This monastery in Meteora is named “Holy Trinity” and dates to the 1460s. It is built in the cruciform style on top of the rock formations a thousand feet or more above the valley below.
Wednesday, January 14; Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessaloniki
The Lion statue at Amphipolis still guards the Strymon River but no one knows why. We were kept high and dry in our first visit to Apollonia. The farmer didn’t want us tracking his rain soaked top soil into the bus. At St. Demetrios Church in Thessalonica the Roman Bath underneath the church where Demetrios was imprisoned and martyred was closed. Many of the ruins in the agora were not there. They must have been taken by a thief in the night. It rained while we toured the redesigned museum.
Thursday, January 15; Vergina, Veria (Berea), Dion
Vergina is home to the “Great Tumulus” where Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, is buried. From the outside, the tomb appears like an oversized baseball pitcher’s mound. The mosaic mural at Berea commemorates Paul’s Macedonian call and his teaching the noble-minded. In the center are the steps that led to the Jewish Synagogue’s bema seat. Between the Aegean Sea and Mt. Olympus is Dion. Among the archaeological ruins is a temple dedicated to Zeus and the twelve deities of Greek mythology. Soldiers in antiquity would come here to offer sacrifice to Zeus and the other gods for their assistance and protection in battle. It is possible Dion is where Paul boarded a ship for Athens after being chased out of Berea, however the Bible doesn’t explicitly say.
Friday, January 16; Meteora, Thermopylae
There are two noticeable oddities at Meteora. From the ground the spectacular natural sandstone pillars seem as if they are suspended in the air. From above you can see the entire valley, called the Plain of Thessaly. We visited two monasteries, the Holy Trinity and St. Stephen. The six remaining inhabited monasteries built on their lofty perches have no more than 10 occupants each. Back in the valley, we saw a demonstration of the meticulous work involved in Byzantine Iconography. Wood-carved, stencil-drawn, hand-painted, gold-leafed icons filled the shelves of the store conveniently located next to the “factory.” The Battle of Thermopylae was fought by the invading Persians and an alliance of Greek city-states, including King Leonidas I of Sparta in 480 B.C. Xerxes was the king of Persia. In the Bible book of Esther Xerxes is called Ahasuerus. This battle is not recorded in the Bible but historically took place between Esther 1:22 and 2:1.
Saturday, January 17; Delphi
The world’s most famous Oracular Temple is at Delphi and considered the “navel of the earth.” Here seekers would find the will of the mythological deities through the use of hallucinating gasses escaping from below the surface of the earth. As Fate would have it, a prophetess miraculously appeared answering several questions in typical nonsensical phraseology. This was the world view most Gentile Christians in the first century would have originally held. We got a first look of the Parthenon in Athens at night.
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