I would like to continue the Introduction to the Acropolis.
I would like to speak a little bit about an attack that was organized against the city-state of Athens by a superpower at the very time when democracy was born here. When this little miracle called democracy started in Athens, we had all these changes in the political and social system of the city of Athens. On the other side of the Aegean Sea, we also had major events. The King of Persia, Darius, had expanded his kingdom, his empire, from the Indian borders to the Aegean Sea, and he had conquered one by one all the Greek states of the coast.
Athens, feeling an obligation, sent some soldiers and ships to help Miletus. Miletus was considered the twin city of Athens. Finally, all of Asia Minor was conquered, and for Darius, the help Athenians had sent to Miletus was a very good pretext to expand his empire further west. So, for the first time in history, we have an attack from east to west, from Asia to Europe, from an empire, the super military power of that time, against a city-state. The attack is like the attack of an elephant against an ant. When Athenians heard that 100,000 Persian soldiers led by two generals were crossing the Aegean Sea and coming against Athens, they were scared to death. The Athenian assembly, the body of the citizens, gathered at the square and decided that all men from the age of 16 to 65 had to join the army. They then had to make a very important and crucial decision about the slaves. The city at that time had slaves, and even one of them escaping to the enemy could make the position of the Athenians even worse by revealing secrets of the city to the Persians. In another society, they might have killed all the slaves before the attack for their own safety.
However, the Athenians decided to do something else. They took the risk to set them all free by giving them equal rights with themselves, making them citizens of Athens with one condition: those who could fight had to fight on their side. Since then, and for a while, the city of Athens was a city of free people, with no slaves in Athens. All the Athenian men from ages 16 to 65, including the former slaves, gathered at Marathon Beach.
They were 10,000 to face the coming Persians, one to ten. They went there not expecting any victory; they went there to die with honor, defending their place. But behind history is the Master. There are many who say that history is written by the winners of the battlefields and the leaders of human thought. Actually, these are just methods in the hands of the Master of History. The Master of History had another idea. By the end of the day of the battle, more than 6,000 Persians had vanished in a nearby marsh. From the Athenian side, only 192 were killed. This is why, after the battle a soldier, in full armor, ran from Marathon to the city to announce the good news of victory. This man is the first marathon runner of antiquity. He arrived in the city, in the Agora, the square, and said, “Be joyful. We won,” and then he fell dead. The Persians were pushed back for 10 years. Darius was offended, and he ordered one of his servants every morning before breakfast to repeat the phrase, “Don’t forget the Athenians.” Ten years later, in the year 480, his son Xerxes, a biblical figure mentioned in the Book of Esther as the husband of Queen Esther, decided to fulfill his father’s dream and come against Athens personally. According to the historians of the time, he came out of Asia, crossing the Dardanelles into Thrace, leading 1,700,000 soldiers. He was escorted by a terribly big navy consisting of 1,400 ships, and he was responsible for the food supplies for this army. They went through the Thermopylae gates and finally arrived in Athens. They found the city of Athens evacuated. The Athenian navy, consisting of 85 ships, had brought the Athenians to the islands. And then the city of Athens was totally leveled. Everything seemed to be over for Athens forever. The Persian admirals, thought that the shortest way for them to go from Athens to Corinth was through the Straits of Salamis. There they were blocked by the Greek navy, consisting of 120 ships, 85 of them Athenian ships coming back from the evacuation of the city. Not because of any attack, but because of panic, the Persian ships started crashing into one another, and so the Persian navy destroyed itself, leaving the army without food supplies. This forced Xerxes to go back home. When the Athenians returned a year later, in 479, they decided to reconstruct their place and their political system. The people who participated in these Persian Wars decided altogether to leave the Acropolis of Athens intact so future generations of Athenians could see what a barbarian attack means. But the second and third generations, being emotionally distant from the events of the war and being in the culmination of the golden age of democracy when the city was very rich for many reasons, decided to reconstruct the Acropolis. The Acropolis of Athens is the first monument in history registered as being built by free people, not slaves, people experiencing the best human-made political system: democracy. Being under the euphoric feelings of such a brilliant and unexpected victory, they depicted all that inner situation in the aesthetics of the monuments. This is what makes the Acropolis of Athens today the emblem and symbol of Western civilization based on freedom, equality, democracy, and human rights, especially the temple which was first built up there called the Parthenon.
We are going to speak now about the monuments. This little theatrical structure, and the other monument at the top of the hill are also gifts to the city of Athens, like the Stoa of Attalos was a gift, like the upper part of the stadium, Hadrian’s Library, Hadrian’s Aqueduct, the Agora of Octavian Augustus, the Forum, and many other gifts. The structure you see here is not a theater for theatrical plays. The first theater of history, the Theater of Dionysus, was much bigger.
The little theatrical structure here is The Odeon.
The Odeon was roofed, had a capacity of approximately 5,000 seats, and was mostly for orations and musical performances.
In many cases in later antiquity, it was used by the assembly of Athens for their meetings. It was destroyed at the end of the third century by the attack of the Heruli. It was excavated in the 19th century, and the lower part of it was found in good shape, and so today, it is still in use.
During the summer weekends, the Athenian festival takes place there, and prominent musicians are honored to perform at this theatrical structure, which is called the Herodium, after the name of the benefactor, Herod Atticus.
Now, up there at the top of the hill, we have another monument erected in the second century AD, by a prominent man of the Mediterranean world who was not Athenian, nor Greek.
He was the throne prince of a country between Turkey and Syria today called Commagene. The name of this benefactor was Gaius Julius Antiochus Philopappos. We still call this monument of the second century AD the Philopappos Monument.
Mars Hill in Athens, Greece, became important for Athenian society after the monarchy was abolished.
