{"id":1088,"date":"2010-06-11T19:26:01","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T19:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/lands-of-the-bible-2010-the-asclepion-at-corinth.html"},"modified":"2010-06-11T19:26:01","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T19:26:01","slug":"lands-of-the-bible-2010-the-asclepion-at-corinth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/lands-of-the-bible-2010-the-asclepion-at-corinth.html","title":{"rendered":"Lands of the Bible 2010–The Asclepion at Corinth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bble<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

One of the more fascinating aspects of life in ancient Corinth is what went on in the temple of Asklepion,  the god of healing (from which we get the modern symbol for medicine with the staff and the serpent).  What has been found at the Asklepion was clay votive offerings largely of various body parts.  The debate is whether they served as offerings meant as entreaties for healing that had not yet happened, or as thanks offering for healings of a particular part of the body.  For example, consider the following pictures of these votives in the newly revamped Corinth museum…<\/p>\n

\"Bble<\/a><\/span> <\/div>\n

\"Bble<\/a><\/span>
\"Bble<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the fascinating things about these votive offerings in clay is how often we see molds of genitalia, both male and female. Of course the sexual promiscuity of Corinth was legendary but I doubt it is an accident that it is in 1 Corinthians that Paul talks about the body of Christ and speaks of various body parts in doing so. He probably had seen some of these representations of body parts being crafted in a shop in Corinth.  The ancients did not view salvation the way we usually do.  For them, to be saved mostly referred not to some emotional religious experience but rather it meant to be healed, or to be kept safe or to be rescued from danger.  For example, when Jesus says to the woman with the issue of blood ‘your faith has saved you’  what he means is ‘your faith has healed you’.  This is the common meaning of the term in antiquity.   Paul’s metaphors are aptly chosen to suit and be persuasive in their immediate context, and the use of the body metaphor is one such example. <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the more fascinating aspects of life in ancient Corinth is what went on in the temple of Asklepion,  the god of healing (from which we get the modern symbol for medicine with the staff and the serpent).  What has been found at the Asklepion was clay votive offerings largely of various body parts. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nLands of the Bible 2010-The Asclepion at Corinth - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/lands-of-the-bible-2010-the-asclepion-at-corinth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lands of the Bible 2010-The Asclepion at Corinth - 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}