The world’s most famous (and powerful) oracle resided at Delphi, high up the slopes of Mount Parnassus in the Temple of Apollo. In ancient times, supplicants would wind up the mountainside, patiently hoping for words of wisdom from the priestess (called the Pythia) in the temple’s adyton (inner chamber). Corbis

Archaeologists are good at recovering things left behind by the past, such as buildings, incense altars, tools and relief carvings. What they are not so good at recovering are the ideas, feelings and emotions—the innerness—of sentient ancient beings. It’s one thing to examine a temple’s holy of holies; it’s another thing to understand what went on there and what people experienced. Sometimes, however, there’s an exception to the rule.

Numerous classical authors report that natural phenomena played an essential part in one of their most sacred religious rituals: the oracle at Delphi. According to the geographer Strabo (c. 64 B.C.–25 A.D.), for example, “the seat of the oracle is a cavern hollowed down in the depths … from which arises pneuma [breath, vapor, gas] that inspires a divine state of possession” (Geography 9.3.5). Over the past five years, a team of researchers—a geologist, an archaeologist, a chemist and a toxicologist—has put that claim to the test, making it much more likely that we will actually understand what happened at Delphi.

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When ancient Greeks and Romans had to make decisions, they consulted the gods—by drawing lots, casting dice, interpreting dreams and analyzing such signs as sneezes, thunderbolts and flying birds. But for matters of the utmost importance, they sought to hear the words of the gods in the mouths of oracles.^a

Pythias were virgins who dedicated their lives to prophesying on behalf of the god Apollo. The first Pythia is said to have been the goddess Themis, who is depicted on a fifth-century B.C. cup (shown here) sitting on a tripod and holding a bowl and a sprig of laurel (Apollo’s sacred tree). According to Strabo (c. 64 B.C.–25 A.D.) and other sources, the Pythia was inspired by mysterious vapors, though these accounts have been largely ignored by modern researchers. Now, however, a team of archaeologists and geologists have proved that the Temple of Apollo sat directly above fault lines that likely released intoxicating carbon-based gases into the adyton. Was this the oracle’s secret?

Paradoxically, in male-dominated classical Greece the most influential voice, the Delphic oracle, belonged to a woman. The oracular temple was perched on the south slope of Mount Parnassus, surrounded by high cliffs, about 75 miles west of Athens. Getting to Delphi required either a long trek across the mountains or a sea voyage to the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth. However difficult the journey, thousands of visitors sought guidance from the holy woman, called the Pythia,^b who spoke on behalf of the gods.

The Pythia dealt less in visions of the future than in right choices: where to locate a new colony, when to attack an enemy, how to lift a curse, whom to choose as leader, what offering to make to which god. No kingdom, city or private person could afford to make critical decisions without consulting the Pythia. Thanks to her prestige, Delphi became the richest and most famous Hellenic sanctuary. The Greeks called it the omphalos, or “navel of the world.”

How could a mere mortal command such respect? The answer lies in the belief that Apollo—the god of revelation and inspiration—used the Pythia as his mouthpiece, taking possession of her during oracular sessions. The Pythia would fall into a trance, and the words she spoke were supposedly those of Apollo, delivered in a voice very unlike her normal tones.

Most scholars believe the Delphic oracle was established around the eighth century B.C., when founders of new colonies would consult the Pythia before setting out for the western Mediterranean, North Africa, Asia Minor or the Black Sea. The origins of the oracle are recounted in a story about a goatherd named Koretas, who pastured his flock on the slope of Mount Parnassus. Koretas noticed that when the goats grazed near a certain fissure in the mountainside, they began to bleat strangely. Approaching the fissure, he was filled with a prophetic spirit. Eventually, a woman—the first Pythia—was appointed to sit on a tripod over the cleft and give prophecies. Before she could mount the tripod, however, a goat had to be sacrificed to ensure that the day was propitious.

Image: Frank Ippolito.

During the classical period, supplicants would line up at dawn to walk along the Sacred Way, a steep path snaking up through the sanctuary toward the Temple of Apollo. The priests and temple attendants determined the order of the queue, giving priority to state embassies and then working their way down through military commanders, athletes, poets and, last of all, mere heads of families concerned about a child or an investment. The supplicants filed past bronze statues, war monuments and treasure houses dedicated in the past by grateful visitors. It would have been late in the day by the time the ordinary men at the rear reached the terrace of the temple and viewed the famous inscriptions, “Know Thyself” and “Nothing in Excess.”

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From here the way led up a ramp to a great colonnade of Doric columns, and then through a double door into the temple itself. Inside burned a constant pinewood fire tended by women of Delphi. The final approach to the oracle led downward into a sunken space below the level of the temple floor, where the visitor would be confronted by a gold statue of Apollo and the omphalos stone that marked the sacred spot. The Pythia sat in a recessed inner sanctum called the adyton, a Greek word meaning “not to be entered.” Standing outside the adyton, visitors would ask their questions and await the response.

Unlike itinerant prophets and omen-interpreters, the Pythia derived her power from the place—she could only prophesy while seated in the adyton within the Temple of Apollo. According to Strabo, the pneuma arose from a small opening (chasma ges) in the adyton: “Over the mouth [of the opening] a high tripod is set. Mounting this, the Pythia inhales the pneuma and then speaks prophecies in verse or in prose. The latter are versified by poets on duty in the temple” (Geography 9.3.5.).

Strabo was not the only ancient source to describe the adyton and the intoxicating gas. The second-century A.D. traveler Pausanias told of a spring in the temple’s adyton that made the Pythia prophetic. Also, in On the Obsolescence of the Oracles, the biographer Plutarch (c. 46–120 A.D.), who served as a priest of Apollo at Delphi, described an exhalation of vapor in the adyton that sent the Pythia into a trance.
Despite these testimonies, no serious scholar over the last 50 years has accepted the idea that the Pythia’s trance was caused by a gaseous emission.

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Modern investigations began in the 1890s, when French archaeologists began to excavate the sanctuary at Delphi. They first moved the modern village of Kastri, household by household, from above the ancient sanctuary to the town of Delphi, west of the sanctuary. The French archaeologists uncovered the boundary wall of the ancient sanctuary, an entry gate, and the lower stretches of the Sacred Way. By 1893 they had reached the terrace of the Temple of Apollo—where they found that scarcely a stone remained in place above the floor. The columns had toppled, and the statuary had been carried off or destroyed. In the lower chamber, where the oracle once spoke, no trace of the ancient structure remained. Even the archaeologists’ attempts to reach bedrock were frustrated as water filled the excavated areas.

