I Can't Stop Looking!

Joe O. Lewis

July 20, 2014

(Certain Greeks) came therefore to Philip... , and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.  

John 12:21

Are you old enough to remember Ray Stevens 1974 song about the streaker?  If you are you can doubtless help me tell the story.  In the song, a TV Newsman interviews the same country bumpkin three times after "disturbances" occurred at the supermarket, and at the gas station and  at a basketball game .  Each "disturbance" was caused when a streaker wearing nothing but a smile ran by.  Each time the man yelled to his wife "Don't look Ethel," but it was too late.   There are some things that just capture our attention.  I say that to note that some things you see in church are captivating too!  Take our beautiful windows, for example.  I thought I was well hidden behind a post in the back of the sanctuary, but Dr. Moebes caught me  a time or two looking at our stained glass windows instead of concentrating on his sermon!   My defense was that the windows made me do it.  They are just so beautiful, I can't stop looking at them. It would serve me right if your eyes wandered to the windows while I preach today;  in fact, I invite you to look and I've provided you a picture of the five scenes in our window because it is very hard to see the details from where you sit.  I remind you that Yogi Berra, baseball great and sometime philosopher,  said "You can observe a lot just by looking!"
There are eight windows along the walls that tell the story of Jesus from the four Gospels and a ninth one in the series at the front that has scenes from the book of Acts. The Norman Rockwell of poetry, Edgar A. Guest, began one of his poems, " I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day."  He could certainly get his wish filled here.  No one in this sanctuary need ever go home without seeing a great sermon--no matter what we preachers say! Today I want to look especially at the window on your left and behind me and see the sermons it preaches.  The first sermon is all about light and color and it is a sermon on the sacred.

The Sermon On The Sacred

Even before the windows interpret God's redeeming love for us they preach a sermon about how special this place, this very room, is.  From the early pages of the Bible people are said to have met God at special places.  Moses was working his sheep one day when he saw something that captivated him.  He couldn't stop looking.  It was a bush that burned but did not burn up, and Moses met his Master there.  It was holy ground and he had to do something different--he took his shoes off.  And so it is when we step inside this place.  The blues and greens and reds and gold sparkle like nothing in the rooms of the houses we live in.  We sense even without thinking it through that this is a place where we ought to meet our Master, too.   The wonder of the windows may have become so familiar that we miss their sermon, but the light being transformed into technicolor pictures before our eyes is like a voice from a burning bush saying, "This is holy ground," do something different.  Most of us aren't physically able to get down on our knees  anymore,  but we feel the downward tug and we bow our heads.  The first sermon we see every time we step in this room is that God has entered our space and time and is here waiting on us. This place is sacred.  But after that we see in our window a second sermon on salvation, a sermon on how God prepared us for his Son.

The Sermon On Salvation

Two disciples, one of them known to Luke by the name of Cleopas, had no clue that the dusty road from Jerusalem to Emmaus would be to them what a burning bush was to Moses.  It was Sunday morning.  Jesus had been put in the tomb. They had lost more than a friend.  They had lost their hope that God was in that place with them.  But when a stranger met them on the road and interpreted to them in all the Old Testament the things concerning Jesus their eyes were opened and their hearts burned within them and they had to do something different--they put their shoes on and went back to Jerusalem.  I wonder how many stories in the Old Testament that stranger had to go over with them before they got the point.  Our window leads us through God's plan for our redemption by using just four scenes!

The Expulsion From the Garden
The window could have started with the creation of the world (the Word) or at least with the creation of Adam as in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting of God stretching forth his finger toward that first Adam.  But instead the window begins with the expulsion of guilty man and woman from the Garden. Why start with them?  Because the sermon on salvation is about the salvation of sinners like us.  What does the expulsion from the garden have to do with the birth of Christ?  The obvious answer is that it explains why there needed to be a birth of Christ, the Son of God and Savior of sinners like Adam and Eve.  The beginning of sin leads ultimately to the need for a savior.
You remember, of course, that when Adam and Eve realized  they were naked, they “covered themselves with fig leaves” (3:7).  But after God confronted them and heard their confessions, the text says that “The Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them” (3:21).  That seems to be a very early note about God’s grace—God did for them what they could not do for themselves.  Our artist, however, has chosen to depict the guilty pair without clothes-- still naked-- not even fig leaves for covering--and fleeing.  They are wearing neither the fig leaves nor the garments of skins suggesting that they are still in need of God’s grace just like us.  And neither of them has a halo.  We can almost hear the Apostle Paul say, "O wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death" (Romans 7:24).  If you would see Jesus, look first to yourselves and confess that you are Adam and Eve and you need him.

