THE APOSTLE PAUL IN GREECE WITH IAN PAUL AND STEPHEN TRAVIS

[Music] paul with silas and timothy had been working his way westwards across turkey eventually they reached troas on the coast of the roman province of asia and there something happens of great significance this was a hugely significant moment in paul's missionary journeys we read in acts 16 that originally paul had intended to continue through what we now call turkey in a westward direction but the holy spirit he says prevented us from this plan we don't know what paul's alternative plan would have been but he was forced to turn north and he had a vision of a man of macedonia calling him to share the gospel there so he heads north reaches the port of troas and from there sets sail across the aegean past the island of samathrace and lands here at cavalla at neapolis from here he heads inland to the very significant city of philippi then along the ignatian way to thessalonica onto athens and then turn south to corinth for us this is enormously important the distinction won't be made in quite the same way but for modern readers we realize this is the first time paul sets foot in europe and his missionary journey takes him in a new direction we're here in cavalla which was the ancient port of neapolis the name the apple is simply means new city this became a very significant place because in paul's day the ignatian way which ran across to my left here was actually in poor repair so this would have been the natural place to come to philippi it's about 10 miles inland most people have come to philippi through this port and paul would have sailed in here and landed here at kevala i'm standing here in the greek theatre at philippi and behind me you can see the valley of philippi enormous flat expanse between here and the mountains philippi was established as an administrative center by phillip of macedon and named after himself but it became really important as a roman colony in the valley behind was a key battle in the establishment of the empire in 42 between octavius who became the first emperor augustus and mark anthony anthony and their enemies brutus and cassius and after the battle this became a colony and it was settled by roman veterans but in new testament times it was more significant for being a roman colony occupied by people with roman citizenship and as a roman colony it was expected to be if you like a little outpost of rome so people lived according to roman values and ways of life it exemplified how you should be a roman citizen paul sees that very much as a pattern for the church christians are not to see themselves as citizens of whatever country they happen to live in but as citizens of heaven of new jerusalem their mother city so we don't adopt the lifestyle and the values of those around us we live according to our home city as citizens of the kingdom of heaven here we are by the river just outside the city gates of philippi paul is in unknown territory he hadn't planned to come here but the spirit of god had made him cross the water and come into what we now call europe he's coming to philippi and his normal strategy would have been to go to the synagogue but there's no synagogue in the colony so he's come outside the city to what the jews would have called a place of prayer and he finds lydia and some other women they can't form a synagogue there are no men here paul explains the good news of jesus and lydia and our household believe on the sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of prayer we sat down and we began to speak to the women who had gathered there one of those listening was a woman named lydia a dealer in purple cloth from the city of thyatira who was a worshiper of god the lord opened her heart to respond to paul's message when she and members of her household were baptized she invited us to her home if you consider me a believer in the lord she said come and stay at my house and she persuaded us jesus's promise to the woman at the well in samaria was that he would give her a gift of living water or we might say water of life we would call this river running water but in the greek the new testament was written in it would be described as living water so it was the habit of the early christians to be baptized in living in running water to symbolize the promise of new life that jesus gave so it was natural for lydia and her household to be baptized here in the river just below me below the rapids there's actually quite a still pool and on the other side the tradition has been continued christians have built a cross-shaped baptistery so they can walk into this living water this running water to receive the promise of new life that jesus gives and walk out the other side living a new life for jesus so here i am ready to be baptized and i'm coming in from one side the river which represents my old life the old way of doing things and i'm ready to immerse myself in the living water it's a little bit cold actually quite nice when you get used to it and if i was doing this for real then this is the point in which i'd be immersed i'm not quite dressed for that today i think i'd have to be careful not to get carried away with it and then i come out the other side representing the new life i'm now going to live the significance of this place in the coming of the gospel to philippi is marked by a small church building outside on the front there are mosaics of the key figures in the story here we find paul and his partner silas and of course the woman who first responded to the story of the gospel lydia there are paintings of paul and silas inside the church building as well and on the floor is a large mosaic showing a map of paul and his companions journeys through turkey across to greece and then south to athens and corinth but now let's go back into the city itself i'm standing here in the bath house area of philippi and this particular bit of building dates back to the roman period so this is a place that paul silas and the first followers of jesus in philippi would have been very familiar with bath houses were significant places for first christians because before they had their own buildings these the kind of public places they could have met together encourage one another and listen to the apostles teaching being passed on in philippi the inscriptions are particularly interesting the main inscriptions are of course in latin showing that this is a roman colony and really identifying who is in charge but a lot of more popular inscriptions particularly parts of devotion to the deities were written in greek and that