While the French team was excavating the temple, a young English scholar named A.P. Oppé published a report based on his visit to the site. Oppé proposed that the ancient sources had confused the fissure with a nearby gorge, and that the vapor was simply a fiction that had been passed down from source to source.¹

In 1927, after a hiatus precipitated by World War I, a scholar named M.F. Courby published the French team’s final report of the temple excavations. He described the bedrock under the center of the temple as “fissured by the action of the waters”—suggesting that the ancient traditions of an opening in the rock may have been correct.² By then, however, Oppé’s theory that the ancients simply misconstrued the facts had taken too strong a hold among scholars for the issue to be reconsidered. The final blow came in 1950: Pierre Amandry of the École Française d’Athènes stated definitively—or so it was widely believed—that exhalations of intoxicating gas could never have existed at Delphi. Only volcanic activity could produce such gas, Amandry (incorrectly) noted, and Delphi does not lie in a volcanic area.³ For almost half a century, debates about the geological origins of the oracle virtually ceased.^c

The first step toward a modern reassessment of the evidence was made in the 1980s by geologist (and co-author) Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, the senior member of our project in Delphi. De Boer was conducting surveys, under the auspices of the United Nations and the Greek government, to identify active fault lines. One area he studied was the south slope of Mount Parnassus, where he noted an exposed fault both east and west of the sanctuary of Apollo—though it could not be seen at the site of the temple, where it was covered by ancient construction and debris from rock slides. De Boer suspected that the fault did indeed run under the temple, but he gave the matter no more thought.

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It was not until the summer of 1995 that Zeilinga de Boer encountered an archaeologist, co-author John Hale of the University of Louisville, who assured him, first, that he could not possibly have seen any such feature at Delphi and, second (after Zeilinga de Boer described the fault in detail), that this might be a discovery of major importance. We decided to continue investigations at Delphi, eventually adding a chemist (Jeff Chanton of Florida State University and the U.S. Geological Survey Magnetic Laboratory) and a toxicologist (Henry Spiller of the Kentucky Poison Center) to the team.

In 1996, with the support of Rozina Kolonia, the director of the Delphi Museum, we conducted a survey of the site and found that the sections of exposed fault on either side of the sanctuary were indeed part of the same fault—an active fault extending about 13 miles east-west along the southern flank of Mount Parnassus. We named this fault the Delphi Fault.

This egg-shaped stone—the very stone described by the Greek writer Pausanias, who visited Delphi in the second century A.D.—represents the omphalos, or “navel of the world.” According to Greek legend, Delphi was fixed as the center of the world when Zeus released two eagles, one from the west and the other from the east, which met in the sky above Delphi. The original omphalos stone, now lost, was probably an archaic cult object that supplicants draped with wreaths, resembling the wreaths carved in relief on this stone. Erich Lessing

In subsequent seasons we identified a second fault, extending approximately southeast-northwest. This fault could be traced along a line of springs running through the center of the sanctuary. The highest spring, above the temple, is called the Kerna Spring; its water is currently channeled westward to modern Delphi. Further down the slope, though still above the temple, a mass of travertine (a kind of limestone) deposited by calcite-rich waters indicates another spring. There is also an elaborate channel for a spring built into the southern foundation wall of the temple itself. Although this spring is dry today, the early 20th-century French archaeologists found it difficult to reach bedrock within the sanctuary because their holes kept filling up with water. Down the slope below the temple, yet another spring emerges from a cleft in the bedrock near the Treasury of the Athenians.
We have named this southeast-northwest fault the Kerna Fault, after its highest spring. In de Boer’s opinion, the Kerna Fault intersects the Delphi Fault at or near the site of the temple.

What the ancient authors described as a fissure (chasma ges) in the rock over which the Pythia sat was probably a small fracture extending up from the intersection of these two faults. Very likely, this is also what M.F. Courby, in his 1927 publication of the French team’s excavations, was describing when he wrote that the bedrock was “fissured by the action of the waters.”

Greek geologists had already identified the limestone under the temple as bituminous (oil-bearing), with a petrochemical content as high as 20 percent. These petrochemicals appeared to be a possible source of gases. But how exactly could they be released from the rock into the atmosphere?

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The Delphi Fault is linked to one of Greece’s most geologically active features: the great rift, or graben, that today is filled by the waters of the Gulf of Corinth. This is a recent feature, geologically speaking, having formed roughly two million years ago. The rift continues to widen; as it does, motion occurs along faults and earthquakes are triggered. In 373 B.C., for example, earthquakes almost completely destroyed the Delphic temple on the north side of the gulf, as well as coastal towns on the south side.

As slippage occurs along the fault lines, adjacent rock masses are heated, vaporizing the lighter petrochemicals in the limestone and expelling gases upward along the face of the faults. Once faulting has opened such a pathway, gases continue to rise, although the volume would slowly decrease over time. We believe that this is exactly what happened at Delphi: The rock masses deep in the earth were heated, and they intermittently produced gases that rose up along the intersection of the two fault lines, eventually entering the adyton of the temple through one or more fissures over which the Pythia sat.

Read about the discovery in ancient Hierapolis of Pluto’s Gate, a site shrouded in misty poisonous vapors and considered sacred to the underworld deity Pluto.

Exhalations of gases from bituminous limestone have been observed by geologists studying underwater faults in the Gulf of Mexico. There light hydrocarbon gases—methane, ethane and ethylene, all of them intoxicants—have been found bubbling up from the rock below. Closer to Delphi, similar exhalations were detected near the Isthmus of Corinth, as well as on the island of Zakynthos.

We decided to test the spring water at Delphi, along with samples of the travertine rock that the ancient springs had deposited on the retaining walls and slopes around the temple. If significant quantities of gases had been emitted with the spring water, traces of these gases might be found in the travertine deposits. The very presence of travertine rock, formed from dissolved calcites in warm spring water, is evidence that the springs along the Kerna Fault had their origin at deep levels.

The water and travertine from the sanctuary of Apollo, which were analyzed by Jeff Chanton, revealed traces of the light hydrocarbon gases found in the Isthmus of Corinth and on Zakynthos. Could this explain the Pythia’s state of intoxication in ancient times?

Apollo sits on a carved ompholos stone—perhaps even a representation of the stone shown in the previous photo—on a coin (shown here) minted in Antioch in 225–223 B.C. Clearly, the Delphic oracle and its association with Apollo were well known throughout the ancient world in Hellenistic times. By the first century A.D., however, the Pythia’s powers were failing, perhaps because the volume of gases flowing into the adyton had decreased—and by the fourth century, the demise of the oracle was complete. Photo: American Numismatic Society.

