The account of St. Paul’s address on the Areopagus in Athens is a masterclass in the evangelization of the culture – a skill surely important for our day and age. His arrival in Athens is, in its way, the introduction of Christianity to Europe. It was an event, while of no particular note or importance to historians, thoughts leaders, or philosophers of the day, was one that shaped the history of Western Europe and eventually the world.
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One of our Bible study folks asked about the reference in The Letter to the Galatians to St. Paul’s time in Arabia. I had always wanted to post something on the topic – and now I have an immediate request to do so. The problem is that we don’t really know a lot of biographical information about St. Paul – at least not in the sense of modern biographies.
In any biography the author, by necessity, leaves out many events. Even a lengthy work like the 16-volume, 10 million-word biography of Winston Churchill by Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert, which is said to be the longest biography of modern times, will still leave out much more than it records. So, when we read the New Testament, which is relatively short, we do well to remember that the human authors have been highly selective, mentioning only a very few events in the lives of the characters. St. Paul’s time in Arabia is one such event that receives only a couple of brief mentions, without which we would know nothing of it at all. We can only speculate on the “why,” “when,” and “how long” of Paul’s time in Arabia based on the information we have – which is not a lot. Continue reading
The first reading for today’s daily Mass is from St. Paul to the citizens of Thessaloniki (Thessalonica in English). The original name of the city was Θεσσαλονίκη Thessaloníkē. It was named after princess Thessalonike of Macedon, the half sister of Alexander the Great, whose name means “Thessalian victory” honoring the Macedonian victory at the Battle of Crocus Field (the bloodiest battle recorded in Ancient Greek history; 353/352 BCE). The victorious forces were under the reign of Philip II of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great. The city has its own history, but today is the second-largest city in Greece, with over 1 million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of Greek Macedonia. Continue reading
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