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HELEN
HAD GIVEN US
their big bedroom, and we fell asleep listening to the wind howl.
Still
suffering from jet lag, by 7 a.m. when the others got up I was already
sitting in the living room at my laptop, having had a cup of
coffee earlier with George who had already left for the farm. He
promised to come back for us at lunch time and take us to some of the
places Jesus had visited when he was in Corinth. George was very
familiar with the Urantia Book’s account, and had outlined a plan for
us, half today and the other half tomorrow.
After
breakfast, Joy and I spent the rest of the morning walking through modern Corinth, along the
waterfront, into some of the streets and past the building on Theotoki
111 where I had lived with Pat in 1980. I videotaped it all with my new
camera, this is one reason we have few regular shots of this day. What
amazed me most was that throughout
the town they were still digging up all the streets, just as they had
been doing seventeen years before when I lived there!
A
view of modern Corinth
At
noon we found George waiting for us on an agreed-upon corner. Everyone,
everywhere we went, smoked cigarettes, and this was annoying Joy to no
end. In the car, as
I watched George’s smoke waft straight into Joy’s nostrils and eyes,
I said, “George, I forget to tell you that Joy is allergic to
smoke.”
“I’m
sorry, Joy,” said George sympathetically, “I didn’t know you were
allergic to smoke.” But he continued to puff on his cigarette anyway!
George and Saskia
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A
SHORT HISTORY
OF CORINTH
There are four
different Corinths: New Corinth, Old Corinth, Ancient Corinth, and
Acrocorinth.
New Corinth is a modern seaport and center of trade for
olives, tobacco, raisins, and wine. New Corinth was built twice: First
in 1858 after Old Corinth, four miles southwest, was destroyed by an
earthquake, and rebuilt after another earthquake in 1928. Old Corinth is
now a village close to the ruins of Ancient Corinth, which was one of
the largest, wealthiest, most powerful, and oldest cities of ancient
Greece. Acrocorinth is the fortified
citadel, or acropolis, built high on a hill overlooking the ancient
city, and the site of the temple of Aphrodite.
First
inhabited in the Neolithic period (5000-3000 B.C.), Ancient Corinth
occupied a strategic position on the only land road from northern to
southern Greece and was the site of a strong fortress. Located in the
middle of a fertile land and sitting on an isthmus dividing the Greek
mainland from the Peloponnesus, Corinth
served two harbors: Lechaion and Kenchreai.
Corinth was
invaded by the Dorians (Adamsonite stock) around 1000 B.C. Under the rule
of tyrants Cypselus, his son Periander, and their successors, it became
a flourishing maritime power also known for its inventions in
architecture and music. Corinth reached its economic and artistic peak
in the fifth century B.C. becoming one of the three major powers
in Greece and taking part in all the battles against the Persians.
By
the fifth century B.C., a towpath (diolkos) across the isthmus (about 4
miles wide at the narrowest point) made it possible to haul ships from
one harbor to the other, permitting passage from the Adriatic to the
Aegean thus avoiding the perilous trip around the Peloponnesian cape. Heavy
taxes were imposed on the passage of goods across the isthmus, and
Corinth’s warehouses were filled with wheat from Sicily, papyrus from
Egypt, ivory from Libya, leather from Cyrenaica, incense from Arabia,
dates from Phoenicia, apples and pears from Euboia, carpets from
Carthage and slaves from Phrygia.
Corinth was
destroyed in 146 B.C by the Romans and rebuilt in 44 B.C. by Julius
Caesar. The center of the Roman city was organized to the south of the
temple of Apollo and included shops, small shrines, fountains, baths and
other public buildings. It became the
capital of Roman Greece and was mainly populated by freedmen and
Latin-speaking Jews. Living for centuries in a major crossroad
of world trade, inhabitants of Corinth were exposed to the philosophies
and religious practices of many cultures, and paid homage to foreign
as well as civic deities.
It
was during this Roman revival time that Jesus visited the city with
Gonod and Ganid, and it
was to this sophisticated metropolis that the Apostle Paul brought his
message of the “crucified Jesus Christ” in 50-51 A.D., staying in
Corinth for 18 months. The letters of 1 and 2 Corinthians are addressed
to Christians in the city: Prisca and Aquila with whom he lived and
engaged in tent making, and town notables Chloe, Stephanus, Gaius,
Crispus, and Erastus.
After the
invasion of the Herulians in A.D. 267, the city declined though it remained
inhabited for many centuries through successive invasions and
destructions, until it was liberated from the Turks in 1822.
Excavations
in the ancient city over the last 100 years have revealed the agora,
temples, fountains, shops, porticoes, baths and various other monuments,
all dominated by the imposing ruins of the Temple of Apollo, built in
550 A.D. Digging
has also extended to the fortress on Acrocorinthos, the prehistoric
settlements, the amphitheaters, the cemeteries, the Quarter of the
Potters, and other buildings outside the main archaeological site.
[http://www.culture.gr; Encyclopaedia Britannica]
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Our
first stop the harbor near Ancient Corinth where Jesus, Gonod and
Ganid had arrived by boat.
| From Nicopolis they sailed [to] Corinth, the capital
of the Roman province of Achaia. [1471] |
Ruins
of the harbor at Lechaion, when Jesus, Gonod and Ganid arrived by boat.
