Walking through History…..

……and lessons from the Bible!

Our first stop was at the House of the Virgin Mary. Mary is said to have to come to this area 

together with Saint John, and the house on top "Bulbul" mountain was where she was said to 

have spent  her last days.
A sign at the entrance of the house mentioned that when Jesus died, he left his mother in the care of Saint John as he was given Asia minor to spread the gospel, he took Mary with this as the persecutions were to have started by that time. 

About few kilometers away is Ephesus where we headed next and I feel really lucky to have

been able to explore this ancient city because while it existing over 2000 years ago it just seemed so modern. Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city dating back to the 1st century BC. The city appeared to be well planned and well laid out. Apart from houses and underground water pipes they had hospitals, chemists, public baths, a library, an impressive open air theater built for 25,000 people. It was just as any modern city would have been built. As you walk around you see references to Persia, Alexander the Great, the Emperor Constantine and things you would only find in history books; and to imagine I was now walking down the same marble road as them.

The city of Ephesus was famed for the Temple of Artemis which was built around 550 BC and is now one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Thanks to our stop at this ancient wonder, this is now 2 down on my list of 7wonder sightings! Currently, the temple is represented only by one inconspicuous column. However, and this takes some imagination, if you think of a 127 such pillars the temple in its time must have been absolutely imposing.

We drove past the "Paul tower" where St Paul was imprisoned for a short time. Bible references capture letters he's written while imprisoned at this location. His imprisonment reminded me of a something I've always heard my grandmother say. She's always said that the God we worship is ‘omnipresent’ and hence we never worship idols. Now apparently, St Paul went around preaching the same thing and was then imprisoned because of a dispute with silversmiths whose livelihood depended on selling the statuettes of Artemis in the Temple of Artemis. If Nana lived in this time, she'd have never been popular with these silversmiths either.

They say the Gospel of Saint John might have been written in Ephesus. As we walked around the Basilica of St. John built in the 6th century AD, I wondered many times where he must have been sitting while writing this gospel and what he drew inspiration from. Had I ever read this gospel, I may have had more ideas!

Ephesus, was once the trade center of the ancient world and a religious center of early Christianity. So, this day was essentially like walking on the same ground as the apostles and all those other famous people from the past.