection, the inhabitants stumbled upon a novel way to survive. Under their villages, they dug elaborate tunnels and chambers where they could hide and wait for the enemy to pass.  Presumably the Persians and others passing through, finding a deserted village, assumed that the people had fled.

We drove above 15 miles to see the largest of these underground cities, Derinkuyu.  In it's heyday, they estimate it could hold 10,000 people.  It consists of ten levels of tunnels and rooms, the bottom four or five levels which are inaccessible. They had places to feed livestock, very deep wells, air shafts leading to the surface, places for worship and smaller niches in the rock for bedrooms.

The crew lined up near the entrance tunnel.

One particularly zany area

A large chamber about four levels down