Well I'm in Antakya tonight, the city is also known as Hatay. Back in New Testament times the city was known as Antioch, the church here was Paul's home church as he spread the Gospel.
(a beautiful day in Istanbul)This morning was a beautiful morning in Istanbul, the air was brisk and the sky was clear and blue, it was a great change from the wet weather of the previous two days. After we packed up and left the hotel, we went to the Turkish Archaeological museum, then it was lunch and then the airport.
We also walked past the church where the first council of Constantinople took place. (It is closed, we couldn't go in.) The Council of Constantinople was a huge deal. I don't have time to go into what happened there, but if your curious, look up the creed of Constantinople. That was what they covered.
(Above, St. Irene's, where they had the first council of Constantinople. Left, Jin, (who tried to assign me Korean homework tonight, myself, and Brian, (not my roomate) in Istanbul. Across the Bay is Calcedon, where another really important church council took place.)
The Archaeological museum was pretty great, We saw a bunch of stuff from Ancient Assyria (whose kings had great names like "Tiglath-Pilaser III," I think it's awesome that they decided to reuse that name three times. If I ever have a boy I'm going to name him Tiglath-Pilaser Mattern IV. Or maybe I'll name my next dog that, I haven't decided yet.)
We also saw: Hammurabi's code, the oldest piece of Hebrew writing in the world, the inscription from Hezekiah's tunnel (it's in the Bible) and a block of stone from Herod's temple in Jerusalem (the one that Jesus would have been in) that threatens death to any gentile who went into the next courtyard. Pictures of stuff taken in museums are boring though (and in the case of Hammurabi's code, blurry. The Turks have something against people using tripods, ask me about it sometime.) So here is a picture of a cat posing like an Assyrian Lion.
After the museum was mostly travel, flying from Istanbul to Adana, then driving to Antakya. Tomorrow were going to a mosaic museum, we're going to look at the church of Antioch, then we're driving back to Adana, where we'll spend the night. So tomorrow night's post will be from Adana. I'd like to tell a couple of funny stories about Joyce and Jin, two of the Korean girls who have taken it upon themselves to have me speaking Korean before the trip is over. Hopefully tomorrow night there will be time for that.
Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.
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