Pictures of Athens, Words of Paul

Meridian Magazine has a nice post with some beautiful photos of Athens, mingled with a review of Paul's sermon to Athenian intellectuals in Acts 17. Interspersed with the post are ads for a ten-day Mediterranean cruise next summer with the author and his photogenic eternal companion. Normally I kind of sneer at that sort of thing (hosted cruises; self-promotion; blog ads), but a cruise sounds pretty tempting at the moment. Eat my way around Italy with my own photogenic eternal companion. Stroll through the agora followed (no-doubt) by a latter-day sermon on Mars' Hill. Stranger things have happened. Are cruise ships wired for Internet? If not ... make it a three-day cruise. Couldn't handle ten days offline. Ten days is forever.

Comments

[Seth R.]

If you're looking to tour Greek ruins, paradoxically, you're better off going to Turkey. Half the price, and more Greek ruins.

[CAW]

We went on a Mediterranean cruise last month -- we got a great last minute deal. It started in Rome -- good Roman ruins there, of course, and we stopped at Patmos -- saw the cave where John received Revelations (beautiful scenery) and the best excursion was to Ephesus (the port was at Izmir, Turkey, ancient city of Smyrna). Fabulous ruins. We didn't stop at Athens on this cruise -- been there before. But other cruises have that as a port. Our Greek ports we didn't see ruins, but fabulous scenery. A cruise is a wonderful (and cost effective) way to see the Mediterranean. They do have internet on board ship, but it's quite expensive. But we stopped at an internet cafe in one port -- very cheap internet access.

[Ann]

Priestcraft.

[Matt W.]

Going on a cruise with a religious tourguide is not priestcraft. Unless that tourguide is John Bytheway...

[Norbert]

At BYU, I took Letters of Paul for my religion requirements from a professor who had been at the Jerusalem center for a while. The class probably had some content, but I mostly remember him reading from his travel journal; him singing songs he had written about the Middle East while playing the guitar; and him reading scriptures while showing slides of his travels. He had an especially impressive collection of pictures of phallic street signs -- I forgot what the point was.

Anyway, the Meridian article reminded me of that class.

[Todd Wood]

I like Seth's suggestion . . . Turkey.

Tell me, Dave, when you cruise the Mediterranean. I could join you. I bet I could highten the stimulating, intellectual discussion on biblical archaeology for the tour group. :)

As far as internet . . . well, wordpress has been running into legal difficulties with their free speech in Turkey.

[Nitsav]

I roomed with Taylor and some other LDS guys at SBL a few years ago. He's a good guy, knows his stuff.

[Duff]

Dave, I dare say every cruise line has an internet cafe on board. It is not that expensive and will get more and more inexpensive every year. Some of them will even deliver your emails to your cabin. Go and enjoy.

[Stephen M (Ethesis)]

"Asia Minor" is how you say it when you talk about Greek ruins ;)