The ancient sources describe two distinct types of prophetic trance experienced by the Pythia. First, and more normally, she would lapse into benign semi-consciousness, during which she remained seated on the tripod, responding to questions—though in a strangely altered voice. According to Plutarch, once the Pythia recovered from this trance, she was in a composed and relaxed state, like a runner after a race. A second kind of trance involved a frenzied delirium characterized by wild movements of the limbs, harsh groaning and inarticulate cries. When the Pythia experienced this delirium, Plutarch reports, she died after only a few days—and a new Pythia took her place.

According to toxicologist Henry Spiller, both of these symptoms are associated with the inhalation of hydrocarbon gases. Spiller studies the effects of such inhalants on young people, known as “huffers,” who breathe in fumes from gas, glue, paint thinner and other substances because of their intoxicating properties. Perhaps the Pythia too was high on one of these hydrocarbon gases.

It may even be possible to identify the kind of gas. Plutarch—who, we recall, was a priest of Apollo at the Delphic sanctuary—noted that the intoxicating pneuma had a sweet smell, like expensive perfume. Of the hydrocarbon gases, only ethylene has a sweet smell—so ethylene was probably a component in the gaseous emission inhaled by the Pythia.

Now, there is a good deal of evidence concerning ethylene intoxication, particularly from the early 20th century. In laboratory tests involving human subjects, the pioneering anesthesiologist Isabella Herb and other scientists studied the effects of light doses of ethylene. Ethylene worked twice as fast as nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and achieved similar effects with only half the quantity. In high concentrations, ethylene produced complete unconsciousness; in low concentrations, it induced a trance state. Ultimately, ethylene’s use as a medical anesthetic was discontinued because of its combustibility: A spark from electrical equipment in the operating room could ignite the ethylene canister, causing it to explode.⁴

From the evidence of “huffers” and the experiments with ethylene, we know that subjects normally react to inhaling small quantities of these gases by entering a benign “out-of-body” trance. They can remain seated and answer questions, but their tone of voice and typical speech patterns are altered. Recovery takes place as soon as the subject is removed from exposure to the gas, and complete amnesia about the trance follows. In a minority of cases (about one in six) in the ethylene experiments, subjects experienced delirium, or a “bad trip.” Experimenters had to use restraints to hold down those undergoing this delirium, which was accompanied by groaning, shrieking and a thrashing of the arms and legs.

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Unfortunately, no detailed accounts of the Pythia’s behavior survive from the golden age (seventh to fifth century B.C.) of the Delphic oracle. By the time Plutarch took office as priest of Apollo at Delphi, the oracle’s powers had significantly diminished. According to Plutarch, emissions of pneuma in the adyton were slight and unpredictable, leading to the decline of the oracle itself. He suggested that whatever produced the pneuma in the rock below the temple had become exhausted, or that the fissures in the rock had been blocked up in the 373 B.C. earthquake. The Delphic oracle never recovered its former prestige after this earthquake, even though the temple was rebuilt.

The diminished flow of gas may not have been the only reason for the decline of the institution. Plutarch opined that the pneuma was merely a trigger for the prophetic trance, and that the Pythia’s lifelong training and psychological preparation played the most important role in her spiritual possession. In a memorable simile, Plutarch compared Apollo to a musician, the Pythia to a lyre, and the pneuma to the musician’s uncanny ability to produce music by touching the instrument. Perhaps there were socio-cultural reasons for the decline of the institution, or perhaps, as the gaseous emissions became less powerful, devoting one’s life to the oracle became less attractive.

Whatever the reasons for the oracle’s demise, we can no longer dismiss ancient traditions concerning its origins and power. Strabo, Plutarch and the others have been rescued by science from a century of calumny.

Read the Bible History Daily feature Medicine in the Ancient World.

The House of Apollo: A History

The Delphic oracle appears often in Greek myth, even in the account of the repopulating of the earth after a great flood. The high god Zeus, distressed over mankind’s wickedness, sends a flood to cover the earth, but two pious human beings, Deucalion (Prometheus’s son) and Pyrrha (Prometheus’s niece), survive by climbing Mount Parnassus. With the ebbing of the flood, the two descend the mountain and come upon the Delphic temple site, where they hear a voice: “Veil your heads and cast behind you the bones of your mother!” Like many of the Delphic oracles, this one is initially enigmatic, but Deucalion and Pyrrha soon realize that the earth is their mother; so they throw rocks over their shoulders, and the rocks are transformed into men and women, saving humanity from perdition.

Photo: Erich Lessing.

Another famous, or infamous, visit to the oracle was made by the young Oedipus—who, having been adopted as a baby, wanted to know the identity of his parents. (The third-century A.D. marble relief above shows Oedipus [center] sacrificing to the Delphic oracle in front of a statue of Apollo [left].) However, the Delphic oracle informed the young man that he would murder his father and commit incest with his mother. To foil the prophecy, Oedipus left Corinth, which he (erroneously) believed to be his native land. On his journey he killed another chariot-driver in a fit of ancient road rage—but unknown to him, the other driver was his father Laius, King of Thebes.

The oracle at Delphi was also consulted by non-mythical figures. In the sixth century B.C., King Croesus of Lydia, in western Anatolia, inquired whether he should attack King Cyrus of Persia. “If you attack,” replied the Pythia, “you will destroy a great kingdom.” Croesus attacked the Persians, suffered total defeat, and saw his kingdom absorbed into the Persian Empire. Croesus had destroyed a great kingdom—his own.

Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

More than a century later, the philosopher Socrates—shown above in a Hellenistic bust—reminded the Athenians at his trial in 399 B.C. that the oracle had declared him the wisest of men, a fact that did not save him from execution.

Photo: David Harris/Collection Israel Museum

After Greece was conquered by Rome, a number of Roman emperors posed questions to the oracle. Nero (54–68 A.D.) was warned to beware the 73rd year, and he was later assassinated by troops who made the 73-year-old Galba emperor in his place. Hadrian (117–138 A.D.), shown in the bronze statue above, ever the intellectual, wanted to know the birthplace of the poet Homer. (The Pythia’s answer: Homer was the grandson of Odysseus and born at Ithaca.) The oracle advised Diocletian (284–305 A.D.) to persecute Christians—which Christians avenged by destroying a number of oracle sites in the fourth century A.D. Finally, the envoys of the pagan Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (361–363 A.D.) received word of the oracle’s demise from the Pythia: “Tell the king the fair-built hall has fallen; Apollo now has no house or oracular laurel or prophetic spring; the water is silent.”