For the first time, the system called oligarchy was established, and power passed into the hands of the Royal Council. It was necessary for the Royal Council to go up Mars Hill to have its meetings after the king was no longer involved in the administration. The Royal Council used the summit of Mars Hill for their meetings, and since then, the Royal Council, or the Supreme Council of the city of Athens, was known as the Supreme Council of Mars Hill. Even today, the Supreme Court of Greece is called the Mars Hill Supreme Court.
Draco, an Athenian lawmaker in the 7th century BC, decided to change the Athenian custom regarding homicide. At that time, homicide was impersonal. In cases where someone was killed by another person. and had no family or friends to seek revenge, they were buried and forgotten. No questions, no trials, no punishments. In cases where the person had family or friends to seek revenge, a chain of murders would start.
Remember the Old Testament: “an eye for an eye?” Draco came and said that if revenge continued, crime would multiply. So, shouldn’t the responsible power and institution of the city, the one to decide about the life of someone, be the Supreme Council? Since then, the Supreme Council also has become the Supreme Court.
For the first time in history, the Supreme Court of Athens legally recognized excuses and spared the life of someone who had shed human blood.
Even soldiers coming victoriously from the battlefield, pouring human blood on the earth, were considered unclean. They had to be purified outside the city before entering and celebrating their victory.
In cases where the Supreme Court decided to spare someone’s life, they also pointed the way for their purification, which was also their punishment. This was a significant leap forward in human culture.
Because of its significance, Mars Hill underwent structural changes. A retaining wall was built around the rock, similar to the Acropolis retaining wall. Unfortunately, the special shape that Mars Hill once had is lost today.
A staircase was carved into the bedrock in the 7th century BC, and this staircase was the only access to the top until 2004. If you like, you can go up there, but be very careful. It is slippery and rough. We don’t have the retaining wall anymore, and there are pickpockets. Many people trying to catch pickpockets have had terrible accidents. They lost their bag, they lost their wallet, and they went to the hospital. Purse snatchers grab a purse and run down the hill, so hold on to your belongings. They are really acrobats, don’t try to compete with them.
We no longer have the retaining wall, the temple of the Furies, or the marble theatrical structure with the bemas for the accused and the accuser. The only thing we have is the bedrock and the staircase. This staircase was the only access to the top until 2004 when the archaeological services fixed a new staircase. For sure, this place has seen the footprints of many brilliant Athenian minds, philosophers, lawmakers, politicians, artists, and definitely the footprints of the significant personality, the Apostle Paul.
On the right side of the staircase, a small temple was built, with four columns, having the same dimensions and shape as the Temple of Nike, and it was dedicated to the goddesses called Furies. The Furies were the goddesses who made the human conscience feel guilty if someone was a criminal.
The rest of the summit was leveled, and a theatrical structure was built there.
Have you seen the general’s room in Philippi or the council area in Thessaloniki? In the theatrical structure Athenian citizens could sit to attend trials. In the place where the theater had the orchestra, two small Bemas were placed: one for the accused and the other for the accusers. The desks of the judges were placed on the theater stage. However, homicide cases in Athens was rare because Athenian society was very small. For a long time, the marble structure where people could sit was not used by the Supreme Court all the time. The place was open to the public and became very popular with philosophical groups who developed philosophical debates sitting on these marble seats.
This is why, when a stranger visited the city in the middle of the first century AD, bringing special ideas, he was brought here. This stranger was Apostle Paul. At that time, syncretism was at its peak, a phenomenon that started with Alexander the Great by marrying cultures and Alexander himself married a Percian princess, promoting the same syncretism to his soldiers. Preaching about a new god was not a weird or special thing. Everyone could preach about their own gods. At that time, there were temples in Athens for Egyptian gods, Persian gods, and in Rome, temples for Greek gods, and so on.
The strange thing for the philosophical ear was resurrection. Resurrection was common for a believer in Christ, but pagan believers participated in mystical rituals called mysteries. The philosophers stepped away from the religious system, myths, and all these things, and tried to find another way to approach the supernatural. Remember the concept of the unknown god in the Ephesian and Milesian philosophers in Athens?
At that time, there were two main philosophical groups: the Stoics and the Epicureans. The Stoics were the philosophical descendants of Socrates, who highly believed in the immortality of the soul. Now, Socrates had a disciple called Euclides from the city of Megara. When Socrates died, Euclides returned to his hometown and built a school, the Megarian School. The Megarian School combined the ideas about the Unknown God, the Great Mind, with Socrates’ concept of objective truth and good. Euclides taught that there is no good except God, that there is only one good, which is God.
Remember the story in the three synoptic Gospels, (Mark 10:17-18, Matthew 19:16-17, Luke 18:18-19) when the young man asked Jesus, “What can I do to be saved?” Jesus started his answer with a question, “Why do you call me good teacher? You don’t know that only one is good, and that is God.” This reflects the main philosophical saying of the Megarian School, established by Euclides, the disciple of Socrates.
This school was in Megara until the third century BC. Then, Demetrius the Besieger closed the school and conquered Megara. The last director, Stilpo, came to Athens and became the personal tutor of Zeno the Cypriot, who founded the Stoics. This is how we have a line from Socrates to the Stoics.
The Stoics believed that the most important part of a human is the soul. They strongly believed in the immortality of the soul and that the body was given to humans to become the precious residence of the soul, the most important gift to humans from the gods. However, when humans became sinners, this precious residence turned into an awful prison for them, introducing pain, struggle, perishability, and finally, death into human life. The Stoics suggested that we must endure our imprisonment with patience and stoicism until the day the gods mercifully set our soul free from its prison. They celebrated not birthdays, but death days, as the most joyful day. Although this group believed strongly in the immortality of the soul, there was no room in their approach for resurrection, as it would mean returning to their prison.
On the other side, we have the Epicureans, an opposing school founded by Epicurus in the fourth century BC in Athens. Epicurus based his teachings on pleasure, dismissing all notions of God, spirits, Hades, and souls as nonsense that bored the human brain and died with it. He advocated for eating, drinking, and having pleasure, as tomorrow we die and return to dust. If there are gods, they are far away from us. As you understand, their opinions opposed the opinion of the Stoics and they also had no thought of resurrection in their materialistic philosophy, which is the basis of hedonistic philosophy.
