{"id":794,"date":"2005-07-21T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-21T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html"},"modified":"2005-07-21T12:50:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-21T12:50:00","slug":"save-colossae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html","title":{"rendered":"Save Colossae"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Having spent parts of the last two summers in Turkey, one of the dismaying things is seeing the Biblical sites which desperately need to be excavated but are untouched.  One such site which has never been dug is Colossae. The city was destroyed by earthquake in the mid 60s A.D.  and has lain pretty much untouched since then.  It is a small  but manageable sized  mound and would not take years and years to uncover.  You can see the outlines of an Odeon on one side of the tel,  and farmers are still planting wheat on the other side of the tel.  It is pristine and crying out for excavation.  Something needs to be done and soon,  because recently someone has tried to dig a trench or hole in the site to find antiquities and pilfer them.   The site is fortunately now guarded at least part of the time, but the only way to really protect this precious site is to excavate it and bring it under the protection of the antiquities authorities in Turkey.   <\/p>\n<p>The Turkish government is happy to have a proper foreign team dig the site though they require quite naturally the supervision of a Turkish archaeologist, they charge a $50,000 for permission to dig, and of course the artifacts need to go to Turkish museums.   I am wondering if there is someone or someones out there in cyberspace  who would be willing to underwrite one season&#8217;s worth of digging, to see what we can find and whether it is worth pursuing for a longer period of time.  If there are such folks, I have the contacts in Turkey, and would be glad to help facilitate this.  I would love to take a team from Asbury and elsewhere over there for a dig,  and we have many students who would go and dig as long as they had sustenance to help with this project by providing cheap labor.   If anyone is interested,  contact me via my email address&#8212; benw333@hotmail.com.    This is a project worth doing for sure, and who knows what lies beneath the surface of that mound?  It could be, as Paul says in Colossians, a revelation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having spent parts of the last two summers in Turkey, one of the dismaying things is seeing the Biblical sites which desperately need to be excavated but are untouched. One such site which has never been dug is Colossae. The city was destroyed by earthquake in the mid 60s A.D. and has lain pretty much&hellip;<\/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-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Save Colossae - 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\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Save Colossae - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Having spent parts of the last two summers in Turkey, one of the dismaying things is seeing the Biblical sites which desperately need to be excavated but are untouched. One such site which has never been dug is Colossae. The city was destroyed by earthquake in the mid 60s A.D. and has lain pretty much&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-21T12:50:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Save Colossae - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Save Colossae - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"Having spent parts of the last two summers in Turkey, one of the dismaying things is seeing the Biblical sites which desperately need to be excavated but are untouched. One such site which has never been dug is Colossae. The city was destroyed by earthquake in the mid 60s A.D. and has lain pretty much&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2005-07-21T12:50:00+00:00","author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html","name":"Save Colossae - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-07-21T12:50:00+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-21T12:50:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/07\/save-colossae.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Save Colossae"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. 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&amp;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\/794","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=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}