shows that like many roman colonies the day-to-day language the street language was in fact greek one other thing that's very interesting about inscriptions is the role of women in the places devoted to dionysius and to liber pata the roman equivalent many of the inscriptions come from women and in fact we know from them that some very wealthy women lived here and they gave very significant donations to the cult but the real heart of philippi as of any other city in the greek and roman world was the marketplace what the greeks called the agora and the romans called the forum it looks very peaceful now but it was surrounded by public buildings the council house the library commercial buildings shops and so on this is where people met to do business to talk politics and to meet friends this is where the shops were and where craftsmen such as paul the leatherworker and tentmaker could set out their stalls it's where the poor would hang around hope for charity or perhaps look for work and it's here that opposition came to a head some owners of a slave girl had profited from her power to predict the future and they were furious when paul had delivered her from this gift so they dragged paul and silas to the marketplace and they took them before the authorities and accused them of anti-roman activities i'm standing here next to the place which is reputed to be the place where paul and silas were imprisoned according to acts 16. we can be sure that there was a system of some sort but beyond that we can't be definite about anything else the crowd joined in the attack against paul and silas so the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten after they'd been severely flogged they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully upon receiving such orders he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in stocks of course the story doesn't end there the earthquake shatters the gates and the jailer is terrified that the prisoners would have escaped and that he will be held liable so he turns to paul for help and eventually he and his family all become believers so paul and silas have been released from prison it's only now that paul reminds everyone he's a roman citizen and protests against the flogging that they both received and demands an apology from the magistrates now it would have been quite unusual for a jew from the eastern end of turkey to have been a roman citizen we don't know how paul came about this privilege perhaps his father or his grandfather had been awarded it because of services to rome but in any case how would paul prove to the magistrates that he was in fact a roman citizen we know that citizens were given a certificate inscribed on thin pieces of wood or bronze but would paul have carried those around with him on his journeys and through all the dangers or would perhaps he have kept them in a safe place somewhere we don't really know but one way or another paul actually demonstrated that his citizenship was real the church which paul established at philippi and to which he wrote his letter perhaps 10 years after his first visit must have been a fair size perhaps 50 adults and their families as well with them but exactly what would this church have looked like what different kinds of people would have formed part of it stephen travis has been looking in detail at this question well if we think about the population of the city as a whole that would be about ten thousand and maybe another five thousand living outside the walls uh only a tiny number of these would be the elite the ruling class less than one percent twenty percent probably would be farmers descendants of the veterans uh who were there when the city was founded 100 years before and the largest group would be service workers people like bakers shoemakers crass people of all sorts they would be about 40 percent of the population and then 20 percent uh probably would be poor people living below the subsistence level and another 20 would be slaves so that's the kind of general balance of population within the city as a whole to get to what extent are these proportions represented in the church itself we can't be precise about this but we can get some kind of idea it's very unlikely at this stage that any of the church would belong to the elite class although certainly there were elite members later on after paul's time the majority of the church more than 50 would be part of that service community because they were the group to whom paul had natural access through his own work as a craftsman um making tents and doing leather work and so on poor people would also be represented in the church because again they are the kinds of people who would meet with paul they couldn't avoid it if they were in the marketplace looking for work or begging and then a substantial number also would be slaves now nearly all those people would be greek we know that there were very few jews in philippi at this time because lydia had to meet by the by the river there weren't enough people to form a synagogue and then the other group in in the in the church would be lower status citizens like the jailer who we read about in acts chapter 16 and some of the farmers so that gives a a picture of the kinds of people who have been the church the largest group would be that service community group for then reasonable numbers of poor people slaves and lower status citizens so that's philippi after only a brief visit there paul was moved on by the authorities and yet the church that he established remained faithful despite the pressures on them and also retained a strong bond of affection with paul his mission in europe was underway with over a million inhabitants thessalonika is the second city of greece coming only after athens in terms of population what's quite unusual about it as a city is it's one of the few places in greece which has had continuous occupation right from the early greek period through the roman byzantine medieval and into the modern day there's evidence of occupation here from 500 bc that the city itself was founded in 315 by cassandra who was then the king of macedonia thessalonika has always had links with power and with those in control and in fact the city was named after cassandra's wife thessaloniki and her name meant victory at thessaly she was one of alexander's half-sisters now of course the question is why has it been such a successful city why was it located here and there are two main answers to that the first is its location here on the mouth of the thermic gulf we can see before us this extraordinary natural harbour