Apostle Paul, coming here, faced a significant challenge to speak about Christ to people who ignored the Old Testament and its prophecies. They were considered the supreme intelligence of the Mediterranean world but were not interested in learning about the Old Testament. Paul decided to speak to them in their own cultural language, starting his speech on Mars Hill with the concept of the unknown God, the Creator, a purely philosophical Greek concept, distinct from the religious Greek concept of many gods, or polytheism.
Let’s open our Bible here and read what happened in Athens. When our reader reads the speech, another person with a good timer should time the speech to find out how long it lasts. Let’s not take a chance. We are in chapter 17, verse 16 to the end. When we reach verse 22, I will start counting the time. Who is going to read? Trust, go on, sir.
Verse 16: His spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the marketplace, the agora, or the city square, every day with those who happened to be present. Some of the Epicureans and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,” because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. They took him and brought him to that rock, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears, and we want to know what these things mean.” All the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.
Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. While I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with the inscription ‘To an unknown God.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you: The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things. He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, and perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” So Paul went out of their midst. Some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius and others with them.
One minute 27 seconds. Have you heard a sermon lasting so short, including everything from creation to resurrection in the last day of judgment? In that short speech, Apostle Paul included two Athenian poets, Cleanthes and Aratus, but did not mention Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, or other great minds of Athens. What happened? Did Paul know the insignificant poets that even their mothers ignored, but not Socrates and Aristotle? Definitely not. Paul’s approach was quite strategic. He referenced poets like Aratus and Cleanthes, who were well known among the Athenians. By doing so, he connected with his audience using familiar cultural references. This doesn’t mean he was unaware of philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle; rather, he chose references that would resonate more effectively with his listeners in that specific context. Here we have the progressive argumentation of the Athenian logos of six minutes. Unfortunately, the Athenians were not polite enough to stay and hear all his speech. Apostle Paul lost his audience in one minute and a half. But in that short time, he said everything about creation up to the resurrection in the last day of judgment. It is an excellent artifact in the art of speech, unique and still used by many schools teaching the art of speech as an example. He was well-prepared to face the philosophers and give an answer. They were divided into three groups: one group mocked and laughed, another group considered the soul a reality and decided to think again about it, and a third group attached to him and accepted his message. Among them was a prominent Athenian member of the Supreme Court of Athens.
The discussion was not a court case. Some theologians believe he was brought to a court to decide about his religious ideas, but it was not a court. First of all, because we see the presence of women there. Damaris was there and she believed. There was no court result about whether he was allowed to continue his activity. It was just a philosophical debate.
Mars Hill was important to the public life of Athens after the monarchy was abolished.
Mars Hill overlooks the square of the Athenian Agora.
Remember the Bema, of course (and the Bema in Philippi, Greece that you have already seen.)
Read the sign there and look at this rectangular and very humble platform, which is just one step higher than the ground level you see as a frame all around it today. This platform correctly applies the meaning of the word Bema. This is the Bema, and this is where the Athenian citizen stood to deliver his speech, his logos, of six minutes to the assembly. Although it is a very humble monument, it is at the same time the most important monument, the epicenter of what happened in Athens. Because of the speaking at the Bema, we have democracy, and because of that, we have philosophy. Because of that, we have all the terminology, the concepts, and the illustrations used later in the New Testament. Very humble, yet extremely important for all Western culture, this is the Bema of Athens.
And there is another Bema, which is developed in three steps at the top of that rock, after 500 BC, where the called-out assembly of Athens met.
The Stoa of Attalos, built in the second century before Christ, was a monumental gift to the city of Athens.
This building, constructed by Attalus II, a king of Pergamum who studied in Athens, borders the eastern edge of the square. It is a typical stoa. The American Archaeological School fully reconstructed it in 1952 with a donation from Rockefeller.
Thus, we see this building almost as the Apostle Paul saw it when he visited the city, as it had been standing for nearly 200 years.
During the reconstruction, all existing pieces of marble were incorporated, which is why you can see both old and new pieces of marble on the Stoa.
The Greeks highly valued their relationship with nature, considering it their natural home. For this reason, every house had an atrium, and family life developed outside, using rooms only when necessary. Similarly, the agora served as the atrium for the city.
When weather conditions did not permit public life in the square, they used the stoa. The stoa had one of its long sides closed with a colonnade, so someone under its roof still felt like they were outside, unlike being inside the Basilica. Think about the Basilica of St. Demetrius.
Flavius Josephus mentioned that when Herod the Great remodeled and redecorated the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, he built a stoa, or porch, on the southern edge of the hill, using the Stoa of Attalos in Athens as a model. This porch in Jerusalem, known as Solomon’s Porch, is mentioned in John’s Gospel as the place where Jesus often taught and performed miracles during his visits to the temple. It is also described in the book of Acts as the first meeting place of the church of Jerusalem. Today, this building in Jerusalem no longer exists. Part of it is occupied by the Mosque of Al Aqsa, with some original parts incorporated into the mosque. Here, you have an idea, a picture, an illustration of this very important place on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Let’s enter inside the Museum of Ancient Agora, in Athens.
This is the broken cult statue of Apollo from the Temple of the Agora. Unlike what was common at that time, we see Apollo dressed in a long garment down to his feet. It was more common to depict even the gods naked (athletic and heroic nudity).
The most unusual thing of this staute is that his sash, his belt, is not around his waist, but below his chest, the most uncomfortable place for a man to keep his sash or belt. Now, why? Apollo was considered to be the forefather of the entire tribe of Ionians. These were the Greeks of Asia Minor, and also the Athenians here, who honored Apollo as the supreme King Priest. In official temples in the Agora, where he was worshiped as the patron god of Athens and as the supreme King Priest, he was dressed in the long priestly garment with this sash below his chest. This was because Apollo was a musician, a lyre player, and his lyre had a hook. People who visited the Museum of Thessaloniki saw this lyre with the tortoise shell, so it has a hook, and he had to fix it here to be able to play it. This is why Apollo kept the sash below his chest.
