The Apostle Paul stepped out of his boat at the ancient port in Neopolis, now known as Kavala, Greece. Let me introduce you to Kavala.
The Acropolis of Kavala sits at the top of the peninsula where the old town is situated. Narrow roads take cars, vans and people up to the top of the peninsula.
Below the Fortress is the medieval aqueduct.
The narrow winding roads lead past portions of the town.
During the time of Ottoman rule churches were converted to mosques or mosques were built over churches. Here’s a mosque built on an early church site.
The Palia Mousiki Hall (formerly the Halil Bey Mosque), the terracotta colored building on the right, was built over an early Christian church, which seems to have had a 7 room seminary and a cemetery. Here is the excavation site, which also continues inside the hall, which was closed when we arrived.
The narrow winding road leads through the Old Town towards the Acropolis.
We reached the final stair climb at the top. The former Byzantine Acropolis of Christoupolis was destroyed in 1391. Part of it was incorporated in the early 15th century.
The Acropolis, as a place, as an institution, appeared in the middle of the 2nd millennium before Christ during the Mycenaean Period, the period of the Trojan War, which generally can be described also as the Late Bronze Age.
The term Acropolis is a combined term from άκρη, meaning summit and edge (from which we have in English the term acrobat – the person who likes to walk on the edge,) and πόλεις, meaning cities (and from that term we have police and politician -the guards of the city .)
The literal meaning of the word Acropolis means the upper city and was organized to be the palace sanctuary of the King Priest.
When the monarchy was opposed in Greece, the Acropolis remained the sanctuary of the patron gods of the city. The administration came down into the middle of the city. After Alexander the Great, all the cities, including Jerusalem, had some necessary standards.
The Temple of Jerusalem was considered the Acropolis of Jerusalem by the Greeks and the Romans. Don’t forget, at the time of Christ, Jerusalem was a gymnasium and a theater, both identified in the old city (and also a pagan temple in Jerusalem is identified) dedicated to the god Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. It was built on the side of Bethesda Pool.
As we traveled Kostas told us wecould trace all the standards of a city, down to a village, even Philipp, for all the Mediterranean world after Alexander the Great.
And in that frame, we would place the events described in the Book of Acts. We were going to the very places in Philippi that are described in The Book of Acts. But archaeologically we would see the sites built mostly at the time of Octavian Augustus after the topple of Philippi, 42BC.
We would be seeing Philippi, archeologically, a hundred years after the Apostle Paul visited the city. We would see ruins of the city walls, just behind the grass, the inside the area of the walls and the terrain of little tiny Philippi, Greece. The Letter to the Philippians was addressed to the church of the little village of Philippi, almost 10 years after the Apostle Paul came there, the first time, from the prison of Rome. Although they were a small group they had never forgotten him.
The Apostle Paul walked the Ignatian Road from the Port of Kavala to Philippi.
The road, mostly buried under the modern road, was built in the 2nd century before Christ. It was the first infrastructure work built by the Romans outside of Italy. It was a military road that traversed the Balkans and connected the Adriatic with the Black Sea, with a length of approximately 1,100 km. Every Roman mile was marked by a milestone giving travel distance information to the travelers of that time.
We are going to Philippi at the River of Lydia where we would have an opportunity for worship on the banks of the river.