The Near Sacrifice of Isaac  
The story in the window moves from a sinful pair in need of a Savior to a father who was willing to sacrifice his only son on whom his whole future depended .  This story—terrible as it is—surely was chosen because it brings to mind another Father who  "so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believed in him might have life” (John 3:16).
There are four figures in this panel and the story moves from the kneeling Isaac, to an Abraham arrested in the very act of sacrifice, to an angel who grabs his arm and, finally, to a ram tangled up in a bush.  To see the sermon in this scene it helps to have seen the way another artist portrayed it.  Caravaggio painted the scene in 1603 and depicted Isaac as  overcome after a battle with Abraham; he has a scream on his lips while being held face down on the altar with a knife at his throat.    But in our window Isaac is depicted as bound but willingly kneeling and not objecting.  He is offering himself as Christ would later do.  Indeed, we can almost hear the prayer he offers—“if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will….”    It is the same prayer that the Christ offers in the companion scene of Gethsemane in the right hand window.  Isaac kneels upon a neatly stacked cord of large logs—enough wood for a cross.   Do you see the sermon?  If you would see Jesus, don't look at Abraham; look at Isaac.

The Transfiguration of Moses
The account of Moses reception of the Law is recorded more than once in the Old Testament.  You remember that Moses shattered the first set of tables and had to go back up the mountain before God once again to get a second copy.   In our window, Moses is seated for the second time looking upward as if God has just spoken to him.  The stones have already been inscribed (although the writing in our window is symbolized by Roman numerals of which I, II, III and a little bit of IV are visible).  Moses’ hair has been blown backward as if by a mighty blast of wind.  And then there are those two rays that extend from Moses’ head beyond his halo to the outer edge of the panel. In Exodus 34 it is said that when Moses descended the second time with the Law, “the skin of his face shone..” (v.30).  Our artist has  depicted the very light of the presence of God reflected from the head of Moses.   Do you see the sermon?  This transfigured Moses would one day commune with a transfigrued Christ while Peter and his companions stood amazed.  John captured the awe when he wrote:  "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth "(John 1:12).  If you would see Jesus,  don't look at the Law; look at Moses.

The Suffering Servant
There is no doubt about the biblical source of the next panel.  It comes from Isaiah 6 and pictures Isaiah’s famous call while he was in the temple.  Isaiah confesses that he is a “man of unclean lips” living in the midst of people like himself.  He saw a vision of God exalted on a throne with seraphim beside him.  In his vision, Isaiah saw one of the seraphim take a burning coal from the altar with a pair of tongs and touch his mouth with it, sanitizing his mouth so it could speak for God.  And when God asks who will go for him, Isaiah responded with the right response, “Here am I, send me.”  That is the picture we see in the figure of Isaiah in this panel.  His lips are being cleansed and his right hand is upright as if he is taking an oath of allegiance to the Lord.  But the sermon we need to see is the sermon of the left hand.  The left hand tells us how this scene leads us to the Christ.
The left hand gestures toward a figure who stands on an altar with his hands bound behind his back.  The image represents Christ as the "suffering servant"who was "bruised for our iniquities."   If you look closely at the head of Jesus you will see that our artist has placed it within a cross.  The picture could hardly have been made any clearer.  The prophet Isaiah spoke of Christ on the cross.  The reference of the image is to Isaiah 52-53 where the Servant of the Lord suffers and dies for others. The sermon of the left hand should not be missed.  If you would see Jesus, don't look at Isaiah;  look at the Servant.

The Coming of Christ
At first glance the top window just portrays the birth of Christ.  There is a star at the top representing the star of Bethlehem with rays proceeding out from the star.  There are three figures just barely visible between the heads of Mary and Joseph, and, presumably, these are  the Wise Men who came looking for the newborn king.  Then, there are three major figures in the panel: Mary, Joseph and the Christ.  Mary has lifted her right hand as if to caress the Christ.  But look closely at Joseph!  He holds a branch from a tree as if it were a king's scepter.  Look again at the very top of the branch and notice that it is flowering.  In that tiny flower there is a meaningful message. The blossoming rod tells us that Christ is  the“shoot from the stump of Jesse,” the one Isaiah spoke of, the one we have been looking for across all the Old Testament--the Messiah. Yogi  had it right:  "When you come to a fork in the road, take it!"  It doesn't matter which fork you take from here because all paths lead to Jesus.
But look closely at the figure inside the oval frame, it is not a "babe wrapped in swaddling clothes" but Christ with arms wide open to receive Adam and Eve and you and me.
If you would see Jesus, then

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face and the things of earth will 

grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

I can't stop looking.  I hope you won't stop looking either.