Now, I would like you to open the Bible to Revelation 1:13: “…one like a Son of Man clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.” Do you see the similarities between this verse and the statue? Why? Because the Apostle John describes in the book of Revelation Jesus not as the poor barefoot Rabbi of the Lake of Galilee, but as the coming supreme King Priest. This was the image of the King Priest in the whole of Ionia, and remember, the book of Revelation was written on the island of Patmos, which was part of Greek Ionia, and the capital of Greek Ionia was the city of Ephesus. Now you know why this verse is so unusual. It gives the illustration of the King Priest, as the people of the place had that in their mind.
Before we enter the museum, I would like to tell you that before the seventh century BC, the square was the cemetery of the city. The city was on the slopes closer to the Acropolis. When they decided to use the flat area, which was closer to the city, for other purposes, they removed the gravestones but left the graves underneath intact. “Archaeologists were thrilled to find intact graves under the classical level of the square of the Agora, covering a period from 4000 BC to 700 BC.”
Inside of the museum there is an inscription from the fourth century BC, the time when Athenians decided to reconstruct democracy, to protect democracy and give the ultimate and most responsible rights for its protection not to the army or the police, but to the citizens. The law even allows the citizen to assassinate a person who makes serious efforts to become a dictator. This Athenian law from the fourth century BC, (with some modifications since the American Revolution) is the last paragraph of many Western European and American constitutions. It assigns the final and most important responsibility for the protection of democracy to the citizens, not the army or the police.
The first part of this museum focuses on burial goods. Remember, the Greeks always believed in life after death, unlike the silence on this topic in the Old Testament. For that reason, they placed burial goods in the graves, even for slaves and infants, to help them continue their journey beyond. You will see some very interesting little objects. Here we have a reconstruction of a chamber grave from the Mycenaean Period, found in the Agora. The date is 4th millennium BC, and there are the burial goods all around. You can see how the burial goods were placed inside, including ivory pieces from the Mycenaean time. The date here is 14th century BC, the time of the Trojan War and the Exodus in the Bible.
In the museum there is the grave of an infant with burial goods as well. See exhibition number 4 if you go there and you can see a fitting bottle for a baby, the terracotta boots of wooden dolls, also burial goods, accompanying a young girl. Something very necessary for a baby or an infant is the baby pot, the potty. Look for a sketch of it at the museum. Yes, the most difficult thing for a mother is finding the best way for the infant to sit. Look how this problem was solved with this baby potty.
Here we have the public scales of measurement. In the area of the Agora, there was an office where people could go to recheck the articles they had just bought to find out if they were deceived or not.
Here, we have the tablet, the accurate scales, and measurements. When you are at the museum find the assembly of Athens depicted as a human body, as a man with the concept of all being parts of the same body, with democracy as a lady crowning the assembly, the body. The excavation brought to light sandal nails and sandal bottoms. The identification was done because of a broken part of a wine cup where we see scratched on it “I belong to Simon,” something very common in antiquity for identifying personal wine cups.
Now, from the prison, we have these little cups here, which look like communion cups.
They were used in medicine a lot to measure the dosages of different herbs for medical reasons. In the prison, they were used to measure the dosage of hemlock, the poison given for executions in Athens. Athenians considered even executions something to be conducted with dignity and modesty, so they gave hemlock to the people being executed. This is how Socrates was executed. Since Socrates, very cold, got the cup with the hemlock in private, the “cup of death” became a proverb, and much was spoken about the cup of death with symbolic and metaphoric meaning. Remember Jesus during His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane spoke about the death cup, and you can see what that cup looked like, similar to the communion cups used in Protestant churches.
And here is a reconstruction of an original late 5th century clay water clock, called klepsydra.
Here is a weather warning for your time on Mars Hill. For us, in March, it was very windy.
Paul’s Sermon on Mars Hill | Acts 17: 22-31 NASB
22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all respects. 23 For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything that is in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His descendants.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the descendants of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by human skill and thought. 30 So having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now proclaiming to mankind that all people everywhere are to repent, 31 because He has set a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all people by raising Him from the dead.”
I would like to remind you that God never left Himself unrevealed to the nations and to the Gentiles. The Apostle Paul, several times, repeats that idea. Remember, in the letter to Romans, Paul asks the question, “Is God only the God of Israel or the God of the nations? I say to you, yes, He is the God of the nations, as well.” And Paul said to the people of Lystra (who had thought that Paul was a Greek god) that although the real God, led the nations to take their own ways (that means they turned their back to him) He never unwitnessed Himself to them by doing good to them from above. And also remember the Apostle John. In his first chapter of the gospel, John says that Jesus is the light who enlightens every single one, without exception, who comes on this road.
So what we are going to say for the Athenian democracy played a very important role that happened only once in human history, In a certain time in history, Athenian democracy prepared the Mediterranean world, the first international community in history, to become the first mission field. For the gospel became the plow on the head of that crazy young Boy of 20 years old called Alexander the Great, to cultivate the world for the time of the Septuagint and the New Testament.
Until seventh century BC, the world did not know any other political system except monarchy. The world had a lot of styles and types of monarchy, and most of the monarchs were personalities that were worshiped, considered the be demigods or gods on earth. There were the Pharaohs of Egypt, or the great kings of Persia.
But then, after the 8th century BC, Greeks spread out in all of the Mediterranean world and the Black Sea, and they had smaller and bigger states.
Remember, there were Greek states from Spain to the Middle East and from the Black Sea to Northern Africa. Greece in antiquity, means culture. It doesn’t mean a certain state, like today.