which protects it from the weather and from storms and this has made it a natural port and an important trading place over the centuries the second is to do with communication as well and that's because the romans built the ignatian way which runs right through the center of the city and it connects the east of empire with the west they came to thessalonica where there was a jewish synagogue as was his custom paul went into the synagogue and on three sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures explaining and proving that christ had to suffer and rise again this jesus i am proclaiming to you is the christ he said some of the jews were persuaded and joined paul and silas as in a large number of god-fearing greeks and not a few prominent women but the jews were jealous so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace formed a mob and started a riot in the city they rushed to jason's house in search of paul and silas in order to bring them out to the crowd when they did not find them they dragged jason and some other brothers before the city officials the politics shouting these men who've caused trouble all over the world have now come here and jason has welcomed them into his house they're all defying caesar's decrees saying there is another king one called jesus when they heard this the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil they put jason and the others on bail and let them go we heard the foundation of thessalonica was very much tied up with questions of power and empire and that continued to be the case throughout its history thessalonica was a very influential and politically active place during the civil war in the 40s bc they supported mark antony and as a result of that mark anthony granted them the status of a free city this meant that like a place like philippi they were governed by politics and had a certain amount of privileged position within the empire and in fact that word polytarq is the word that luke uses in acts 17 6 when he talks about the city officials that the jews dragged jason before because of thessalonica's close relationship with figures of power it meant that the imperial cult was very important here and in fact we find in paul's letters in one and two thessalonians he uses constantly terms of the imperial cult when he's talking about jesus and particularly talking about the expectation of jesus's return jesus will come he says just as the emperor would come and visit a city in the empire and he would come to authorize to support the city officials now of course for paul the officials the rulers whom christ will in support and encourage and vindicate on his revelation on his appearance are in fact those who followed him in their lifetime when paul came here he found a very different atmosphere from the philippi he'd left behind as a recently founded colony philippi was dominated by roman institutions now although thessalonika was the seat of roman government in northern greece it remained a thoroughly greek city only two percent of inscriptions found here are in latin a popular religious cult here was the old fertility cult of dionysius but the patron god of the city was cabiris seen here on a coin his colorful rituals were believed to guarantee the prosperity and the renewal of the city to these ancient cults was now added the imperial cult the worship of rome and the emperor and when paul came proclaiming a different lord he was soon seen as a serious troublemaker i'm standing next to the marketplace here in the middle of thessalonica actually the middle of the modern city the marketplace in greek was the agora in latin the forum most of the buildings we actually see here uh dates only go back to the second century when the romans rebuilt the forum on the ruins of an earlier greek marketplace probably destroyed by an earthquake this was the place where the jews who opposed to paul's message got a crowd a mob and had a riot they gathered the people from the marketplace and then they took them to the area just over my shoulder the buluterion those curved seats which is the place where the politics or city officials would have met to make decisions this is the place where jason was taken and where he was accused of colluding with paul and silas in this new movement which was upsetting the whole world by proclaiming another king instead of caesar this king jesus in fact the buluterian was later adapted and became an odion a small theater and extended but further to the right you can actually see some bath house complex area which was actually dates back to the first century so this is an area that paul would have known from his visits to thessalonica it's clear from the account in acts but also from paul's letters to the christians in thessalonica that they experienced significant opposition right from the very beginning this continued in succeeding centuries right through to the beginning of the fourth century and i'm sitting now here in the crypt of the church of saint demetrius who lived in the beginning of the fourth century here in thessalonica um this crypt was probably a roman bath house at the time of paul and the church was later built on top it was believed that this was the place where demetrius was imprisoned by gallerius who was the ruler of this part of the empire from 305 onwards gallerius galeries imprisoned demetrius and tortured him down in this area and then he was martyred and he's now the patron saint of the city following the death of demetrius in 311 was the elite toleration and that finally ended the diocletian persecution from the end of the third century and christians began to know peace and security under constantine standing on the site of the ancient ignatian way which ran right through here through this arch that was built in the fourth century by gallerius it explains why uh it was thessaloniki continued to be so important in the empire it wouldn't have been as noisy in paul's day but it certainly would have been as busy the ignatian way was built between 114 120 bc and its aim was to connect the east with the west of the empire head east down here and i go to byzantium and then down into syria and beyond head west and i reach the coast the adriatic and crossover joining the appian way i'm at the heart of rome itself so thessaloniki continued to be a really strategic center as a port as a center of communication on this vital route but it also gives us insight into paul's missionary strategy it seemed as though whether it's by his own design or whether it was by the leading of the spirit paul established churches