Day 06 - Pergamum

Sarah Anne did her normal exceptional job of leading us in an inspirational morning devotion. After that we boarded the bus and headed over to the ancient city of Pergamum.  The letter written to the church of Pergamum can be found in Revelation 2:12-17.

Pergamum was known as the Mayo Clinic of the region. There was nothing better or more respected (outside of Athens, Greece) than Pergamum. Like our medical symbols today, we see images of snakes. This was because snakes had regenerating properties. They would shed their skin and then regenerate their skin. The god for health was Asclepius. All doctors that worked were considered priests of Asclepius. Jesus frequently ran into issues with Asclepius when he healing people. This put Jesus in conflict with Asclepius in the minds of the people.

In one of the attached pictures, you see Brady standing by the sacred stone of Asclepius. Each person had to make an offering and touch the stone before entering the healing center. It seems that they were all about hedging their bets on healing people. The following were not allowed into the healing center: The elderly, disabled, and pregnant women. Why pregnant women? It’s because about 50% of the women died during childbirth. That doesn’t make Asclepius look very powerful.

Because the town was dedicated to healing and health, the theater had a limited offering of entertainment. No tragedies were allowed. Only comedies. They believed the phrase “laughter is the best medicine”.

One of the pictures shows the pool that would facilitate healing. As part of the bath complex, pools were constructed to do mud baths and mineral baths each supplied by sacred water.

As a group walked through a tunnel, we learned that if you would need surgery, the hospital would have you travel through this tunnel that had “living water“ flowing through it. Once you arrived in the rounded room, you were given opium and either had surgery, or some sort of treatment, or you would wait to get a vision (opium induced) as to  how to be healed. Upon recovery, you would carve the body part that was healed into a monument.  It appears that many men had trouble with ED. :)

For hundreds of years, Pergamum was the most important city in Asia. Eventually, it was eclipsed by Ephesus because they had a seaport. Pergamum was built on the side of a mountain and saw tremendous growth during the Hellenism period. This is also the town where Roman emperor worship first began.

Also at the top of the city was a temple to honor Athena. Athena was a goddess of wisdom and power and the patron goddess of Alexander the Great.

We took a walk over to the Terrasse Theater. This Greek theater held 10,000 people and is the steepest in the ancient world. To enter the theater, you had to walk through a tunnel, take a turn, and then emerge at the top row of the stadium. As you can see in one of the pictures, Brady went down to the bottom of the theater and addressed our group in a demonstration of the theater's amazing acoustics.

At the bottom right of that large theater the temple of Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of theater, entertainment and wine. The Greeks/Romans believed that Dionysus turned water into wine on his birthday each year, and also that he raised someone from the dead.

There was another god worshipped there, called Demeter. Demeter was the god of grain (and therefore bread). When Jesus fed the 5,000 people, the people would have associated Him with Demeter, and wanted to call him the ‘bread’ King.

Toward the end of the day we speculated on how hard it was to be a Christ follower amongst all the everyday pieces of society that caused them to interface with Roman gods. How do you see a doctor when you have to give sacrifices to the their god first? How do you purchase grain or go to the theater without paying homage to the gods? The church ended up having to create its own economy in society based on loving and caring for people. And because the elderly and disabled and pregnant women were excluded from care, the church began to help those too.

After a late lunch it was back on the bus for a two hour ride to the West Coast. The team is pretty excited because we get to stay in the same hotel for three nights!

It’s been super windy today, so our evening out on the Aegean Sea got postponed.  (In fact, it was almost impossible to keep a hat on while we were touring the sites)!  Hopefully, we will be able to do that tomorrow or the next day.