And yes, these states prior to the seventh century BC had monarchy, but these Greek kings were always considered to be mortals – descendants of gods or heroes, but mortals. Being the leaders of their society, they were considered the chief generals, leading their army personally to the battlefield.
And so the ancient Greeks were friends with their kings who died on the battlefield and never on the bed. The kings were also the leaders of religion which means they were high priests.
So when we hear the title King-priest, definitely this title applies to a Greek style of monarchy.
That brings to mind, the monarchy of Israel, a monarchy established late in history, yes, at the beginning of the first millennium BC. All the other nations, including the Greeks, had monarchy since the second millennium BC. Definitely in the house of David all were considered nothing else but mortals. They we are not priests, because priesthood in Israel preexisted monarchy and was from another tribe.
So when we say King-priest, we mean a Greek title, although that in the Bible, we have a unique case of a personality, a mysterious, holy personality, described as the king-priest of the Most High God. He is Melchizedek.
We don’t know a lot about him. In the New Testament, Melchizedek is described as a prefiguration of Jesus Christ. And the question is, how does this man have this title of king-priest? Only indirectly we can give an answer. Melchizedek was a neighbor, not only with Abraham, but with another king as well, who was related with Abraham. And this king was Abimelech, the king of the Philistines. And the Bible says that the Philistines went to the Middle East from the Aegean Sea, especially from the island of Crete, and that gives an answer about the relation the Aegean Sea had with the Middle East.
A monarchy, as we see it (until the seventh century BC) among the Greeks started in the middle of the second millennium BC, after the collapse of the Minoan civilization. And this is the time when the Acropolis appeared as a place and as an institution to become the palace sanctuary of the King- priest.
And remember, we spoke about the definition of the root word/term acro, summit, an edge (from which we have acrophobia and acrobats) and the term polis, which in Greek means city.
So at the seventh century BC, in Athens, the king under peaceful circumstances (not very clear to us today) decided to give up his administrative duties, but he kept for himself the title of King and his priestly duties. And the administration, for the first time in history, went from the hands of one person to the hands of a group of people, the Royal Council. And so we have another political system called oligarchy, administration by a few people.
Next century, sixth century BC, a man called Pisistratus was a member of that council and he made a coup. Overthrowing the power of the others, he became dictator in Athens.
Now Greeks hated dictators, and called them tyrants, and they called the dictatorship a tyranny. But the tyrant of Athens, Pisistratus, spent a lot of money (his personal wealth and his family’s wealth) on the city. He built a new aqueduct which brought water into the city and that changed the daily life of the Athenians. Pisistratus was the first one who built a natural temple upon the ruins of the Acropolis, dedicated to the patron goddess of the city, Athena. And he reorganized the session. so Pisistratus finally was accepted.
When he died, his power passed to the hands of his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, who were not wise like their old father and so very soon after they got power, they brought the state of Athens to the edge of civil war. Around 520 BC, there were riots during the festivals of the city, and the older son was assassinated. Then eight years later, the younger son was expelled from the city and the city remained totally scandalized. That brought a worse situation to the city, because the strong families tried to impose their own rulers. They started organizing the assassination of prominent members of other families, and the situation in Athens became anarchy, the worst that can happen to a society.
Four years later, at 508 there was a nobleman called Cleisthenes, a man who was unknown, a low-profile man who organized, in the middle of the square, the first meeting with political significance on this place. This was the first act, related with the agora, for political meeting,
Cleisthenes gathered all the Athenian men over 20 years old to the square, and made a dramatic speech. He told them, “If we continue being under anarchy, after a while, none of us is going to be alive. But, you know, look around this place. It is a poor place surrounded by the sea. And if there is a value here, it is you, the living body of the city. The value is not the rocks, nor the sea. And so we have to find a way, not just to co-exist, but to cooperate harmoniously like the members of the human body. And this is the first time in history when a group of people, the assembly of the Athenian citizens, was compared to the human body. The Greek word describing the human body is demas δέμᾰς, and another word Kratos κράτος means power and state, It was the formation of a new term, a term which described a new political system, democracy.
Democracy means the power and state of the body of the assembly. And this concept, the concept of the body, and the harmonious cooperation of all the members of the body, follows the meaning of democracy.
Today we use the term democracy, but we use it to describe a republic, a representative democracy. The Athenian democracy was direct democracy. Public life was for all citizens, as expressed in daily life in two ways mainly. Firstly, there were annual elections in the city. And instead of creating a ballot, they erected a lottery machine for each Civic office, and then, all Athenian citizens were welcome, if interested, to be candidates – to put their name in the lottery machines. And so all the Athenian citizens had the same possibility for one year to become the rulers of their own place. And that was for all citizens, the shepherd, the grocer, the teacher, the artist.
This was really revolutionary and extremely important because it elevated the value of the simple human being from almost nowhere to the most high stage of authority – thus equalizing the Athenian citizen, the simple human being, with the rulers and the kings of the world.
Never before has any human society had such an achievement. This was the introduction of concepts like human rights, equality in front of the law, and the right of speech. These are the foundations of the Western culture today. So when we say democracy, we mean direct participation of all citizens based on free will. The authority of the state became the assembly of the citizens who had the final word.
But this is not the most important. There is something else which makes the Athenian citizens exceptional. Every Athenian citizen had the right to stand in front of the assembly and to deliver a speech. For that reason, a little platform in the square was erected, just one step higher from ground level and it was called step. The word step in Greek is bema βήμα. Every Athenian was allowed to step upon the Bema to deliver a speech whenever he thought it was very important for the public life of the city for all the citizens.
When we say everybody had that right, we have to think about time, because the assembly couldn’t stay in the middle of the square all day, listening to people who might never end their speaking. For that reason, next to the speaker, on the side of the Bema, a water clock was placed which gave the citizen a certain amount of time to speak, which was determined to be six minutes.
In six minutes the speaker should say whatever he had to say. Otherwise, he was interrupted, and his place was given to the next speaker, and he was very, very ashamed to be interrupted.