in key centers along these trading routes these routes of connection across the empire he seemed then to want to leave the christians there to become mini paws for themselves he didn't bother evangelizing the region around these centers he expected the christians in thessaloniki to do what he had done and to go out from the center and found churches in their local area meanwhile he himself moved on he moved on to athens then south to corinth in order to establish churches in these other key centers just as he had in thessaloniki once paul and his companions silas and timothy have been denounced by their jewish opponents as proclaimers of another king it wasn't safe for them to stay any longer their friends in the new christian community sent them on to berea a town 50 miles southwest of thessalonica very few ancient remains can be found here but there is a modern mosaic celebrating the warm reception that paul received among the jewish people here in time the opponents from thessalonica caught up with him and he had to move on again south to athens but how did he make this journey we've just traveled about 30 miles coming south and west from thessaloniki we've come to this beautiful little bay here and a village over there called mathony the account in acts 17 tells us that paul went from thessaloniki inland to berea and the gospel was well received there but some troublemakers from thessaloniki followed him and made life difficult for him so some of those who are with paul brought him to the coast and the local tradition has it that he came here to methoni luke doesn't in fact tell us how he got to athens and the tradition says he actually got on a boat here and sailed south rather than going by foot we can't be sure what the reality was but it serves to remind us that during this period of the empire's history travel around the empire was relatively easy it wasn't quite like getting in a car and driving down the motorways we've done but it was much easier than it would become in later centuries in fact it's probably the case that after the collapse of the empire travel around europe wasn't as easy again until the middle of the 19th century and the opening up of the railways now this question of the ease of communication is vital for understanding paul his missionary strategies and also for reading the letters that he wrote to the different churches but it's actually got a much wider significance too it helps us to understand the context in which the gospels were read for a long time new testament scholarship labored under the assumption that the different christian communities in different places had their own distinct theology that they didn't communicate with one another that the ideas weren't shared from one place to another so there's talk of the mathean community or the markan community or the johannine community in fact all the evidence we have from the first couple of centuries was that christian communities communicated with one another very frequently that people moved from one place to another it was relatively easy to pass letters from one place to another paul at the end of his life asks timothy to bring his parchments and we see the same kind of language amongst the early christian leaders all the evidence says that transport was easy was possible and that there was a regular interchange of ideas and materials from one place to another to get paul away from the threats of the opponents of macedonia he was brought here to athens but without his companions silas and timothy his purpose here was simply to give time for them to come and join him but it soon became clear that he couldn't just keep silent so as paul traveled south from macedonia and on his way to corinth he stopped here in athens awaiting his companions and it's interesting to reflect how paul must have felt as he looked around the city in paul's day there was a long-standing rivalry between corinth and athens and in fact corinth had the upper hand it was more important economically and it was more influential politically and yet as paul looks around he comes to the place which is the center of western civilization here are the roots of democracy here are the origins of drama and the creative arts in the western tradition here is the home of the great philosophical thinkers who shape the perception of reality socrates plato and aristotle and hereto is an important religious center and a sense in which religion holds together both the philosophical and the political behind me on the acropolis is the parthenon the temple of athene the goddess of the city and the goddess of wisdom paul must have realized he faced formidable obstacles as he presented this new message this new strange and probably rather foolish message of jesus a man an obscure man in a corner of an empire crucified and paul claims raised to life you can see behind me that green area with the temple in it is the greek agara and just this side of it hidden behind buildings is the roman forum or marketplace and they're both just below the acropolis to my right when paul came to athens he came here first he came and visited the synagogue we're not quite sure where that is that was his normal practice to go and first proclaim the good news of jesus to god's people the jews but he also associated beyond that he spoke to god fearing greeks those associated around on the fringes of the synagogue but also he wandered around the marketplace and the temples to see how it was the people thought luke writes about this slightly dismissively he says that the athenians have nothing better to do all day than exchange ideas and hear the latest thing but in fact this was a really important principle it's one of the three principles of greek democracy that of equal speech every citizen had the right to be heard equal with every other citizen so every new idea needed to be tested and to be weighed up and discussed this wasn't just a marketplace of goods it was a marketplace of ideas and into this marketplace paul puts this extraordinary idea of a man crucified god's agent crucified and then raised again to bring new life let's go and have a look at the marketplace for ourselves the agora was the location of many of the great institutions of ancient greece temples and law courts council chambers statues of gods and heroes to come here was to discover the athenians self-understanding how they saw their place in history how they saw their importance and how they saw themselves in relation to the wider world on the days of religious festivals processions would enter the agra at its lowest point