Notes

a. The oracle at Delphi was not the only ancient oracle, though it was the most powerful. Other Greek oracles were located at Epidaurus and in Asia Minor at Colophon and Didyma. Italy’s most famous oracle was at Cumae (near Naples), where a sibyl, or priestess, prophesied in a cavern; originally, the sibyl’s utterances were inscribed on palm leaves.

b. “Pythia” derives from the original name of the site, Pytho. Homer, for instance, refers to Apollo’s “shrine in Pytho” (Odyssey 8.94). The name “Delphi” came later.

c. However, this was not so among such Greek scholars as Spyridon Marinatos (1901–1974), the excavator of ancient Thera (modern Santorini), which was buried in a volcanic eruption around 1638 B.C. Marinatos argued that Delphi’s active geological history made it difficult to know what changes might have occurred over the past two millennia. He also made a report on an anemotrypa (wind hole) in the modern town of Delphi—a small cleft in the rock that emitted gas with a sulfurous smell. Scholars outside Greece ignored these ideas.

1. A.P. Oppé, “The Chasm at Delphi,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 24 (1904), pp. 214–240.

2. M.F. Courby, Topographie et architecture: la terasse du Temple: Fouilles de Delphes (1927), vol. 11, pp. 65–66.

3. Pierre Amandry, La mantique apollinienne a Delphes: Boccard (Paris, 1950), pp. 215–230.

4. See Isabella Herb, “Ethylene: Notes Taken from the Clinical Records,” in Anesthesia and Analgesia (December, 1923), pp. 210, 231–232; Herb, “Further Clinical Experiments with Ethylene-Oxygen Anesthesia,” Anesthesia and Analgesia (December, 1927), pp. 258–262; A.B. Luckhardt and J.B. Carter, “Physiologic Effects of Ethylene: A New Gas Anesthetic,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 80 (January–June 1923), pp. 765–770.

“Was She Really Stoned?” by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and John R. Hale appeared in the November/December 2002 issue of Archaeology Odyssey. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in May 2013.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Lay That Ghost: Necromancy in Ancient Greece and Rome

Solomon, Socrates and Aristotle

Who Were the Minoans?

Stoa Poikile Excavations in the Athenian Agora

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Amid the remains of a fourth- or fifth-century church at Hierapolis, one of the most significant Christian sites in Turkey, Francesco D’Andria found this first-century Roman tomb that he believes once held the remains of the apostle Philip. Photo: Archive of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Hierapolis.

At about the same time as the July/August 2011 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review was hitting the newsstands, containing an article about St. Philip’s Martyrium,* author and excavation director Francesco D’Andria was making an exciting new discovery in the field at Hierapolis, one of the most significant sites in Christian Turkey. A month later he announced it: They had finally found the tomb of the martyred apostle Philip.

The tomb wasn’t discovered at the center of the octagonal hilltop martyrium as long expected, however, but in a newly excavated church about 40 yards away. D’Andria’s team found a first-century Roman tomb located at the center of the new church, which he says originally contained Philip’s remains. This early church of Christian Turkey was built around the tomb in the fourth or fifth century, and the nearby martyrium was built around the same time, in the early fifth century.

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The remains of the apostle Philip are no longer in the tomb, however. According to D’Andria, the saint’s relics were very likely moved from Hierapolis to Constantinople at the end of the sixth century and then possibly taken to Rome and placed in the newly dedicated Church of St. Philip and St. John (now the Church of the Holy Apostles), although 12th-century reports describe seeing Philip’s remains still in Constantinople, the seat of Christian Turkey.

This sixth-century bread stamp shows two churches from the site of Hierapolis in Christian Turkey: the domed martyrium on the right, and the newly-discovered church containing Philip’s tomb on the left. Photo: © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond/The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund/Photo: Katherine Wetzel.

This new discovery also sheds light on the wonderful imagery of the rare sixth-century bronze bread stamp from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts that we published in our article about Philip’s Martyrium. The structures on either side of the saint can now be identified as the domed martyrium (on the right) and the new Byzantine basilical church containing the tomb of the apostle Philip (on the left), both of which were important Christian sites in Turkey.

Based on Strata, “Philip’s Tomb Discovered—But Not Where Expected,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2012.

A team led by excavation director Francesco D’Andria in Hierapolis also uncovered the remains of Pluto’s Gate, a site considered an entrance into the underworld in the Greco-Roman period. Read about it in Bible History Daily.

Notes

* Francesco D’Andria, “Conversion, Crucifixion and Celebration,” Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2011.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in January 2012.—Ed.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Hierapolis and the Gateway to Hell

Apostle Philip’s Tomb Found in Turkey

Paul and the Slave Girl in Philippi

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library:

Did Philip Baptize the Eunuch at Ein Yael?

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The post Tomb of Apostle Philip Found appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Pluto’s Gate in ancient Hierapolis was considered a gateway to hell and sacred to the underworld deity Pluto. Photo: Francesco D’Andria, Discovery.

Shrouded in misty poisonous vapors, Pluto’s Gate, or the Plutonium, was a cave entrance sacred to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. According to the first-century geographer Strabo, the site was home to rituals in which any animals entering the enclosure “meet with sudden death.”

Hierapolis archaeologist Francesco D’Andria reconstructed the route of the area’s thermal spring to discover Pluto’s Gate, which was destroyed by Christians in the sixth century. The Plutonium’s infamous mystique is not just the stuff of legend; during the excavation, several birds were killed by carbon dioxide emissions as they approached the Plutonium cave’s entrance.

During the excavation, poisonous fumes from Pluto’s Gate killed several birds, echoing the seemingly mythological tales recorded by Strabo. Photo: Francesco D’Andria, Discovery.

This is not the first astounding discovery at D’Andria’s excavation at Hierapolis, located next to the often-visited hot springs and travertines at the World Heritage Site of Pamukkale. According to the apocryphal Acts of Philip, the apostle Philip preached and converted many Hierapolis residents, yet he was martyred there nonetheless. An octagonal church was built in Hierapolis to memorialize the saint, and a sixth-century bread stamp depicts Philip standing at the very site. The publication of D’Andria’s article “Conversion, Crucifixion and Celebration” in the July/August 2011 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review was followed by the discovery of a small church that D’Andria believes to be the tomb of St. Philip.

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“CASTLE OF COTTON.” The translation of Pamukkale, the modern Turkish name for the area near Hierapolis, aptly describes the breathtaking natural travertine formations at the site. Hierapolis sits on an active seismic fault line that has created earthquakes and hot springs over the millennia, the latter an early attraction of the site. The precipitation of minerals from the geothermal hot springs harden into the sedimentary rock travertine and form the so-called “cotton flowers” that continue to attract visitors. Photo: Archive of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Hierapolis.