So, before an Athenian decided to step upon the Bema to deliver that speech to the assembly, they had to think twice, to be well prepared, to find the certain words, to count the time, to practice their performance at home, to be sure that the speech would not last longer or less than six minutes. And in this speech, he had to say everything.
What caused a speaker to offer an opinion upon the bema (βήμα) ? It was a problem he had seen in the common life of the city, and he was the first to describe the problem. But that was not enough. The problem was possibly obvious to many. Through arguments the speaker developed his wisdom in front of the assembly and proposed a solution. That was the most important, he had to be persuasively expressive, and finally, he had to present in front of the assembly his credentials – that he was a loyal citizen to the body, working not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the body. For that reason, Athenian speech of six minutes upon the bema in front of the assembly had five very important characteristics, reason, wisdom, expression, persuasion and credibility. The name of this speech is Logos.
Location where Logos was delivered: The Bema of Athens:
Now, this term was not used for the first time in Athens. The first person who used the term Logos, almost a century prior to this process of Athens, was the philosopher Heraclitus at the city of Ephesus in Asia minor.
Heraclitus used the term logos, with the meaning of logic, The Supreme Logic in name, with that, the first reason of creation.
Heraclitus was one of the thinkers of Asia Minor of sixth century BC, who decided to find the origins of nature apart from the myths of creation. In seeking and studying nature, the thinkers arrived at the conclusion that behind nature is the great mind. (A special man of Athens developed his activity in this square as well, and his name is Socrates.)
At sixth century BC between the cities Ephesus and Miletus, thinkers started doubting seriously the creation myths, and myth was not enough for them to explain nature. They had decided to find the origins of nature apart from myth. By studying nature, the thinkers arrived at the conclusion that nature is not compartmentalized, it is not in pieces, but is unique, a chain from the very small to the very big and they found mathematics everywhere. They discovered that all living nature (plants, animals and humans) in their outer form has the same tendency to fulfill the same mathematical formula.
Whis formula is 2x + 1/x, and possibly you have been taught about this formula in school.
For example, this length divided by this is the same as this length divided by this – and the same with the leaves of the plants, the same with the body parts of an animal. Nature has the tendency to fulfill this formula. Because of that tendency, living nature has to fulfill this formula.
The thinkers considered this formula to be the expression of harmony and the expression of the ideal. And they called this formula the Golden Ratio or Divine Ratio. And they were the first who saw nature as a mathematical artifact, and they called nature “jewel.” The Greek word for jewel is cosmos. So they were the first who called Nature cosmos.
Now, these people tested the formula from the concrete test to the abstract by saying, “If this is a jewel, a single mathematical artifact, then who is the cosmos maker? The jewel maker is the artist behind this mathematical artifact.” And they answered this question, “It definitely should be a mind, or several minds, that can function mathematically in a way parallel to the human mind.” This is why we have a sort of communication through mathematics. The second question was, “Is the jewel maker one or more than one mathematical mind? And they answered this question, “Several minds see the same reality from a different point of view. And in art that destroys harmony, and this is the reason every single artifact is signed by a single artist expressing his own personality (since the beginning of art history, until today.)
For that reason, the thinkers arrived at a conclusion: Behind this jewel called Cosmos, (nature) behind these mathematical artifacts, there should be one mathematical mind. They called that mind, the Great Mind. Heraclitus identified this mind with the term logos (from which we have the terms logic and logistics.) This great mathematical mind, the logos of Heraclitus was not identified with the gods of the myth. And this is the root of the concept of the Great Mind the Logos, the Unknown God, the Creator.
Athenians used the term logos to describe their speech, and they gave the term logos, five characteristics, reason, wisdom, expression, persuasion and credibility. It is not by chance that some centuries later, the discussion about logos came to the same city from where the discussion started, the city of Ephesus. The Apostle John, in the year 95 AD, used the term logos to identify Jesus of Nazareth. John said that this logos, spoken about by the ancient thinkers as the great mind, had an identity, a human identity, Jesus of Nazareth.
Everyone, in that time, who heard the term logos, automatically had in his mind, without a second thought, the 5 characteristics of speech – that Jesus was God’s reason, wisdom, and expression (that means not a messenger like the prophets of the Old Testament, but the message itself) God’s persuasion and credibility to us. Athenian democracy contributed the Apostle John’s terminology, structure and images. Concepts that had been cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean world for centuries were ready to be used in the day of the gospel.
Now, at the year 500 BC, more or less this square here became a busy place. Administrative work, religious and commercial work took place here. So the assembly did not have a quiet place to sit down to discuss law projects, external policy, the province of the army and other major pieces as the supreme authority of the state. For that reason they tried to find another place, one that was more quiet, outside of the residential area, but inside the walls.
And that place was a rock called Pnyx, (which is behind the houses in the middle of the trees) a rock like a short cliff and they started having their meetings at the top of this rock.
Because they had regular and irregular meetings at the top of this rock, state messengers would call them out from the residential area to meetings at the top of the rock. And this is why the meetings of the Athenian assembly after 500 BC, we are called the meetings of the called-out ones. The term in Greek is Ekklesia εκκλησία. Ek means out. Ecclesia means to be called out. This term was chosen by Jesus Christ to describe the body of His own believers as the ones who are called out from this world.
And when Jesus first used the term in Matthew’s gospel, he related the term with the illustration of the rock. He changed the name of Simon to Peter, saying with other words, “I’m going to build My own church, not on a natural rock like the ancient Athenians had and is there, but on a spiritual rock, your testimony Simon, that I am the Son of God.”
As you understand, it was not easy for every Athenian to step upon the Bema and to deliver the logos.
The shepherd, the artist, the grocer and the teacher did not have the same ability to step upon the bema, the platform, to express themselves in six minutes. So the second, the third generation of Athenians, after democracy was established, felt the need of more education. This is what made Athens very attractive to the teachers of the whole area. Teachers came to Athens ready to get paid well to teach the Athenians how to stand in front of the assembly.
