Hi All!

Yesterday, I visited the archaelogical remains of Corinth, an extremely important city in the first century. St. Paul spent a significant amount of time there, and wrote 29 chapters to the early Christians in Corinth, more than to any other community. (Apparently, they were his problem children!)

Corinth was inhabited for centuries before Paul got there, although the city was sometimes destroyed and rebuilt. Often, the destruction was due to warfare. Corinth sits in a tiny slip of land between the Adriatic and Aegan seas, and rival Greek city states often fought over it. Corinth later became quite rich because they could transport merchandise across the isthmus so that ships wouldn't have to sail all the way around Greece. Roman Emporers (and later Napolean) tried to dig a canal, but were unsucessful. Finally in 1893, a canal was cut, but you can see the bedrock they had to cut through to do it!

Sometimes, the destruction was due to earthquakes, which are prevalent in this area. In Paul's day, the city had recently been rebuilt by the Romans around 46 BC (after having been destroyed by the Romans about 164 BC!) The Romans populated the city with a whole host of people, including Greeks and Romans, slaves and freedmen (ex-slaves). In addition, there seems to have been a significant Jewish population. So, the people that Paul would have met were diverse in many ways.

You'll see in the pictures that the site is pretty broken up. In later ages, the city was destroyed repeatedly, and earthquakes took their toll. Today, the modern city of Corinth is located several kilometers up the road. So, it's kind of hard to make heads or tails of what you're seeing, and it took me a lot longer than usual to figure out what I was looking at. However, I'll put it all together when I get back, and hopefully you can get a sense of what's there by my photos and somewhat longer captions.

Today and tomorrow I'm finishing up sights in Athens. Then, I'm off to Thessaloniki on Saturday.