Hierapolis’s gateway to hell was an important sacred space in the city. The first-century traveler Strabo described its deadly properties:

The Plutonium, below a small brow of the mountainous country that lies above it, is an opening of only moderate size, large enough to admit a man, but it reaches a considerable depth, and it is enclosed by a quadrilateral handrail, about half a plethrum in circumference, and this space is full of a vapour so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Now to those who approach the handrail anywhere round the enclosure the air is harmless, since the outside is free from that vapor in calm weather, for the vapor then stays inside the enclosure, but any animal that passes inside meets instant death. At any rate, bulls that are led into it fall and are dragged out dead; and I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell. But the Galli, who are eunuchs, pass inside with such impunity that they even approach the opening, bend over it, and descend into it to a certain depth, though they hold their breath as much as they can (for I could see in their countenances an indication of a kind of suffocating attack, as it were)—whether this immunity belongs to all who are maimed in this way or only to those round the temple, or whether it is because of divine providence, as would be likely in the case of divine obsessions, or whether it is, the result of certain physical powers that are antidotes against the vapor (Strabo, Geography 13.4.14, trans. by Horace Leonard Jones).

 

Read more about Pluto’s Gate at Hierapolis.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

King Midas and His Golden Touch at the Penn Museum

The Oracle of Delphi—Was She Really Stoned?

Tomb of Apostle Philip Found

Where Is Biblical Colossae?

The Church of Laodicea in the Bible and Archaeology

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 1, 2013.

The post Hierapolis and the Gateway to Hell appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

King Midas was an actual historical figure. During the mid-eighth century B.C.E. he ruled from Gordion (Turkey), the royal capital of the powerful Iron Age kingdom of Phrygia. One of the large royal buildings uncovered at Gordion is likely his palace. Many artifacts, sumptuous architecture, massively built fortification walls and the contents of 36 tumulus burials from Gordion have now been excavated.

Gordion is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the Near East and was once violently destroyed by a massive fire. It is where Alexander The Great supposedly cut the Gordion Knot during his 333 B.C.E. campaign against the Persian Empire.

In addition to relating the history of Gordion, Dr. Rose will present an illustrated overview of the most recent fieldwork there, including: new discoveries at the monumental burial mound built by Midas for his father; a new circuit of fortifications revealed by remote sensing; and the latest architectural conservation at the site.

Click here for more information.

Our free eBook Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries brings together the exciting worlds of archaeology and the Bible! Learn the fascinating insights gained from artifacts and ruins, like the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored the sight of the blind man, and the Tel Dan inscription—the first historical evidence of King David outside the Bible.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

King Midas and His Golden Touch at the Penn Museum
Hierapolis and the Gateway to Hell
The Last Days of Hattusa
Amphipolis Excavation: Discoveries in Alexander the Great-Era Tomb Dazzle the World

The post D.C.-Area Archaeology Event: The Golden Age of King Midas appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

King Midas, who inspired the legendary story of King Midas and his golden touch, ruled over Phrygia from his capital at Gordion. Here, the massive burial mound known as Tumulus MM can been seen in the distance at Gordion in central Turkey. The tomb is thought to be the final resting place of King Gordios, Midas’s father. Photo: 1958, Penn Museum Gordion Archive, G-3312.

Everyone knows the story of King Midas and his golden touch. In Greco-Roman mythology, the Phrygian king Midas was offered anything he wished from Bacchus, the god of wine, for showing kindness to Bacchus’s teacher, Silenus. Midas wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. While it amazed Midas that everything he then touched became gold—from a twig to a husk of corn—he soon discovered just how reckless his request was, for he could not eat or drink anything but gold (Ovid, Metamorphoses, XI:85–145).

The historical King Midas inspired this character in Classical mythology. King Midas ruled over a group of people known as the Phrygians in central Anatolia (modern Turkey). It was during the reign of Midas (c. 750–700 B.C.E.) that Phrygia reached the height of its wealth and power. Indeed, archaeological excavations at Gordion, the capital of Phrygia, revealed a massive citadel complex and a series of wealthy tombs dating to the reign of Midas. At the end of the eighth century, the citadel was destroyed in a major fire, possibly due to the invasion of the Cimmerians from the east.

Our free eBook Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries brings together the exciting worlds of archaeology and the Bible! Learn the fascinating insights gained from artifacts and ruins, like the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored the sight of the blind man, and the Tel Dan inscription—the first historical evidence of King David outside the Bible.

On February 13, 2016, in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology opened the exhibit The Golden Age of King Midas. Objects from a spectacular tomb at Gordion believed to belong to King Gordios, Midas’s father, are on display, including large bronze cauldrons (likely used to hold beer), bronze drinking bowls and intricate bronze fibulae (ancient safety pins). Also included in the exhibit are funerary objects from other royal tombs and a late-ninth-century B.C.E. pebble mosaic floor (the oldest known in the world) from Gordion as well as dazzling artifacts from the neighboring Scythians, Lydians, Urartians, Assyrians and Persians.

Inside Tumulus MM, archaeologists found an assemblage of artifacts from a funeral feast for the deceased Phrygian ruler—likely Midas’s father—including bronze cauldrons and bronze drinking bowls. Photo: 1957, Penn Museum Gordion Archive, G-2390.

In the November/December 2001 issue of Archaeology Odyssey, G. Kenneth Sams, Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and project director of the Gordion excavations, describes the Phrygians’ fine metalworking techniques and the cosmopolitan atmosphere in which they lived:

The Phrygians’ bronze- and iron-working brought them into contact with peoples to the west and east. The raw materials—copper, tin, iron ore—may have come from as far away as eastern Europe. Their production techniques, however, show an indebtedness to the Phoenicians, Syrians and Hittites. Some of the bronzes, such as a pair of large cauldrons with winged human creatures attached to their rims, are probably eastern imports from the Syro-Hittite cultural zone. Most others, however, including the numerous mold-made fibulae on Midas’s burial shroud [now thought to belong to Midas’s father], were probably made in Phrygian workshops. Among the more sumptuous bronze objects are elaborate belts with leather backings. Three examples from [a] child’s tomb are engraved with intricate meander motifs resembling the designs of woodworkers and weavers.

A bronze double-pinned fibula (ancient safety pin) from Tumulus MM. Photo: Penn Museum Gordion Archive, G-2561.

The Golden Age of King Midas showcases the magnificent objects that have come to light in the Gordion excavations, which began in 1950 under the auspices of the Penn Museum and are ongoing today. Running from February 13 through November 27, 2016, the exhibit features 150 artifacts from the Penn Museum’s own collection as well as from Turkish museums in Ankara, Istanbul, Antalya and Gordion.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 15, 2016.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Hierapolis and the Gateway to Hell
The Last Days of Hattusa
The Decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

The post King Midas and His Golden Touch at the Penn Museum appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Tel Kabri’s Katie David and Marielle Velandar.

