By far the most exciting Athenian moment for us was our visit to what remains of the Areopagus, a rocky outcrop and meeting spot for the ancient Greek judicial body, place of religious worship, philosophical debate and (most importantly) Paul’s famous speech to the Athenians which resulted in the spread of Christianity into Greece in 1st century AD (this also happens to be one of Amy’s favourite bible passages).
Paul had been invited to speak before the Areopagus on the basis “all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas”, and Paul’s message certainly was a new and intriguing idea - see Acts 17:16-34, highly recommended reading.
It was only when we were standing in the Areopagus itself that we realised Paul would have been speaking directly in the shadows of the Acropolis (including the Parthenon of course) and overlooking the Agora and Roman Forum! This gave the powerful context to his opening statement "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious…". He then proceeded to tell them about their "unknown god" by declaring that “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands…", which I imagine would have been shocking (almost insulting) given the majesty of the surrounds! Paul went onto explain that God can be found through Christ, who will judge the world with justice and "He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead". As you can probably tell, standing in the place where these powerful words were spoken was very exciting for us!
1 comment:
Hey Rorski, Santorini is where Atlantis used to be, if you're a fellow Plato fan like I am you will probably already know this. His description of the city of Atlantis is that it was a silvery looking town (can't remember the exact words, he put it a lot better) which probably meant it was made from Gypsum, something that is fairly unique to the quarries around Santorini, and highly unlikely to come from anywhere else. This is where the Minoan eruption occurred which wiped out the whole parish. Seen it on Tuesday on the History Channel when waiting for the wrestling to start. Summerslam this weekend, can't wait.
By the way, your blogsite is all in French, so I hope I am writing this in the correct spot, something about enregistre un commentaire sur blah blah blah Vous pouvez utiliser certaines balises HTML, telles que b, i, a. Whatever? I'll go now in case I am on some random French fellas pictures.
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