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Evangelical

2025-06-30T14:04:52-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Orvieto–Italy’s Hidden Gem–Part Four

Last updated on: June 30, 2025 at 2:04 pm By Ben Witherington

If you found the detail on the outside of the cathedral mesmerizing, just wait until you see the inside. And we were fortunate enough to be inside during part of an organ recital of Widor’s Wonderful Toccata. I was moved to tears– as it was played at our daughter Christy’s funeral. The area around the high altar and the rose window can give you a permanent crick in your neck from staring up. Read more

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I did think I had entered paradise

2025-06-30T13:33:00-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Orvieto–Italy’s Hidden Gem– Part 3

Last updated on: June 30, 2025 at 1:33 pm By Ben Witherington

You could spend hours just studying what’s on the front of Orvieto’s cathedral. Here are a few close ups… Read more

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Ornate is too subtle a word for this cathedral

2025-06-30T13:26:42-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Orvieto– Italy’s Hidden Gem– Part 2

Last updated on: June 30, 2025 at 1:26 pm By Ben Witherington

There is a reason why the resurrection chapel to the right of the main altar and aisle has scenes that look strikingly like those in the Sistine Chapel. That’s because the one was modelled on the other. Luca Signorelli did these incredible paintings, and Michelangelo is said to have borrowed some of these images and copied them in the Sistine chapel (and in any case Signorelli himself had done a now lost section of the fresco in the Sistine Chapel. ... Read more

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Resurrection from out of the dead ones

2025-06-30T13:07:44-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Italy’s Hidden Gem–Orvieto Part 1

Last updated on: June 30, 2025 at 1:07 pm By Ben Witherington

Certainly one of my very favorite places to visit in Italy is the hilltop town in Umbria, known as Orvieto which has one the most spectacular cathedrals anywhere in the world. This post will focus on the cathedral itself. Notice in the picture above the bronze (now green in color), just like the bronze doors on St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. Here you see on the side of the cathedral why it has been called the zebra cathedral– the black... Read more

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A city set on a hill can't be hid

2025-06-29T22:28:46-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Miletus Museum Grave Art

Last updated on: June 29, 2025 at 10:28 pm By Ben Witherington

Apart from the bird stele above, it is not clear to me that any of this is grave art. It is more like permanent advertisements for the animal contests in the Roman arenas in which gladiators would fight animals in various places in the Empire, including in the province of Asia where these steles were found. The last one is probably meant to be Asclepius, since that is his symbol in the right part of the stone. Read more

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lions and tigers and bears

oh my

2025-06-28T21:40:59-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Keystone in the Arch

Last updated on: June 28, 2025 at 9:40 pm By Ben Witherington

There were three sorts of stones referred to in the Bible that were of significance— a cornerstone, which in antiquity was not some showy thing at the corner of a building with the name of donors on it, or the founding date of the building. A second sort was ‘the head of the corner’ which was an L shaped stone which joined togerther two walls at the top, keeping them together and solid at the top. Finally there were keystones... Read more

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make way for the keystone

2025-06-28T20:45:52-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

More Floor in Store (and Walls) at Ephesos

Last updated on: June 28, 2025 at 8:45 pm By Ben Witherington

The discussion of how this archaeological project came about is in itself worth studying. Here is a chart outside the slope houses chronicling things. Surprisingly, there is a high vaulted meeting or dining room on the ground floor of these apartments as seen above, which set this set of apartments apart from any other set from antiquity that I know of. Were these residents such snobs that they couldn’t be bothered to go out to dine or have public meetings?... Read more

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My frescoes are nicer than yours.

2025-06-28T20:25:06-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Have You’ve Been Floored— the Slope Houses’ Floors

Last updated on: June 28, 2025 at 8:25 pm By Ben Witherington

The slope houses are the amazing high rise apartment that the Austrian have unearthed at Ephesus. And the floors and walls there deserve to be highlighted in and of themselves. So check this out…. One of the stranger things that one did not expect to find in the plaster on the walls of these ultra expensive apartments is graffiti of any type, never mind the sort you see below. Rich people did not decorate their walls this way…. Besides the... Read more

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A new sort of graffiti

2025-06-28T13:06:11-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

F-1— The Need for Speed

Last updated on: June 28, 2025 at 1:06 pm By Ben Witherington

It’s not just the technology that’s speeding up, everything seems to be in a world of fast food, fast tech, fast wifi, and of course fast cars. And none are faster than Formula One cars, sometimes doing actual road races, some doing races on a track. This movie has received some good reviews, and surprisingly the movie itself is not fast— 2 hours and 38 minutes, though the content makes it seem much faster. I saw it in HD and... Read more

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the need for speed

2025-06-21T17:57:11-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Ephesus Museum

Last updated on: June 21, 2025 at 5:57 pm By Ben Witherington

Considering how vast the archaeological site at Ephesus is, it is shocking that there is not a proper sized museum in Kushadasi. But at least there are some fine things worth seeing in the little museum, which has a lot of busts and gladiator monuments. There is also a model of the temple of Artemis, and two statues of her. Since Artemis was a goddess of fertility those lobes on her breast are probably eggs, though some have thought they... Read more

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Museum or bust?

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