abandoned soon after the year 637, as there are no Arabic remains above the Græco-Roman material. In the year 1121 Baldwin II, of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, made a campaign against Gerasa, where the ruler of Damascus had caused a castle to be built. In the next century the Arabian geographer, Yakut, describes it as deserted. It appears to have been ruined by an earthquake.

Apparently the Hellenic city at Gerasa lasted longer than any of the other cities of the Decapolis unless it be Kanatha. One can, accordingly, gain from the ruins of Gerasa an excellent idea of the general appearance of one of these cities. The writer has never seen more beautiful ruins than those at Jerash except the ruins at Athens. As one approached the site from the south he faced a beautiful arched gateway. After passing this gateway one looked northward down a long colonnaded street, which at a little distance from the gate broadened out into a circular forum. At distances approximately equal from one another this main street was crossed by other colonnaded streets. A number of these columns are standing in different parts of the town. The remains of two imposing temples, of two theaters, of a large Christian basilica, and of various other buildings, impress one with the former glory of the city. A number of the buildings at Gerasa were built in the second century A. D. in the reign of the Antonines; (see Figs. 268, 269).

8. Philadelphia, the most southerly of the cities of the Decapolis, was on the site of Rabbah Ammon (Deut. 3:11; Josh. 13: 25; 2 Sam. 111, etc.). This was situated on the upper Jabbok about twenty miles east of the Jordan valley, where Amman now lies. The Hellenic city here was built by Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt, who reigned from 283-247 B. c. It was named Philadelphia from him. In 218 B. C. the city was taken by Antiochus III, who captured the cistern to which in time of siege the Philadelphians went for water by an underground passage, after which thirst compelled them to surrender. Joab centuries before had captured the city for David by the same method,3 and in 30 B. C. Herod the Great again took it in the same way. The remains of the Hellenic

2

1 See Merrill, East of the Jordan, 281–284; Schumacher in Zeitschrift des deutschen PalästinaVereins, XXV, 1912, 111–177; Brünnow and Domaszewski, Provincia Arabia, II, 234–139; Barton, A Year's Wandering in Bible Lands, 158, f.

2 See Polybius, V, 71.

See 2 Sam. 12: 27 and Barton in the Journal of Biblical Literature, XXVII, 147–152.
See Josephus, Wars of the Jews, I, xix, 5.

temple, of the theater, and of other buildings, including a Christian basilica, are still to be seen at Amman. In the fourth century A. D. Philadelphia was one of the prominent cities of the Roman province of Arabia; (see Figs. 270, 271).

These cities of the Decapolis appear to have been built on a similar plan. Each had a colonnaded street through the center of the town, each had at least one temple and one theater, and some of them more. All were architecturally beautiful. They all possessed a similar government also, and each appears to have controlled the villages in its district.

9. Jesus in the Decapolis.-The prevailing influences in the Decapolis were pagan, and yet there were Jews living in it, for multitudes of them from the Decapolis followed Jesus (Matt. 4: 25). On at least two occasions our Lord himself went into the territory of the Decapolis. We read in Mark 5:1 that Jesus and his disciples "came to the other side of the sea to the country of the GeraThe Authorized Version reads "to the country of the Gadarenes." The country to which Jesus came at this time cannot have been that of the Decapolitan city Gerasa, for, as we have seen, that lay far to the south. It was in a direct line nearly fifty miles from the Sea of Galilee. Neither can it have been to the region of Gadara that he came, for Gadara lay at least five miles to the south across the deep valley of the Yarmuk. There was, however, on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee a town called Gergesa, the modern Kursi. This place was near the city of Hippos, and possibly one of the towns subordinate to Hippos. As Jesus and the disciples walked back from the sea they met the demoniac, whom Jesus healed. It was in connection with this healing that the herd of swine was destroyed an incident that could happen in no part of. Palestine except Decapolis or Philistia, for swine were unclean to Jews and they never kept them. The demoniac, when cured, went and preached Jesus in the Decapolis (Mark 5:20).

Again, toward the end of the ministry of Jesus, after he had withdrawn for a time to Phoenicia, he returned by crossing the high lands of northern Galilee and coming down east of the Jordan "through the midst of the borders of Decapolis" (Mark 7:31).

1 See Merrill, East of the Jordan, 399, ff.; Schumacher, Across the Jordan, 308; Brünnow and Domaszewski, Provincia Arabia, II, 216–220, and Barton, A Year's Wandering in Bible Lands, 155, f.

CHAPTER XV

ATHENS, CORINTH, AND THE CHURCHES OF ASIA

ATHENS.

CORINTH. THE CHURCHES OF ASIA: Ephesus. Pergamum. Thyatira.
Sardis. Philadelphia. Smyrna. Laodicea.

THE greater part of Biblical history was enacted in Palestine and the great valleys of Mesopotamia and the Nile. The Apostle Paul, however, broke the Jewish bonds of primitive Christianity and carried the Gospel to the coasts of the Ægean Sea. In cities of this region he spent years of his active missionary life; to churches of this region most of his epistles were sent, and to churches of this part of the world the seven messages to the churches were addressed. We cannot, therefore, conclude this sketch of what archæology has done to throw light upon the Bible without saying a few words concerning exploration and excavations in certain parts of Greece and Asia Minor. It will be impossible for lack of space to go thoroughly into the history of this region, but as these lands were not, like Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Palestine, closely connected with Biblical history for a long period, detailed history of them before the Apostolic age will not be missed by the student of the Bible.

