{"id":1096,"date":"2010-06-15T10:00:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/lands-of-the-bible-2010-istanbul.html"},"modified":"2010-06-15T10:00:58","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T10:00:58","slug":"lands-of-the-bible-2010-istanbul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/lands-of-the-bible-2010-istanbul.html","title":{"rendered":"Lands of the Bible 2010–Istanbul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Certainly one of the most interesting and cosmopolitan cities in the world is Istanbul. This is a city of many names and many cultures, both east and west, indeed its residents like to boast that it is the only major city where East meets West, because it sits on two continents.  Be that as it may,  Istanbul=Byzantium=Constantinople is a city of major importance to the history of  Christianity, even though it existed only as a small Roman town in the first century A.D.
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Istanbul today is a city of big churches (see Hagia Sophia above) and big mosques, though the churches are mostly museums these days and the Patriarch is not really allowed the freedom to train people for the ministry by having a Christian school or seminary in Istanbul.  But it was not always thus.  This is the city where John Chrysostom preached, and where Constantine helped the church become a legal and licit religion.  This is the city where major church councils have been held, and indeed which was the capital city of all Christianity when Rome was sacked and Byzantine Christianity was on the rise.
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The signs are everywhere of the ancient Roman (see aqueducts above) and Christian presence.  And if ancient history is not your thing, the food in this town is also stellar.
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The art and architecture and artifacts of Christianity dominate various parts of this town, whether one is in Hagia Sophia (see below)<\/p>\n

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Or in the Istanbul archaeology museum where we run into altars to unknown gods (Acts 17–see below).<\/p>\n

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It has been said that those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Whether that is always true, or not,  there is certainly much to learn about Christianity in Istanbul, and along the way one learns about all sorts of other interesting subjects as well. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Certainly one of the most interesting and cosmopolitan cities in the world is Istanbul. This is a city of many names and many cultures, both east and west, indeed its residents like to boast that it is the only major city where East meets West, because it sits on two continents.  Be that as it…<\/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-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nLands of the Bible 2010-Istanbul - 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-istanbul.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-Istanbul - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Certainly one of the most interesting and cosmopolitan cities in the world is Istanbul. 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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\/1096","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=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}