Villagers still cultivate the vine, and olives are pressed for their oil in much the same manner as was used 2,000 years ago. Traveling beyond the major cities such as Izmir, which once was the Greco-Roman and biblical Smyrna, you are impressed with how out of place are the incursions of modernity on the old and lovely Ionian coast.
#BIBLE DISCOVERY TURKEY FULL#
What endures is the sense that the Christian faith grew to its full stature here, and from here reached out to so many. One marvels at the overnight flowering of yellow bugle and silvery wormwood in the brief springtime under the peaks of Mount Ararat, and is astounded at what the Mongol wrath left of the great ancient city of Harran. The lasting impression in this land is the sense of the stubbornness of men and women in search of the one God. Here, it is said, God spared Jonah from the belly of the great fish.
It is in this same Anatolian land that Abraham tarried for seven years at Harran as he and his fellow wanderers made their long trek into the land of Canaan.Īnatolias wide-reaching Mediterranean coast, with its busy port and huge petroleum refinery is a stretch of shore not wholly spoiled by development. And here far away in the Anatolian north, locked in seemingly-eternal glacial ice, are two peaks where it is said the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Christian, Moslem and Jew stand in awe before this mighty sleeping volcano which reaches in height to 16,920 feet. Here, the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow southward where according to tradition they once made fertile the Garden of Paradise. The countryside is as broad and diverse as a continent, and is everywhere filled with memories of holy men and women who toiled and worked miracles here in the second holy land, Anatolia now modern Turkey. Andrew crossed the Bosphorus here on his way to martyrdom in Patras. The descendants of Shem moved to what is now modern-day Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, becoming the nations of Arabia, Syria, Persia, Lydia, Israel, and Assyria.Įventually, all these people spread out to fill the Earth as God had commanded them in Genesis 1:28, but it took God’s hand at the Tower of Babel to cause them to do it (Genesis 11:5-9).Basilica of Hagia Irene (upper left) and dependencies of Hagia Sophia, (in foreground), on the acropolis of Byzantium. They eventually became the Hittites, Egyptians, Babylonians, Philistines, Amorites, Canaanites, and most of the other “ites” in the Old Testament. Ham’s descendants moved to modern-day Turkey, Egypt, and to the land where the Israelites eventually settled.
They became the nations of the Medes, Scythians, Greeks, and other various peoples of the Mediterranean Sea. The descendants of Japheth lived in what is modern-day Turkey, Iran, and many of the islands in the Mediterranean Sea. In Genesis 10, we can read where all these people went, and what nations they became. We read in Genesis 11 where, after the Flood and the confusion caused at the Tower of Babel, God scattered the descendants of Noah and his three sons all over the Earth (Genesis 11:9). This map also shows from which one of Noah’s sons many different people descended. If you look in the back of your Bible, you may see a map that shows where some of the people and nations mentioned in the Old Testament were located.
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