As we ring in the New Year, archaeologists are already eyeing the calendar to prepare for next summer’s field season. Here at the Biblical Archaeology Society, we are looking forward to sharing a new year of archaeological finds with our online community in 2014. The New Year is a time to reflect, and we’ve put together a list of the top ten Biblical archaeology finds from 2013. We would love to hear which archaeology finds were most interesting for our readers, so please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

**The stories below are listed in no particular order and all are available for free in Bible History Daily**

Rare Egyptian Sphinx Fragment Discovered at Hazor
For more on the Hazor excavations, read the Bible History Daily feature Hazor Excavations’ Amnon Ben-Tor Reveals Who Conquered Biblical Canaanites.

Jerusalem’s Earliest Alphabetic Text
A recent reading of the inscribed pottery fragment suggests that it refers to a cheap type of wine.

Legio: Excavations at the Camp of the Roman Sixth Ferrata Legion in Israel
A web-exclusive report on the discovery of the Roman military camp by the excavation directors.

Eshtaol Excavations Reveal the Oldest House in the Shephelah

Hierapolis and the Gateway to Hell

One of Civilization’s Oldest Wine Cellars? Tel Kabri Cellar Held Equivalent of Nearly 3,000 Bottles of Reds and Whites
I’ll admit a personal interest in this story–I took part in the Tel Kabri excavations this year. Learn more about the Minoan-style frescoes at Kabri, or visit the BAS Tel Kabri page for posts and photos on the 2013 field season published directly from the field.

A Monumental Underwater Structure in the Sea of Galilee

The Ophel Treasure: A “once-in-a-lifetime discovery” at the foot of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount

King David’s Palace at Khirbet Qeiyafa?
For more on the monumental building uncovered in final season at Khirbet Qeiyafa, read the Bible History Daily feature Khirbet Qeiyafa and Tel Lachish Excavations Explore Early Kingdom of Judah.

Bronze Age Collapse: Pollen Study Highlights Late Bronze Age Drought

Our free eBook Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries brings together the exciting worlds of archaeology and the Bible! Learn the fascinating insights gained from artifacts and ruins, like the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored the sight of the blind man, and the Tel Dan inscription—the first historical evidence of King David outside the Bible.

2013 was a thrilling year for Biblical archaeologists, and the discoveries listed above were certainly not the only important archaeological finds of the year. Take a look at these additional archaeological finds uncovered in 2013:

New Huqoq Mosaics: Huqoq synagogue in Israel reveals additional depictions of Samson in the Bible

Hasmonean Jerusalem Exposed in Time for Hanukkah: Hasmonean era no longer absent from Jerusalem’s archaeological record

Mikveh Discovery Highlights Ritual Bathing in Second Temple Period Jerusalem

Private Lives of Jerusalem Elites Revealed in Mt. Zion Excavations

Hidden from View: New Jerusalem discovery may evidence starvation during Roman siege

Roman Curse Tablet Uncovered in Jerusalem’s City of David
Think these archaeological finds should have been included in the top ten? Please share your thoughts in the discussion section below.

Check out the top archaeological discoveries in 2012, 2014 and 2015.

The post Top 10 Archaeological Finds in 2013 appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

A menorah from the Library of Celsus at Ephesus.

Samuel Fishman
Bethesda, Maryland

Mark R. Fairchild responds:
The menorah is the most distinctive image that identifies a Jewish presence in ancient Anatolia (today’s Turkey). These are most commonly etched upon the lintels of synagogues or on sarcophagi or displayed on mosaic floors. In addition to the one on the steps of the Celsus Library in Ephesus, others are found, for example, at Nicaea, where the menorah is in secondary use, framing a fountain under a church. This was likely a part of a synagogue at Nicaea. At the well-known synagogue in Sardis, a menorah can be seen in situ in the courtyard.* This is hard to see, except after a rain when the inscription is accentuated. Workers at Priene discovered three menorahs at the synagogue (two still in situ).** Another menorah was found with the discovery of the synagogue at Andriake, although this has been removed and is now in the museum at Antalya. Other menorahs can be seen at the bouleuterion at Aphrodisias*** and in the necropolis of Hierapolis.

All of these are in western Anatolia. Much less has been discovered in central and eastern Anatolia. Yet literary and epigraphic evidence indicates a strong Jewish presence throughout ancient Anatolia. Aside from the menorahs and two synagogues found at Çatiören and Korykos, there is little to be seen in the east. In my recent trip to Cilicia I photographed six menorahs on sarcophagi at Korykos and another two that are possible menorahs (they are too weather-beaten be sure). I also saw what appears to be a second menorah at Çatiören. Graffiti in an underground granery at Kabacam shows ships and perhaps another menorah. Central and eastern Turkey have not been well explored, and I’m sure there is a lot more to be found.

* Crawford, John S. “Multiculturalism at Sardis.” Biblical Archaeology Review, Sep/Oct 1996, 38-42, 44-47, 70.

** “BAR Helps Shed Light on Priene” sidebar to Joey Corbett, “New Synagogue Excavations in Israel and Beyond,” Biblical Archaeology Review July/August 2011.

*** Angelos Chaniotis, “Godfearers in the City of Love,” Biblical Archaeology Review May/June 2010.
 

 
Is Gezer of Gaza Referred to in the Sheshonq Inscription?
On the second paragraph on page 50 of the July/August 2012 of BAR(“Did Pharaoh Sheshonq Attack Jerusalem?”), it is mentioned that a site name “begins with G … It is probably Gaza.” The interpretation that it is Gaza is not possible. The city called in English “Gaza” is an incorrect transliteration of the Hebrew Biblical city by the name of Azza (חזע), mentioned in Genesis 10:19, Deuteronomy 2:23, Joshua 10:41, Judges 16:21, 1 Samuel 6:17, 1 Kings 5:4, 2 Kings 8:18, Jeremiah 25:20, 47:1,5, Amos 1:6-7, Zephaniah 2:4 and other Biblical books (JPS).

On the other hand the name Gezer (ר ז ג) appears in the Bible in Joshua 10:33 and 12:12 as having a king, and in it says that Pharaoh conquered Gezer, burned it and the people and then gave it as a dowry for his daughter who married King Solomon.

