Hello Everyone,
I have been asked several times what my favorite site in Turkey is. Choosing one is like the old Lay’s potato chips commercial, “I can’t pick just one.” However, if you pressed me and insisted, I would start with Antioch (on the Orontes). It is necessary to identify the river that runs through the city because from ancient time there are 16 sites to date identified as Antioch.
Antakya is not the big city and it shows. For instance, the people here seem friendlier, like you would find in a mid-west town in the US. This afternoon we stopped at a local market to purchase water. The schools were done for the day and many of the kids that walked by waved and smiled. As we waited, four 15 year old high school girls helped themselves aboard our bus for a few moments to giggle, practice a little English, and maybe even gawk a little at the fashions the ladies in our group were wearing. That would never happen in a metropolis.
There is a rich history here that would compete with many better known cities. Antakya is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious city today. Just 15 miles from the Syrian border, there are daily border crossings of Turks and Syrians without special requirement. Also living together in the community are Arabs, Koreans, and Jews from every religious persuasion that includes Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic, and even a small group of (Evangelical) Christians. But few today would appreciate a city slogan declaring, “We’re Number Four!”
If cities retain a similar character and persona over the years, as it appears to have done in Antakya, it is not hard to imagine why the Holy Spirit would use Antioch to pioneer the transitioning of the Church from “Jewish” to include all ethnicities and become the training ground for several yet to become important leaders in the first century (like Paul) and even several leaders of the second and third century Church Fathers (like Ignatius). But Antioch never receives a letter that would be included in the Bible as Scripture.
Not included in our itinerary was an especially beneficial trip to the top of Mt. Silipias just east of the city. From this vantage we could see that Antakya is built in a valley surrounded by granite mountains with a river that divides the city in half. Here we looked to our left to the distant Mediterranean Sea, about 16 miles away. Antakya is certainly not a coastal town (important in ancient times for commerce and culture). Morning fog hovered over the south-western portion of the city as if filling the basin with a covering, typifying Antakaya and Antioch’s limited isolation, not so much to be out of touch and just enough to accomplish something extraordinary.
Jim
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