Marvelous Marble

These Greeks were—and are—obsessed with marble. All the floors are marble. In bathrooms everything but the ceilings are marble. Stairs are marble. Everything here seems “marbelous” in our eyes.

Marble is wondrous material for building and sculpting, no doubt about that. And there is plenty of it in the mountains of Greece.

Now see if you can believe what George told us when someone asked how the ancients transported massive blocks of marble so many miles.

“The raw marble was quarried out in huge cylinders with some thing like rims on the ends. The skid roads were built with a groove (like a gutter) on each side. So when the cylinders were placed onto the road they would transport themselves by gravity from the mountains to the plain where Athens is located.”

OK. I’ll buy that. We think hese guys were primitive. But that's not at all the case. They were great engineers!

And it is a gleaming white marble here. So the sun glinted off the monuments with a dazzling brilliance that must have been overwhelmingly impressive. Plus the statues were painted, often with gold trim.

Yesterday we noticed another element that comes to Athens from mountains far away. Water. Sluiceways and aqueducts, some open and some closed run for over 100 miles from mountain lakes, coursing up and down the hills by gravity pressure, making this city’s water drinkable. And a lot of water is needed for the four millions living here in Greater Athens. It reminds me of waterways around Phoenix, AZ.

Now, the big attraction in Athens is the Acropolis—the highest point in the city, much as the City of Zion (Temple Mount) was to ancient Jerusalem. The gods always get the best spot.

And the mesa upon which the Temple of Athena is built is much larger than I would have expected from the photos we’ve all seen of this temple—more than 10 acres, I estimate. To one side is the first temple—a modest one built in the 8th century BC. But in the 5th century this grand temple was built, during the lifetime of Socrates. The chief engineer was genius enough to know that that the base needed to be slightly bowed in order to look straight to the eye, And he made the columns thicker in the middle than at top and bottom so that they would not appear to be leaning outward. All in marble.

There are cranes and scaffolds there now and the buzz of many workers as reconstruction goes on, using recovered stones where possible and new ones as necessary. The original temple was destroyed by the Persians in revenge for their defeat in the naval battle oif Salamis. (The general was told by the oracle that Athens could be saved by wooden walls, which he interpreted as ships. He built three oar-deck triremes that were much faster and cold change direction quicker than Persain sailing vessels. They also had a protruding bronze battering ram just below the surface enabling them to ram the enemy ships and sink them by the hundreds!) It would be left for Alexander to get the final word in as he swept through Persia and all the way to India, before turning back to Egypt, thus conquering the world as it was then known to the Greeks.

To the south of the temple area is an amphitheatre where the great dramatists Aristophanes, Euripedes and Aeschylus put on the blockbusters of the day. George opines that drama of that scale and quality was not seen in Europe again until Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre productions.

The north is the agora—sort of an outdoor shopping mall, not far from the court where Socrates was tried before a jury of 501 peers. This was not in a building but on what amounts to a public commons. Athens was a pure democracy—all the enfranchised citizens (adult male freemen) debated and voted on all the laws. Juries were chosen by a lottery where citizens had a certain color ball. Randomly certain rows of balls were chosen and those determined which citizens were on jury duty for that trial.

But our focus is on Mars Hill, an insignificant rocky knob less than an acre in size, above the noisy agora and below the Acropolis. Here philosophers and other idle rich got away from the noise of the market and did “nothing other than listen to new ideas.” Here Paul gave his famous address with this opening: “I noticed how religious you are when I saw an altar to the unknown god.” He told them who this unknown (to them) God was—this novel religion— much to their delight - until he mentioned the resurrection. A few believed, some wanted to hear more the next day, while most rejected it as nonsense. Thus Paul wrote that the Greeks seek wisdom while rejecting the wisdom of God as foolishness, even though in truth it is the power of God to salvation.

The rocks on Mars Hill are worn so smooth it was treacherous for those of us who ignored instructions to use the modern walkway. Our most senior man had to be assisted over the top to a place where we could safely stand for George’s expostulation. The wind was strong, with gusts up to 20 mph, against which the bright sun was no match.

After a bus ride of nearly two hours we crossed the isthmus to the Peloponnesus where Sparta once held sway. There is a canal 25 feet deep and 80 wide, dug a century ago to replace a portage of four miles over which horses once dragged small ships.

At Corinth we held another communion service at which Dale gave a moving message. Corinth is very much ruins, with only a few small “shops” still standing in the agora. The temple remains are few and have not been rebuilt. We saw where Paul would have gone to the synagogue and then to the magistrate. He spent a fruitful 18 months there doing awning business with Priscilla and Aquila. (Tents were made of skins by the soldiers themselves, so Paul's trade would have been in canvass-type goods for civilian use. A museum shows many of the artifacts. Again—more marvelous marble.

As we headed back, George gave us the surprise bonus which was not on the tour itinerary—Kenchrea (Cenchrea). This small port city is where Paul would have embarked to go to Ephesus in 41 AD. A church was built on the site of the wharves in the 5th century. But an earthquake toppled it some time later and it was never rebuilt.

The splendid works in marble, still showing signs of glory after more than 2000 years, all either in ruins or in mute testimony to a religion and way of life that has no pulse today. Marble, yes, but no longer marvelous. For the things that are unseen are alone eternal.

And this God that Paul preached about so long ago is present everywhere, in heaven and earth. As Dale said, your self cannot be found anywhere in your bodily tissues, yet you are present in every part nonetheless. So God cannot be found in any part of the universe yet is present in every part. We do not have to go to any lengths by means of religious ritual to find him, for he is present everywhere always. All we need to do is open our hearts to him and he will enter in an instant, just as air enters the lungs when we stop holding our breath. This is more wonderful than anything captured in marble.

“How wonderful, how marvelous and my song shall ever be.
How wonderful, how marvelous is my Savior’s love to me.” -- Fanny Crosby, 19th century hymnwriter