Exploring Greece, Israel, and Jordan— Part One

Exploring Greece, Israel, and Jordan— Part One June 19, 2018

Over the rest of the summer, I shall be sharing some pictures and posts on a trip Ann and I led to Jordan, Israel, and Greece, certainly one of the best trips ever for us. It was unbelievably hot in Jordan (Petra 114F), and in Israel (Qumran 120F), but pleasant in Greece. We traveled like the Biblical story moving from East to West, looking into the promised land from Mt. Nebo, and then entering across the Jordan, then exploring Jordan, and then the Pauline sites in Greece. We were gone from May 15th- June 3rd and I believe a good time was had by all.

In these first few posts I will be dealing with Greece, starting with the wonderful archaeological museum in Athens. Here is a statue of either Zeus or Poseidon, cast in bronze.

The sheer artistry of the ancients is amazing, and in this case studying such art is of relevance to understanding Paul’s Corinth, because that city was famous for its bronze objects (remembering the referencing to the sounding bronze etc. in 1 Cor. 13), including statues like this one which was on a boat and sank off the coast of southern Greece. But how did they make such statures—-??? There is an exhibit which shows how in the Athens museum—-

First they would make a clay model of a statue, then working with bronze which is malleable they would shape the statue with attachments so that when they fired it, it could be put into the fire and then extracted without damage to the statue.


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