But as you know, democracy was based mainly on ethics and morals, and of secondary importance was the ability of expression, sharing our thoughts. But these teachers were focused on the art of the speech, and not morality and ethics. And this is why in Athens at that time, the idea developed that good and truth have relative meanings, subjective meanings, not objective. For example, my truth and my good might be not yours, but the important thing for me is to persuade you to my truth and my good. The disciples of these teachers were the famous demagogues (political leaders who sought support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument) and finally they destroyed the Athenian democracy.
In Athens, in reaction to that situation created by the teachers, there was a sculptor. He was around his 40’s. He decided, in total poverty, to punish himself and his family, and he came to the streets of Athens in this square, to meet the Athenians and the teachers. He came out, not presenting his knowledge but his ignorance. This man never had gone to a school. It is not mentioned that he was a disciple of somebody, but he became famous (and still is famous today) for saying, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing. So please, you, the specialists, come to teach me and give an answer to my questions.”
This man was Socrates.
At the end of the discussion, Socrates developed as an ignorant man with the specialists and usually proved that the ignorant man knew more than the specialists, something that we call today Socratian irony, but definitely that changed completely the teaching methods. By that time, the knowledge was delivered prefabricated, like we see in the Old Testament, bum bum bum. This is what the Lord said. But since Socrates, we have questions that need an answer, and this answer leads to the truth.
Socrates believed strongly that the truth and the good was not subjective, but objective, and stands out of the human. And the human has only one way to live his life, to address himself towards to the truth and the good, as the sunflower is addressed, always towards the sun.
Now this man, 30 years after, was arrested in Athens, and given the death penalty accused of corrupting the Athenian youth with his ideas. His prison was discovered, where he finally was executed. He did nothing to defend himself. When the time came and the punishment was announced to him, he had a last opportunity to defend himself. He compared Athenian Society (provoking kindly the Athenians) to a fat, sleeping horse and himself as a horse fly. He said to the Athenians, “It’s easy for you to sleep than to kill flies, but you are going to stay sleeping until the day when God is going to be merciful on you and send from above somebody to awake you.” Because of festivals in the city his execution was postponed for one month. During that month, one of his rich friends, Crito, spent a lot of money and he bribed all the Athenian administration from the most high to the servants of the prison. Then he went to Socrates and told him, “Socrates, let’s go. We are going to leave from here, you are free.” Socrates was surprised and said to him, “How is that possible? I’m expecting my executor.” “I bribed everybody,” was the answer. Then the two friends started a dialog about the importance of the law, even bad law. [And it’s worth it for you to read it. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27743706. For Socrates, the objective truth and the objective good for him actually was to stay in prison and to die. Crito lost all the money he had given to bribe the Athenian administration. Every day Socrate’s disciples came to the prison to speak with him. On the last day they were all gathered outside of the gate of the prison before dawn, waiting for the prison to open the gates (and so to pass that day from dusk until when the execution was planned, with their teacher.) When the gate opened, they blushed to tears, and started crying when they saw Socrates from the other side. And Socrates, very cool and surprised, asked, “What happened to you? Why are you so sad? Why do you cry?” And they said, “Are you crazy? You don’t know that we are living as orphans with your decision to die…”
And there starts one of the most beautiful dialogs, the last dialog of Socrates, related with the immortality of the soul in the fair judgment in Hades.
The title of this dialog is Phaedo. https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html In Phaedo you can see the logical process and the arguments of a man who lived almost 450 years before Christ, how he thinks about the soul, the mortality of the soul, and the fear of judgment. In the dialog one of his disciples who was arguing with him asked, “How do you know that? How do you know all of what you say about the soul?” Socrates answered with this really impressive example. Fish in the sea think and consider the level of the water as the sky, and from the water they see the storms, and the environment deteriorated by the sun and salt. But there are some little fish who can jump a little bit out of the water, and these fish know that the sky is not the surface of the water, and that the stones have another color than the deteriorated stones they see in the water.
In a very, very special place – the agora, in the middle of first century AD, someone was sent from above, and his message arrived in Athens on the face of the Apostle Paul. He met the Athenians and especially the Athenian philosophers. As Socrates had said, “God is going to be merciful on you and send from above somebody to awaken you.” Some of them woke up.
This round building is called Tholos and this one is considered to be the oldest round public building for political use, and was the center of the Athenian government. In Greece there are several round buildings I would like to point out: The Octagon of Philippi, the round Church of Thessaloniki (the Rotunda) and The Octagon of Capernaum.
Inside of the Tholos, couches were set all around. Remember in the chapel of Lydia, also was round. The emphasis was equality, not who was in front with the rest behind him, or who faced the others or the majority, or who faced the supreme people. The Athenian had to remember always they were among equals, and some of them had the opportunity to have the title of King priest – which in Athens became an elective position, and every Athenian could be a candidate at the time of democracy. And remember the Book of Revelation, when the Apostle John says that we are all redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and we are king priests, a royal priesthood.
So here we have the building of the Athenian government. It is called Tholos.
In the middle you see the broken altar of Hestia. Hestia was the goddess of the family and her sanctuary, in every home, was the fireplace. In the city was the eternal flame, the flame which represented the life of the city. So this altar was kept from night to day with the internal flame. Here is the Altar of Eternal Flame:
Just beside there, we have the foundations of the building where the representatives of the Athenian tribes prepared their law projects. Remember, law projects had to be discussed and voted on by the assembly.
And going further here we see this sign on this wall, House of Simon.
Now, who was Simon? First of all, the name Simon is not a Greek name. It is a Jewish name. And this person is a shoemaker of fifth century BC, and we know from Xenophon that in Simon’s workshop, (which was discovered here) Socrates met mostly his minor disciples. We don’t know if Simon was a Jew or an Athenian who had a Jewish name. Remember, two of Jesus disciples had Greek names: Philip and Andrew. Definitely. Simon is the first one who kept notes from the Socratian dialogs. And after Socrates death, he was the first who published them. Unfortunately, we don’t have any of the writings of Simon the shoemaker.