Dahlia Perahia
San Jose, California

Yigal Levin responds:
The Hebrew letter ayin originally represented two sounds: the guttural sound that is used today (by speakers of Hebrew who pronounce their ayins correctly, and not as if they were alephs), and a deeper sound, which is somewhere between an R and a G. In English this second sound is usually represented as “gh.” We know this because some Semitic writing systems differentiated between the two. In the ancient world, Ugaritic had different letters for each, and Arabic still does to this today—ayin and ghayin. In the 22-letter alphabet used by Canaanite, Hebrew, Aramaic and other languages, the two sounds were represented by the letter that we call ayin, but the second sound was eventually forgotten. The name of the city of Gaza begins with the second kind, and in Arabic it is still called “Ghaza” to this day. The reason that it is called “Gaza” in English (and in other languages) is because when the Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint), the “gh” was still being pronounced. This is also why “Sedom and Amorah” are “Sodom and Gomorrah” in English.

So when I wrote that the “G” visible in the name-ring could have referred to Gaza, I really meant Ghaza. Gezer might be represented in the next name-ring. However the Pharaoh who conquered Gezer and gave it to Solomon could not have been Shishak, since he only invaded the land of Israel five years after Solomon’s death.
 

 
Calvin and Inerrancy
In his Biblical Views column (“Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?” July/August 2012), Ronald S. Hendel states that “Calvin did not think that the Bible is inerrant.”

In an article on this very topic, Dr. Roger Nicole quotes Calvin’s commentary on 2 Timothy 3:16:

“This is the principle that distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God has spoken to us and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak of themselves, but as organs of the Holy Spirit uttered only that which they had been commissioned from heaven to declare. All those who wish to profit from the Scriptures must first accept this as a settled principle, that the Law and the prophets are not teachings handled on at the pleasure of men or produced by men’s minds as their source, but are dictated by the Holy Spirit. If anyone object and ask how this can be known, my reply is that it is by the revelation of the same Spirit both to learners and teachers that God is made known as its Author. Moses and the prophets did not utter rashly and at random what we have received from them, but, speaking by God’s impulse, they boldly and fearlessly testified the truth that it was the mouth of the Lord that spoke through them. The same Spirit who made Moses and the prophets so sure of their vocation now also bears witnesses to our hearts that He has made use of them as ministers by whom to teach us … This is the meaning of the first clause, that we owe to the Scripture the same reverence as we owe to God, since it has its only source in Him and has nothing of human origin mixed with it.”1

I agree with most of Dr. Hendel’s article. Even those of us who believe in Biblical inerrancy understand the need to guarantee as much as possible the integrity and accuracy of the texts, since we don’t have the autographs.

Thomas S. Fortner
Burleson, Texas

1 “John Calvin and Inerrancy,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 25, no. 4 (1982), pp. 425-442).

Ronald S. Hendel responds:
Mr. Fortner is correct that Calvin emphasized the principle that in the Bible “God has spoken to us.” But Calvin also emphasized that God accommodated his message to the limited intellect of humans and their often incorrect ideas about the world. This is how Calvin can also speak of Scripture as conforming to “the capacity of the vulgar” and including “rudiments suitable to children” (comments on Genesis 2:8 and 3:1). The basic idea is that God knows how things really are, but when he spoke to Israelite authors (Moses, prophets, etc.), he “simplified” some aspects of his message in order to accommodate them to the worldview of antiquity. In some peripheral aspects of his speech, God traded truth for comprehensibility (a trait of any good teacher). For Calvin, therefore, the Bible is inspired but not inerrant. The relationship between these two categories is important to understand Biblical theology of the Reformers.
 

 
We All Live with Uncertainty—Even Hendel
I was a bit surprised by Dr. Hendel’s disparagement of Alan Plantinga. After having read Dr. Plantinga’s Warrented Christian Belief several times, a book of over 500 pages and the last of a trilogy of philosophical treatments, Dr. Hendel’s offense and response seem small and narrow. I’m not trying to take sides or protect Plantinga, but I found his work complex, deep, insightful and coming from a philosophical perspective, which means he uses the critical methodology of philosophy. Plantinga does call attention to the limitations and conflicted conclusions of historical Biblical criticism. Whether one agrees or not with Plantinga, there are practicing Biblical critics who share his critical view that the paucity of historical data calls for extreme caution in drawing hardcore scientific conclusions. We all live with the uncertainties of life despite having the light of scientific epistemology and methodology. This milieu is bound to cause clashes. It would be exciting to hear Drs. Hendel and Plantinga in a friendly conversation about the issues raised in the article rather than in the once-removed offering we have.

Jim Kutz
Arlington, Washington

Ronald S. Hendel responds:
I agree that Plantinga is a distinguished philosopher. What surprised me in reading his book was that he holds Biblical scholarship to a different standard than philosophical scholarship. He follows the normal procedures of critical scholarship in philosophy—evaluating evidence, arguments, probabilities, and making logically warranted proposals—but when he turns to Biblical scholarship he leaves critical epistemology behind and uses a particular evangelical revision of Calvin’s theology as his standard. This changes the rules in the middle of the game. (And, as I pointed out in my column, it misrepresents Calvin.) This is why I registered my dismay at Plantinga’s dismissal of modern Biblical scholarship. There are many deep and complicated issues involved here, as you rightly observe. My point is that a simple rejection of historical Biblical scholarship (including its procedures and epistemology) simply doesn’t work.
 

 
Critical Biblical Scholarship—A Response
In “Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?” in the July/ August 2012 issue of BAR, Ronald Hendel wrote, “There’s no good reason to be hostile toward good scholarship.” In a web-exclusive response, Biblical scholar Alan Millard asks, “What is good scholarship?” Millard examines the merits and flaws of critical, skeptical and respectful scholarship to suggest that all must leave room for alternate opinions.

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by Richard Bauckham

Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006, 504 pages
$32.00
 
Reviewed by Ben Witherington, III
 
There are books that are interesting, there are books that are important and then there are seminal studies that serve as road markers for the field, pointing the way forward. Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is in the latter category, to be sure. It thus deserves a thorough review, but a little background is in order.

Richard Bauckham and I have been friends for many years and have encouraged each other’s work. I was in St. Andrews University, in Scotland, last July to spend a week with Richard just before a wonderful conference on the Book of Hebrews, and the proofs of this book were sitting on his coffee table. He offered to let me read it, and I did. I realized at once the book’s importance, and Richard himself told me, in his reserved and understated British way, “I think this may be my most important book thus far.” I agree; it is indeed a seminal study, and we may be grateful for it coming now in the midst of so much nonsense being published about early Christianity and its documents.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is to a great extent based on a close reading of the Papias traditions found in Eusebius and elsewhere. Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis, in Turkey, and was one of those bridging figures in Christian history who lived during the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century A.D. and thus had occasional contact with eyewitnesses to events in the New Testament and with those who had heard the eyewitnesses. Though Papias was a literate man, like so many in his oral culture he preferred the viva voce, the living voice, of oral testimony.

