Jack Finegan - The Archeology of the New Testament: The Mediterranean World of the Early Christian Apostles

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
ARCHAEOLOGY

Volume 23

THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT

THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT

The Mediterranean World of the Early
Christian Apostles

JACK FINEGAN

First published in 1981

This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
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1981 Westview Press, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-79971-4 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-75194-8 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-81338-0 (Volume 23)
eISBN: 978-1-315-74819-1 (Volume 23)

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THE ARCHEOLOGY
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

The Mediterranean World of
the Early Christian Apostles

Jack Finegan

Westview Press Boulder, Colorado

_________________________________________

Croom Helm London, England

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright 1981 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published in 1981 in the United States of America by

Westview Press, Inc.
5500 Central Avenue
Boulder, Colorado 80301
Frederick A. Praeger, Publisher

Published in 1981 in Great Britain by

Croom Helm Ltd.
2-10 St. Johns Road
London, S.W. 11

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Finegan, Jack, 1908

The archeology of the New Testament.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Vol. 2 published by Westview Press, Boulder, Colo.

CONTENTS: [v.1.] The life of Jesus and the beginning of the early church. [v. 2.] The Mediterranean world of the early Christian apostles.

1. Bible. N.T.Antiquities. I. Title.

BS 2375.F5 225.93 69-18057
ISBN (U.S.): 0-86531-064-5 (Westview: v.2)
ISBN (U.K.): 0-7099-1006-1

Printed and bound in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Maps

Plans

Figure

With the exception of , I have taken all of the photographs for this volume, and the black-and-white prints have been made by William J. Petzel. Photographs taken in museums were with the museums permission, and I would like also to acknowledge their permission to reproduce those photographs in this book:

, the Archaeological Museum, Antioch, Turkey.

, the Archaeological Museum, Antalya, Turkey, and Professor Dr. Jale Inan, the excavator of Perga.

, the Archaeological Museum, Side, Turkey.

, the Greco-Roman Museum, Alexandria, Egypt.

, the Crypt Museum of Agios Dimitrios, Thessaloniki, Greece.

, the Archaeological Museum, Thessaloniki, Greece.

, the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece.

, the Agora Museum in the Stoa of Attalos, Athens, Greece.

(For the foregoing photographs from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and the Agora Museum in the Stoa of Attalos in Athens, permission is also acknowledged from the Greek Archaeological ServiceTAPA, Athens).

, the Byzantine Museum, Athens, Greece.

, the Ephesus (Seluk) Museum, Ephesus, Turkey.

, the Archaeological Museum, Kos, Greece.

All of the maps and plans were prepared by me and drawn for publication by Adrienne Morgan.

My book The Archeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church was published by Princeton University Press in 1969, with a second hardcover printing in 1972, and as a Princeton Paperback in 1978. This was intended as the first volume of a two-volume work, and the original expectation was that the second volume, on the latter part of the New Testament, would be written by another author. Since this has not been done I have now myselfafter too long a delay for the foregoing reasonwritten this second volume, The Archeology of the New Testament: The Mediterranean World of the Early Christian Apostles, for Westview Press. Together the two volumes are intended to provide an archeological guide to New Testament sites and to make available archeological materials relevant to the study of New Testament history.

After the Gospels the largest part of what is written in the New Testament is associated with the name of the apostle Paul, and accordingly, the record of his travels provides the most convenient outline to follow in moving out across the Mediterranean world. On just the journeys described so carefully in the Book of Acts the apostle Paul may be reckoned to have traveled not less than 12,000 miles (20,000 kilometers), and on the later trip to Spain referred to by Clement of Rome and the further journeys in the East presupposed by the pastoral letters, he must have gone an additional 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) or more, in all a tremendous total in excess of 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers). On land most of this travel was probably on foot for, like Jesus, who is only once described as riding a donkey into Jerusalem, Paul is only once spoken of as riding horseback, and that was when a detachment of Roman cavalry was taking him to prison in Caesarea (Ac 23:24). His passages at sea were hardly less arduoushe was only partway through his career when we learn that he had already been shipwrecked three times (II Cor 11:25).

To follow the apostle in these travelswhether in imaginative study, in actual journeying on the routes he traversed, or bothis an exciting and amazing experience. There is excitement because one goesin imagination or in actualityto what were the chief centers of life in the ancient Mediterranean world, these being exactly the strategic points toward which Paul directed his efforts. The experience brings amazement because one derives a fresh and vivid realization of the sheer magnitude of the physical accomplishment of the apostle, alongside the more generally recognized towering intellectual achievement of his theology.

In fact, those who are concerned with any or all aspects of Pauls work may find illumination in the study of his life in its original setting. There is a notable example in the work of Adolf Deissmann. After many years of academic study of the ancient records of Paul and their modern interpreters, Deissmann felt that he found a new teacherin no sense academicwhen he went into the bright sunshine and open air of the world of the East, and the world of Paul. In his preface to Paul, A Study in Social and Religious History, he summed up the effect of his travels:

I may say that the good germs of an historical appreciation of Paul, which I owed to my teachers and my own studies, underwent new growth in the apostles own field and beneath the rays of his sun, but that many rank shoots that had sprung up in the shade of the school walls withered under the same beams.