and walk up along the sacred way up the slope towards the acropolis and the parthenon the temple of athens patron goddess athena as we wander around the city today we find people engaged in the same kinds of everyday encounters and activities as would have been familiar with paul's time we find street entertainers people buying a snack for their lunch others selling cheap goods and still others selling expensive ones [Music] we can see craftsmen at work and selling the results of their skills [Music] in some places people are peddling popular philosophy [Music] and in others they've asked the philosophical questions on the walls of the city here the question is what does it truly mean to be human and of course we find people chatting about the day's news and in amongst that even today we find ordinary people in the streets quoting the wisdom of the ancients what's the the hardest science also got this answer they told him his math his algebra is trigonometry what what science is very hard so simply he simply has his life up here we're on the areopagus known in english translation as mars hill and as you look around you can see holes in the rock where there's evidence of a wooden structure this is a place where the council of elders met to make decisions about the governance of the city and it's worth reflecting how paul would have felt as he comes up here to meet with the elders and what he was seeing around him how that would make him feel about sharing this strange new good news that he's got to proclaim behind we see the parthenon with the the temple of athens on it but over to the left we see the panics the place where the citizens would have gathered to make decisions about the city and then down in front of the areopagus we can see the roman forum and the greek agar that the centers of economic activity but also the magistrates and the law courts where decisions about judgments were made so all around paul we see these centers of power and of decision making and of influence one thing that's quite striking about the way that paul then explains his new idea is he does something quite different from what he's done in other places instead of starting with the jewish story about the people of god and about jesus as the fulfillment of expectations he starts in quite a different place he starts with the greek's own philosophers and philosophical ideas and brings into that the story of who jesus was and as he gives his account he speaks in terms that they would have understood they know perfectly well what the church the ecclesia is it's the citizens gathering he talks about the leaders as the elders how much of an impact did paul have well he was working on his own and eventually timothy and silas come and meet up with him they catch up with him and then he heads off to his next goal that is to go to corinth and to preach the gospel there in actually quite a different way it seems that in many ways paul's adventure here was something of a failure but in fact actually if you look just behind you can find two roads one the road of paul the apostle and the other the road of dionysius the areopagite and in fact there are a number of churches around here celebrating jesus and the resurrection so it wasn't the great success that paul had in other places but he did actually leave his mark he reasoned in a synagogue with the jews and the god-fearing greeks as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there a group of epicurean and stoic philosophers began to dispute with him some of them asked what is this babbler trying to say others remarked he seems to be advocating foreign gods they said this because paul was preaching the good news about jesus and anastasis the resurrection then they took him and brought him to the meeting of the areopagus where they said to him maybe you know what is this new teaching that you are presenting paul then stood up in the meeting of the areopagus and said men of athens i see that in every way you are very religious for as i walked around and looked carefully at your object of worship i found an altar with this inscription to an unknown god now what do you worship as something unknown i am going to proclaim to you when they heard about the resurrection of the dead some of them sneered but others said we want to hear you again on this subject at that paul left the council a few men became followers of paul and believed among them was dionysius a member of the areopagus also a woman named damaris and a number of others so paul is invited up to the areopagus on mars hill to the council of the athenian elders in order to present this new message but there's some quite strange things about the message as luke records it in acts 17. for one thing paul is on his own this is the only time where we see paul proclaiming christ on his own rather than in a team of two or three secondly he seems to have quite a distinct strategy and there's a question about whether luke is drawing attention to this rather than simply starting from the jewish background and the story of what happened to jesus paul starts further back with the assumptions that the athenians themselves are making he quotes their own philosophers he reasons with them and tries to move from the position they are to engaging with them with the story that he has to present it arouses some curiosity but actually in contrast to paul's other mystery efforts it's very poor in bringing fruit there's he doesn't establish a church here in athens one or two believers yes but not a community that is left in other places what are we to make of this well on the one hand some people say here is a way of engaging with culture here is an example of starting where people are here is if you like a poor line fresh expression of church beginning with the questions people have and seeing if we can move them to the answer in jesus but others would say look this bore no fruit and see what happens when paul gets to corinth he writes to the corinthians i refused to give wisdom to greeks or miracles to the jews but i proclaimed only christ crucified so some would argue this was a failed experiment of paul and in fact he went back to his earlier fruitful strategy maybe one maybe the other maybe there's a more subtle mixture of the two we see paul in his teachings interweaving the jewish background to jesus story and the questions that his readers are concerned about so maybe we need to have both and rather than either or

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Length: 35min 38sec (2138 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2014