I invite you to respond to the invitation today by praying with me using the words of our closing hymn, 502, Open My Eyes That I May See.  Let us stand and sing all the verses.

Please remain standing after our benediction as our choir dismisses us.

The Benediction

And now as you go

May the Love of God the Father,

Love divine all loves excelling;

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Grace that is greater than all our sin;

And the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit,

The fellowship of kindred minds and ties that bind

Rest and abide with you now and forevermore.

Amen

Archaeology and the Bible 

What Mean These Stones

July 16, 2014

One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament is the story of Israel's crossing of the Jordan.  We are told that like pilgrims they plucked stones from that river that had to be crossed and set them up at a place called Gilgal.  And every year some child would ask a father, "What do these stones mean? "  and the father could tell once again the old, old story of what God had done for Israel.  Those stones were just rocks from a river bed, but three millenia later we are still stumbling across stones that have a story to tell and that is the subject of our study this Wednesday.
Every year there are archaeological excavations in Israel, and 2013 was no exception.  These excavations always add to our knowledge of the biblical world if not to our knowledge of the Bible itself, but they don't usually make the headlines.  Only rarely does all the sheer physical labor involved in an archaeological dig produce something of such significance that newspaper editors and TV anchors choose to include it in their daily selection of stories.  Since I am not an archaeologist, I can't give you first hand information about what was found this past year, but I can pass on what I've picked up from the journals.(1)   I've organized the finds based on the time periods on which they shed light.

Light On the Earliest Inhabitants of Palestine

Eshtaol
As often happens, major archaeological finds are not from planned excavations.  Highway 38 in Israel runs from Jerusalem to Beth Shemesh and passes through a little town called Eshtaol, some twelve miles west of Jerusalem.  As the road crew was preparing to widen the highway, the earthmoving equipment uncovered ruins and upon excavation these ruins turned out to be the remains of the oldest house ever found in Israel.  In fact, the house antedates Israel itself by several millenia!  Archaeologists date the house to about 8000 B.C. which would place it at least six thousand years before Abraham arrived.   It is thought to be one of the earliest houses ever built in this part of the world.
In a press statement, the archaeologists describe the significance of the 10,000-year-old domestic building, which dates to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period: “It should be emphasized that whoever built the house did something that was totally innovative because up until this period man migrated from place to place in search of food. Here we have evidence of man’s transition to permanent dwellings and that in fact is the beginning of the domestication of animals and plants; instead of searching out wild sheep, ancient man started raising them near the house.”

A Monumental Underwater Structure in the Sea of Galilee
A giant "monumental" stone structure discovered beneath the waters of the Sea of Galilee in Israel has archaeologists puzzled as to its purpose and even how long ago it was built. The mysterious structure is cone shaped, made of "unhewn basalt cobbles and boulders," and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons the researchers said. That makes it heavier than most modern-day warships. Rising nearly 32 feet (10 meters) high, it has a diameter of about 230 feet (70 meters). To put that in perspective, the outer stone circle of Stonehenge has a diameter just half that with its tallest stones not reaching that height.  The structure is just off the shore of the Sea of Galilee and just a short distance south of the city of Tiberias.  It appears to be a giant rock pile, possibly to mark a burial site. It was first discovered in the summer of 2003 during a sonar survey but is just now becoming widely known. The archaeologists are certain it was man-made, not natural, with boulders placed in a patterned arrangement. The assumption is that it was built on land. The land later flooded. The article notes that similar structures, from the 3000 B.C. were found nearby. In fact less than a mile away the remains of an ancient city of some 5000 inhabitants has been discovered and there may be a relationship between the city and the stone structure.  It’s hoped that an underwater archaeological investigation can be undertaken to find out more and collect items from the site.

