{"id":1107,"date":"2010-06-28T08:49:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T08:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/lands-of-the-bible-sardis.html"},"modified":"2010-06-28T08:49:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-28T08:49:09","slug":"lands-of-the-bible-sardis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/lands-of-the-bible-sardis.html","title":{"rendered":"Lands of the Bible—Sardis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bble<\/a>
\n\"Bble<\/a><\/span>
\n\"Bble<\/a><\/span>Without question one of my favorite sites to visit and revisit is Sardis, home of the fancy synagogue and even fancier gymnasium lovingly restored by a team from Harvard. The picture immediately above is of the Torah shrine portion of the synagogue (built after the NT era) which attests to the social status and economic wherewithall of some Jews in Sardis. What is even more interesting is how this synagogue is right next to the mammoth gymnasium. Jews had managed to blend in quite well with, in some case even syncretize their religion or praxis with, the dominant Greco-Roman culture. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\"Bble<\/a><\/span>The evidence of the influence of Rome is everywhere (see the ancient Roman bridge used as part of a modern bridge and the temple of Artemis refurbished by Rome).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\nNotice how Christians are blamed in this sign (below) for the decline of paganism, when in fact paganism was already in decline in various places long before Constantine. Of course the great dilemma and debate for both Jews and Christians was how much to compromise with or blend in with the dominant culture.  For Jews, this dilemma must have been more acute, since food laws and related practices defined their identity in a way that was not the case with most early Christians.  Some of these factors help us make better sense of what is said in Rev. 3.1-6.  The danger of too much comprise with pagan culture, too much soiling of the clean clothes, so to speak, was an ever present issue.  It still is today.<\/span>
\n\"Bble<\/a><\/span>
\n\"Bble<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without question one of my favorite sites to visit and revisit is Sardis, home of the fancy synagogue and even fancier gymnasium lovingly restored by a team from Harvard. The picture immediately above is of the Torah shrine portion of the synagogue (built after the NT era) which attests to the social status and economic wherewithall…<\/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-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nLands of the Bible-Sardis - 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-sardis.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-Sardis - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Without question one of my favorite sites to visit and revisit is Sardis, home of the fancy synagogue and even fancier gymnasium lovingly restored by a team from Harvard. 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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\/1107","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=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}