Very important for the daily life of the city of Athens, during the time of democracy, is the monument which is behind a fence.
At the top of a long pedestal were placed the statues of the heroes who gave their names to the Athenian tribes. On the pedestal of this monument were made all the announcements private and public, and so every opinion coming out every morning from his home came here to be informed.
For the ancient Athenians, everything related with the private or the public life was announced here, weddings, funerals. After the law was voted, the law was published here for three days before it became the tool of the courts. So every Athenian, regardless if was a member of the assembly, had participated in the discussion about the law, had to be aware of the law. Then the law become a tool for judgments in the court.
Since the time of the Athenian democracy, the city of Athens became the center of the teachers, the center of culture and education. And a lot of prominent people of the Mediterranean world were proud to study in Athens. Among them were kings and princes from Asia Minor (Hellenistic period) and a lot of Roman emperors. Hadrian, Octavian Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius and many other emperors came to study in Athens.
And all these dignitaries, after finishing their studies in Athens were proud to leave behind infrastructure and monuments as a sign of their gratitude – first, for the culture the city gave to them, and also as a signature that they studied in Athens.
So during the late first century BC, beginning of first century AD, at the northern part of the square there was a big complex, The Odeion of Agrippa.
You see the ruins here, the foundations erected by Agrippa. He was related with a family of Octavian Augustus. Agrippa built a new auditorium for Athens. Athens had another auditorium, the theater. And now this gentleman offered the city a new one, the Auditorium of Agrippa.
This complex here was not here at the time of democracy. All of this area was a part of the square, and the Apostle Paul was at the same place, wandering in the square. Remember what the New Testament says about the Athenians? They did nothing else but discuss the new things.
The first agora in Western civilization appeared in Athens, at the end of the sixth century BC. This is where Athenian democracy was born, which opened a new era in world culture. At the Agora in Athens we have the ruins of the administrative and the religious sections of the agora.
The Temple of Hephaistos, the big temple of the agora, was dedicated to both the god of the craft men (especially the blacksmiths) and the god who had helped Athena to be born – Hephaestus.
They were co-worshiped in the temple, with Athena as the protectoress of the people of arts and crafts.
In the lower area of the agora are ruins, the foundation of another temple, which was dedicated to the patron god of the tribe of ions. Ions, unlike the Dorians, were people of culture among the Greeks. But Dorians were warriors, who teased the ions because of their culture – of being feminine. The Ions of Athens were a special, tiny island of Ions, in the middle of a sea of Dorians. All of their Athenian neighbors were Dorians. We have the Temple of Apollo, or rather, the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. The broken cult statues of these temples are in the Museum of the Agora.
The Lyre attaches to the belt on Apollo’s chest.
The King-Priest image in Revelation 1:13 is Apollo.
Here is the Stoa of Attalos:
A Golden Age (480-404 BC) track to honor the goddess Athena. And besides that there is another small temple of Athena as well.
Further, on the right, there is a porch, not a very big porch, but very important. The porch, Erectheion, was dedicated to Zeus (Zeus the Liberator.) Now, this porch, the Stoa of Zeus, was a place for the philosophers.
Among the philosophers, was Socrates, who frequently met his disciples there. It is the place, some centuries later, which Diogenes the Cynic used as a sleeping place.
The Apostle Paul was in the Athens Agora of his time.
And a little bit further is a very little room, a porch which was the office of a person. The porch was not closed in front with a wall, but with a colonnade and is called Royal Porch (Royal Stoa). It was not a place for gathering, but an office.
Remember, Athens is the first place where monarchy was abolished, and the position of King became one of the Civic offices. And so, every Athenian could candidate to be King of Athens, for a year. The person who had the title of the king (for 1 year) was also President of the Supreme Council of the City, the Supreme Council of Mars Hill.
After 3 AD, a part of the records building was used as a synagogue. According to the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul came first to the synagogue, close to the agora, the place of the philosophers (Socrates 470-399 BC; Plato 428-347 BC Socrates student; Aristotle, 384-322 BC student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great) Still today, 2000 years later, the synagogue is very close to the agora. It’s behind the new classical style houses.
A wall filled with bricks identifies the room where the synagogue used to be after the attack of the Herulians in 267 AD. During The Sack of Athens the city was destroyed partially and after it was reconstructed, the city authorities gave a room to the Jewish community to use as a synagogue.
Now, just behind this area is a statue. The sign under the statue says Emperor Hadrian, but it’s headless, armless and very broken.
How can archeologists identify this torso with the statue of Hadrian? Can you guess? Here we don’t have the trophy of a winner, officer or a soldier. We have something else on the breast plate of this emperor. that’s right. We see at the lower part, Romulus and Remus being nursed by the she-wolf. This is the emblem of Rome.
But we see something very weird; we see some bodies stepping upon the back of the wolf vest. Can you guess who is this person, from the symbols on the sides of this personality, that steps upon the back of the wolf? What do we see on both sides of this person?
We see a snake, and we say no, but remember both are symbols of wisdom, the wisdom from above, and the wisdom from below. From that, we understand that the person upon the back of the she-wolf is the patron Goddess of the city of Athens, the goddess of wisdom being crowned by two victories (the flying girls). There are two symbols symbolizing two cities.
Now, if that sign were on the breast plate of a soldier or an officer, it definitely could be considered high treason. No one could say that something is above Rome, except Hadrian, who studied in Athens and was in love with Athens. Hadrian gave a lot of offerings to the city of Athens, and he built a lot of buildings and monuments. As a Roman Emperor he claimed that Athens was above Rome and wisdom was above power. And this is how, everywhere, his statue was erected, always. And that is how we identify this torso as Hadrian’s statue.
Here is a model of the restoration of the 2 AD Agora in Athens.
