Tag: river-of-lydia

Why gather at the banks of the rivers? Living water is the water of the river and the sea, living water is not the water of the lake. Nor is it the water of the well. Living water was necessary for Jewish purification ceremonies.

After coming out of Egypt, Jewish people found themselves for the first time, scattered among the pagans (awful to them, because they considered the pagans at almost the same level as animals.) To a Jew, pagans were unclean.

Jewish slaves gathered by the rivers of Babylon to cry and grieve for the lost glory of Israel. They gathered outside of the pagan city by the banks of the rivers (Psalm of the Exile in the Old Testament is Psalm 157.) As the Jewish people gathered and read prophecy they were encouraged for the future. So informally, by the river, the Jewish synagogue began as an institution of the diaspora. The word synagogue is not a Hebrew word. It is a Greek word, meaning gathering.

According to Jewish tradition, Ezra was the one who made gatherings by the rivers of Babylon an institution, the institution of the synagogue. Then Cyrus gave the Jews permission to go back home and some of them returned to Jerusalem bringing the institution with them.

A synagogue is not a temple. The synagogue never replaced the temple and this is why there was the coexistence of the second temple with the synagogue throughout the days of Jesus until a little bit later when the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple.

The synagogue was mostly a place for teaching and social gathering. But the priesthood goes from the temple. The rabbi was not a priest. A rabbi could be anyone who was a scholar. The priests were of a certain tribe, from the tribe of Levi.

The habit of keeping the quarters in the synagogue outside, away from the unclean, impure, pagan cities gradually was abolished among the Jewish people when they became rich, more commercial and more political at the beginning of the 2^nd century BC. Gradually Jewish communities and synagogues moved into the pagan cities, with some exceptions. The Apostle Paul visited the synagogue of Corinth, Athens and Thessaloniki. We have an exception of piety where we find Jewish people gathered outside of the city.

The first convert in Phillipi was a lady, not a Jew but a Greek, an immigrant. The name ascribed to her, Lydia, may be her personal name or her national name noted from the region of her hometown, Thyatira, a town in the region of Lydia. Possibly being the only foreigner in a small community she may have been called by her national name, Lydia (just as we call someone “The American,” or “The Greek.”)

Lydia seems to have been an emancipated lady. We have to say a few things about the emancipation of women in antiquity. Until the 20^th century AD women in Europe did not vote. Women depended on a man, their father, or their brother, and when they got married, their husband. Still in some countries a wife takes the surname of her husband. Formerly, in Europe they took also the first name of their husband in the family court. So, we cannot talk about the emancipation of a proper lady.

There were improper ladies who decided not to be submitted to a man who they had their own houses. They hired other ladies to work for them. These ladies were colleagues. Colleagues to whom? To men. Their houses offered services, like Giza ladies of the Japanese tradition with prostitution as the source of their main income. Most of the time they were educated ladies, so philosophical debates and meetings were organized at their houses, with music, and amusement. Very often, instead of going to a cafeteria (which did not exist at that time) the men,went to the ladies’ houses to eat. In ancient society these ladies were almost equal to men. They could directly address their word to a man and look at their eyes. They could go alone to the center of the city, they could do work that usually the men did. They were equal, except that they were not accepted to vote. The voting of women in Europe and in many countries came after the second world war.

Lydia was not one of the colleagues. Lydia was something else.

Lydia, a business lady, did a job that usually was the job of a man. We assume that this lady, from Thyatira, was a widow with minor children and did not have the support that was expected for her and her children from her husband’s family. So, she had to raise up her children, take up the situation on her hands and move to where she could find the Roman Imperial of the job that she employed, possibly the job of her deceased husband.

Lydia was a purple maker and dealer.

Do you know how the purple was produced? From snails, plentiful in the Aegean Sea, belonging to the scientific family of Murex. People collected the snails from the sea. They had to keep them all alive. They chose the right number of snails for fabric they had to dye and then smashed them onto fabric. They could only use fabric which had been produced from animals, wool, and silk, not cotton nor linen. The color was not a fixed color, but nine different shades of the color purple, from deep red to red mixed with blue. The Eastern people called different shades “purple,” Here, red was called purple. At the River of Lydia today, scarves are sold which are red (not red mixed with blue.) They are labeled as “purple of Lydia.”

Remember in the New Testament Gospels, the description of the torture of Jesus? One of the Gospels, Matthew 27:27-28 says that He was flogged with a red garment and the other Mark 15:16-17 says, with purple. Somebody might say that we have a gospel disagreement, but we do not because for the Eastern Mediterranean people, including the Greeks, purple is, still today, the deep red.

Let us open the Bible to see what happened when the Apostle Paul arrived at Philippi by the banks of the River of Lydia.

^{Acts 16:6} They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been prevented by the Holy Spirit from speaking the message in the province of Asia. ^16:7 When they came to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to do this,^16:8 so they passed through Mysia and went down to Troas. ^16:9 A vision appeared to Paul during the night: A Macedonian man was standing there urging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” ^16:10 After Paul saw the vision, we attempted immediately to go over to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. ^16:11 We put out to sea from Troas and sailed a straight course to Samothrace, (very close to Andropolis) the next day to Neapolis (the Port of Kavala today),^16:12 and from there we came to Philippi, (a ruin to visit today) which is a leading city (translated: a city colony) of that district  (translated: “city colony” of the first portion) of Macedonia.

The Romans divided Macedonia into 4 portions and at Philippi, we are at the first portion, which is Eastern Macedonia.

Acts 16:12 is better translated, “and from there we came to Philippi, a city colony of the first portion of Macedonia.” Philippi was not a leading city, it was a village, a city colony. Which was the leading city? The sub capital of the portion, the city of Amphipolis.

^16:12b We stayed in this city for some days. ^16:13 On the Sabbath day we went outside the city gate to the side of the river, where we thought there would be a place of prayer, and we sat down and began to speak to the women who had assembled there. ^16:14 A woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira,a God-fearing woman, listened to us. The Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul was saying. ^16:15 After she and her household were baptized, she urged us, “If you consider me to be a believer in the Lord, come and stay in my house.” And she persuaded us.

Do you understand how risky it was for Lydia? She invited foreign men to her house, being herself, the head of the house. It was a very, very delicate situation. She could easily have been characterized in the society as not being a good woman.

The Holy Spirit prohibited to Paul for preach the gospel east and north.

After Alexander the Great, the world was divided into the cultured east and the barbarian west. It was very, very reasonable for Paul to go east. Even the Romans had the Proverb, in Latin, Ex oriente lux, meaning, the light comes from the east.

But the Holy Spirit prohibited Paul from preaching the gospel in the cultured east.