There
was little evidence of the harbor to be seen, but George pointed out
some stones in the ground where they used to carry the boats across the
land.
From there we went on a tour of Ancient Corinth. (It
was a hilly drive, and whenever the car went down a steep incline,
George would turn off the motor and coast in order to save gasoline.)
| A typical visitor to the ancient city of Corinth would
have approached it along the paved stones of the Lechaion Road, which
went from the port to the agora. On the right stood the great Temple of
Apollo, with its massive Doric columns, built in 550 BC. Only a few
steps away were the sacred springs of the Pierenne, where pilgrims had
worshipped for centuries and from which, in legend, Pegasus drank.
Towering over the entire metropolis was the Acrocorinth, an immense
outcropping that sheltered shrines sacred to the goddesses Aphrodite and
Demeter. [www.pbs.org] |
Map
of Ancient Corinth, showing the roads leading from the harbor to
Acrocorinth, the ancient citadel.
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EXCERPTS
FROM "AT CORINTH" [1471]
The three travelers enjoyed their sojourn in Corinth
[where] they met people of every race hailing from three continents.
Next to Alexandria and Rome, it was the most cosmopolitan city of the
Mediterranean empire. . . . Excepting Athens, which was more renowned as
an educational center, Corinth was the most important city in Greece
during these Roman times, and their two months' stay in this thriving
commercial center afforded opportunity for all three of them to gain
much valuable experience. [T]hey held intimate conversations with scores
of worth-while individuals, and as a result of all these apparently
casual contacts more than half of the individuals so affected became
members of the subsequent Christian community. . . .
[Those who “greatly profited by the instruction
received from Jesus” included a miller, a Roman centurion, the earnest
leader of the Mithraic cult, an Epicurean teacher, a Greek contractor
and builder, a Roman judge, the mistress of the Greek inn, a Chinese
merchant, a traveler from
Britain, a runaway lad, and a condemned criminal.]
The Temple
. . . [In the
synagogue
Jesus and Ganid] heard a learned rabbi discourse on the "Destiny of
Israel," and after the service they met one Crispus, the chief
ruler of this synagogue. . .. Jesus held more than twenty sessions with
this forward-looking Jew; and it is not surprising, years afterward,
when Paul was preaching in this very synagogue. . ., that Crispus with
his entire family embraced the new religion, and that he became one of
the chief supports of the Christian church which Paul subsequently
organized at Corinth. . . . During the eighteen months Paul preached in
Corinth . . . he met many others who had been taught by the "Jewish
tutor of the son of an Indian merchant.”
Jesus and Ganid were often guests in another Jewish
home, that of Justus, a devout merchant, who lived alongside the
synagogue. And many times, subsequently, when the Apostle Paul sojourned
in this home, did he listen to the recounting of these visits with the
Indian lad and his Jewish tutor, while both Paul and Justus wondered
whatever became of such a wise and brilliant Hebrew teacher.
When Paul first went to Corinth, he had not intended
to make a prolonged visit. But [because] the Jewish tutor had prepared
the way for his labors . . . Paul prolonged his stay in Corinth.
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Joy sitting in the taverna
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Late
in the afternoon we stopped in at one of the tavernas on the
town square of Old Corinth, where the buses unload tourists and locals.
Here we had some Greek dishes George recommended and watched the
ever-interesting parade of Greeks passing by. We also read to each other
from the parts of the Urantia Book that referred to Corinth.
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George
in the taverna reading from the Urantia Book.
*
* *
Back at Krokida 7 we sat in the kitchen
and ate the
leftover food from the night before, and everyone, including all of the
Markellos kids, chain-smoked while we ate. Joy, unable to bear the smoke, escaped by
taking her plate of food into the bedroom and going to bed early for
what turned out to be a sleeping marathon. Not me. I stayed up drinking retsina with Helen and George,
reliving
the old days when I had been a daily part of their lives, living just a
block away. It seemed like another lifetime to me now.
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PARTIAL HISTORY
OF THE GREEKS
[Around 10,000
BC] a group of the tall
descendants of Adamson made their way over the northern islands to
Greece, coming almost directly from their highland home north of
Mesopotamia. These progenitors of the Greeks were led westward by Sato,
a direct descendant of Adamson and Ratta.
The group which finally settled in Greece
consisted of three hundred and seventy-five of the selected and superior
people comprising the end of the second civilization of the Adamsonites.
These later sons of Adamson carried the then most valuable strains of
the emerging white races. They were of a high intellectual order and,
physically regarded, the most beautiful of men since the days of the
first Eden.
   
Presently Greece and the Aegean Islands
region succeeded Mesopotamia and Egypt as the Occidental center of
trade, art, and culture. . . . [P]ractically all of the art and science
of the Aegean world was derived from Mesopotamia except for the culture
of the Adamsonite forerunners of the Greeks. All the art and genius of
these latter people is a direct legacy of the posterity of Adamson, the
first son of Adam and Eve, and his extraordinary second wife, a daughter
descended in an unbroken line from the pure Nodite staff of Prince
Caligastia. No wonder the Greeks had mythological traditions that they
were directly descended from gods and superhuman beings.
The Aegean region passed through five
distinct cultural stages, each less spiritual than the preceding, and
erelong the last glorious era of art perished beneath the weight of the
rapidly multiplying mediocre descendants of the Danubian slaves who had
been imported by the later generations of Greeks.
[895]
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