Bauckham believes very much in the importance of eyewitness testimony, including that of Papias, which suggests that there was a close connection between various of the canonical Gospels and eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus, with Mark connected to Peter, and John connected to at least John the Elder (otherwise known as John of Patmos, the author of Revelation but not of the other Johannine documents), whom Papias himself met and discoursed with.

Part of Bauckham’s intention is to show that the old form-critical ways of looking at Gospel traditions were wrong. According to classic form criticism (the basis of the work of the Jesus Seminar), early Christian traditions circulated anonymously in communities that were viewed as if they were faceless collectives (for example, the “Q community”). Bauckham thinks this theory is deeply flawed and suggests instead that there were personal links from the Jesus tradition to known and named tradents (carriers of tradition) throughout the period of transmission right down to when these traditions were included in the Gospels. Bauckham is quite right to insist that analogies with modern folklore to explain how ancient Gospel traditions were handled are simply wrong and anachronistic. The period between the time of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels is relatively short (between 30 and 60-some years, depending on the Gospel), and during that entire time there were still eyewitnesses who could act as checks and balances to the formation of the early Christian tradition. The “period between the ?historical’ Jesus and the Gospels was actually spanned, not by anonymous community transmission, but by the continuing presence and testimony of eyewitnesses, who remained the authoritative sources of their traditions until their deaths,” Bauckham writes.

The Papias traditions, as Bauckham reminds us, are available to us only in fragments, mainly in quotations from Eusebius. Eusebius had no high opinion of Papias, but for a particular reason. He called Papias a “stupid” man because he was a millenarian, which means that Papias believed that when Jesus returned from heaven there would be a paradise-like state upon the earth for some one thousand years. Eusebius’ dislike for this eschatology led to his dislike for those who promoted it, such as Papias. But, begrudgingly, Eusebius allows that Papias had some important contacts and knew some important things about the first two generations of Christians. Papias was personally acquainted with the daughters of Philip the Evangelist (Acts 21:8-9) and he also had met and talked with John the Elder. From these sorts of people he learned about the Twelve and other original apostles and eyewitnesses (see Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae 3.39.9).

Bauckham is not merely inclined to think that Papias tells us the truth about such things as the origins of the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John; he is convinced that these documents are based ultimately on reliable eyewitness testimony. Bauckham throughout the study seeks to provide a model for considering the issue of eyewitness testimony that comports with the early Jewish environment from which these testimonies came. He believes that trustworthy testimony can and should be believed, but he is not appealing to some sort of uncritical or pre-critical way of handling such data, nor does he accept the old canard that ancient historians and biographers, such as the writers of the Gospels, were incapable of thinking critically about history and other related matters. For instance, Bauckham quotes Polybius one of the foremost Greek historians of the Hellenistic era, who describes the historian’s task as “to believe those worthy of belief and to be a good critic of the reports that reach him.”

As the book progresses we discover that Bauckham deals in some detail with how sacred and historical traditions were passed down in early Judaism and then in early Christianity. As he points out, the Gospel traditions were not anonymous to begin with, nor were the Gospels themselves. The traditions and then the documents were linked to named persons—well-known named persons—and it was the early Jewish practice to memorize sacred traditions so they could be passed on faithfully from one tradent to another. There was not a long period of transmission of these traditions, and there was often a direct link, or a close link, with eyewitnesses. The analogy Bauckham draws between modern oral historians and ancient Gospel writers, both of whom sought out eyewitnesses to hear the stories “from the horse’s mouth” is plausible, indeed far more plausible than the view that early Christian traditions underwent a long gestation period that is analogous to the way folk literature and myth develop.

Bauckham also reminds us that ancient historians thought that history had to be written during a time when eyewitnesses were still available to be cross-examined. This is why, for example, Luke’s preface in 1:1-4 reads as it does. Unlike modern historians, who range over a much longer chronological trajectory examining sources that they certainly cannot double-check by turning to eyewitnesses, most ancient historians and biographers (especially the former) limited themselves to subjects that could be addressed while the living voice and the eyewitness were still available.

One of the more interesting analogies Bauckham draws is between modern eyewitness testimonies to the Holocaust and ancient testimonies about the Christ event. Very few modern historians would discredit all such Holocaust testimonies (the President of Iran not withstanding), and indeed most find such eyewitness testimonies very credible and personal, even if they should be critically sifted and even though we are now some 60 years beyond the end of the Second World War. Bauckham’s point is that people such as the Gospel writers, and Papias after them, operated in a similar environment—dealing with history-making events that were vividly remembered and often faithfully reported. Further, those writers, like modern Holocaust survivors, were anxious that the story be told straight and that it get out and be widely disseminated. Finally, there is also the point that the distance in time between modern Holocaust survivors’ current testimonies and the events, and the Gospels and the events they record is the same—even in the case of the latest of the Gospels to be written, the Fourth Gospel, called John’s.

There is much more to interact with and commend in this fine book, but in a brief review we must be content with asking, What is the upshot of Bauckham’s discussion? It is that the original Christian Gospels need to be taken far more seriously as sources of reliable historical testimony about the life of Jesus, his words and deeds, his disciples and demise, and the aftermath thereto. They were neither created nor passed along in the form that modern form critics (such as Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius) thought. We do not have in those Gospels “cleverly devised myths” or stories only loosely based on history, but rather eyewitness testimonies and traditions that in many cases the witnesses were prepared to die for, so profoundly did they believe them to be true.

The Gospels were written by people who were indeed in touch with vivid eyewitness testimony about events that had been seared into their memory and had left indelible impressions. As it turns out, we may know more about the historical Jesus and his first followers than modern skeptics have suggested—far more, if Bauckham is right.
 

 
Ben Witherington is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University, Scotland.

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Italian archaeologists working at the site of Hierapolis in southwestern Turkey believe they have discovered the tomb of St. Philip, one of Jesus’ 12 apostles.

“As we were cleaning out the new church we discovered a month ago, we finally found the grave,” said D’Andria. “With close examination, we determined that the grave had been moved from its previous location in the St. Philip Church to this new church in the fifth century, during the Byzantine era.” D’Andria said the excavation of the tomb will begin in the near future.

*For the background story of the Apostle Philip, who was crucified upside down at Hierapolis, see the article, “Conversion, Crucifixion and Celebration,” by lead excavator Francesco D’Andria in the July/August 2011 issue of Biblical Archeology Review.

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