The results of scattered discoveries at Thessalonica and elsewhere will be presented in Part II, Chapter XXVII. At this point attention will be directed to a few important cities.

1. Athens, the chief city of Attica, one of the least productive parts of Greece, is the far-famed mistress of the world's culture and art. Emerging from obscurity in the seventh century before Christ, gaining a position of leadership in the Persian wars after 500 B. C., Athens established a considerable empire. In this period fell the age of Pericles, 460-429 B. C., when the artistic and literary genius of Athens reached a height never equaled in human history. Socrates was born here in 469 and lived till 399 B. C. Here Plato, who was born about 428, became a pupil of Socrates and afterward taught. Hither came Aristotle, after the year 367, to sit at Plato's feet. Here from the age of Pericles the acropolis was crowned with

those architectural creations that are at once the admiration and the despair of the world; (see Fig. 277). It stirs the imagination to think of Paul in such a city.

In the time of Paul, Athens was a Roman city, though still one of the great artistic and philosophical centers of the world. At a little distance from the acropolis on its northern side, a forum of the Roman period was laid bare in 1891; (see Fig. 272). Possibly this is the market-place in which Paul, during his stay there, reasoned every day with them that met him (Acts 17: 17), though of this we cannot be certain, for, while this was a market-place in the Roman period, the older market of the Athenian people lay to the westward of it.

To the west of the acropolis lies the old Areopagus, or Mars' Hill (Fig. 273), from which it was long supposed that Paul made the address recorded in Acts 17: 22-31. Ramsay,' following Curtius, has made it probable that the address was delivered to the city-fathers of Athens, not because they were putting Paul to a judicial trial, but because they wished to see whether he was to be allowed to teach Christianity, which they took for a new philosophy, in the univeristy of Athens-for Athens itself was a kind of university. It seems probable that the meetings of the city-fathers, who were collectively called the Areopagus (Acts 17:22), were held not on the top of the rock, but in the market-place. The Athenian altar "to an unknown god" is treated in Part II, Chapter XXVII, § 2.

2. Corinth. From Athens, Paul went to Corinth, where he spent a year and a half (Acts 18:1, 11). Corinth was one of the old cities of Greece. In Homeric and earlier times it appears to have been subject to Argos. Situated on the isthmus between northern Greece and the Peloponnesus, the sea-trade of Corinth made it an important city. It rose to prominence in the seventh century before Christ. At some early time foreigners from the east, probably Phoenicians, had settled in Corinth and established the worship of the Semitic goddess Astarte on Acro-Corinthus, a hill that rises some five hundred feet above the city. The goddess was here known as Aphrodite,2 and the debasing character of her worship tended to foster that lack of sensitiveness in matters of social morality with which Paul deals in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. The trade of Corinth made it rich and its riches excited the enmity

1 Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and Roman Citizen, New York, 1896, 243, ff.

* See Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, II, Oxford, 1896, 618–699.

of Rome. It was accordingly destroyed by the Romans in 146 B. C., but a century later was rebuilt by Julius Cæsar. Ancient Corinth has now entirely vanished.

Excavations were begun at Corinth by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1896 under the direction of the late Prof. Rufus B. Richardson. The work has been carried forward season by season ever since. Although there were no topographical indications to help the excavators at the start, the theater, the Agora or market-place, a Roman street, the road to Lechæum, and the temple of Apollo have been discovered; (Figs. 274, 276).

Of greatest interest to the student of the Bible is a stone discovered in 1898 on the Lechæum road near the propylæa, or gateway leading to the market-place. This stone once formed the lintel of a door and bore an inscription in Greek letters. Although the beginning and the end of the two words written on it are broken away, it is clear that the inscription was "Synagogue of the Hebrews." The cutting of the letters was poorly done, and the block was a second-hand one, adapted from some other use. It seems probable, therefore, that the Jewish community at Corinth was not wealthy. The block was of considerable size and so was probably found not far from where the synagogue stood. If so, this synagogue, which is probably identical with the one in which Paul preached (Acts 18 : 4), stood on the Lechæum road not far from the market-place. Other discoveries in the neighborhood indicate that this was a residence quarter of the city, and we learn from Acts 187 that the house of Titus Justus, where apparently Paul organized the first church in Corinth, "joined hard to the synagogue. The house of Justus must, then, have been here, and the Lechæum road often echoed to the footsteps of Paul. Probably the judgment-seat to which the Jews dragged Paul for the hearing before Gallio (Acts 18: 12) was in the market-place, so that the excavations have revealed to us the parts of Corinth of special interest to a reader of the Bible.

3. The Churches of Asia.

(1) Ephesus was situated on the Cayster river in western Asia Minor, about three miles from the sea, but in ancient times the sea was navigable up as far as the city. Cities which form the point of

1 See American Journal of Archæology, 2d series, II, 133, f.; III, 204, f.; IV, 306, f.; VI, 306, f, 439, f.; X, 17, f., and XIV, 19, f.

See Benjamin Powell in American Journal of Archæology, 2d series, VII, 60, f., and Fig. 275.