Light on the Time of Joshua

The Sphinx
Many of us may not be familiar with a city by the name of Hazor, but  before the Israelites had made Palestine their home Hazor was one of the major cities in the region.  Those who have visited Israel in modern times are still awed by this massive mound rising beside a major highway that it once dominated.  The book of Joshua mentions that "Joshua turned back and captured Hazor and put its king to the sword. (Hazor had been the head of all these kingdoms.)" (Joshua 11:10).  Hazor was the site of an ancient fortified city in the Upper Galilee and was among the most important Canaanite towns.  It is still the largest ancient ruin in modern Israel and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Before the Israelites got there, Hazor was ruled by Egypt.  The Egyptians call the city Hathor.(2)
The 2013 excavation season at Hazor produced an astounding confirmation of Hazor's past--both its Egyptian connections and its prominence in the region.  A sphinx, a mythical half-lion, half-man creature like the massive ones in Egypt except for size, was discovered at the entrance to the city palace in a 13th-century B.C. destruction layer. The excavators believe it is unlikely that the king of Egypt at the time, King Menkaure, sent the sphinx to Hazor, since there is no record of a relationship between Egypt and this section of the country during his reign. The statue may have been brought to Hazor as plunder by the Hyksos, a dynasty of kings from Canaan who actually ruled Lower (Northern) Egypt in the late 17th and early 16th centuries. Hazor was destroyed in the 13th century B.C. and the sphinx was already there at that time.

Light on the Time of David and Solomon

King David’s Palace at Khirbet Qeiyafa
During the past 30 years, the biblical narrative relating to the establishment of a kingdom in Biblical Judah has been much debated. Were David and Solomon historical rulers of an urbanized state-level society in the early 10th century BC, or was this level of social development reached only 300 years later? Recent excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, the first early Judean city to be dated using  C14 [the Carbon 14 method], clearly indicate a well planned fortified city in Judah as early as the late 11th-early 10th centuries BC. This new data has far reaching implication for archaeology, history and biblical studies.
Khirbet Qeiyafa is located about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem, on the summit of a hill that borders the Elah Valley.  One of the world's most famous battles took place here, the battle between David and Goliath.  This is also a key strategic location in the biblical Kingdom of Judah, on the main road from Philistia and the Coastal Plain to Jerusalem and Hebron in the hill country. The city was constructed on bedrock surrounded by massive fortifications using large stones. The excavation exposed a long stretch of the city wall, two gates, a pillared building (small stable?) and 10 houses
Khirbet Qeiyafa's city wall is a casemate (double) wall with a belt of houses abutting the casemates, incorporating them as part of the construction.  The wall is more than 2200 feet long and 13 feet wide.  This indicates that this was a planned city. Such urban planning has not been found at any Canaanite or Philistine city, nor in the northern Kingdom of Israel, but is a typical feature of city planning in Judean cities like the famous Beersheba. Khirbet Qeiyafa is the earliest known example of this city plan and indicates that this pattern had already been developed by the time of King David.  "So what can Qeiyafa tell us about Israel in the time of King David? Some of the megalithic ashlars in this wall weigh almost 5 tons. Altogether, more than 200,000 tons of stone were needed to construct this wall. It would take a complex, highly organized society to build a wall like this."(3)
  "At the close of the seventh season of excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa [in 2013],  Hebrew University Professor Yosef Garfinkel and IAA archaeologist Saar Ganor announced the discovery of “the two largest buildings known to have existed in the tenth century B.C.E. in the Kingdom of Judah” with great fanfare. One of these buildings is a centrally located 100-foot-long palatial structure decorated with elegant imported vessels.  Garfinkel told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that “there is no question that the ruler of the city sat here, and when King David came to visit the hills he slept here.” The other structure, a pillared storeroom, features hundreds of storage jars “stamped with an official seal as was customary in the Kingdom of Judah for centuries,” according to the IAA press release."(4)

The Jerusalem Inscription
Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has uncovered an inscribed jar fragment from her excavations near the Temple Mount. Dating to the tenth century B.C., the inscription is the earliest alphabetic text ever found in Jerusalem.  Since we  have extended accounts of the reigns of David and Solomon in our Bible it might seem that writing stories was commonplace then.  It may have been, but very few examples of writing have been preserved.  This one is the oldest ever found.  The inscribed fragment is part of the shoulder of a pithos, a large neckless ceramic jar, and it consists of just a few letters.  Written in an old Canaanite script that is earlier than Hebrew and reading from left to right (instead of right to left as Hebrew is written), the text consists of a series of letters—m, q, p, h, n, possibly l, and n.  Not only is the inscription incomplete, but its meaning is also a mystery since this combination of letters does not signify anything in known languages like Hebrew. Nevertheless, the excavators believe that this inscription identified the contents of the vessel or its owner’s name and that it might have been written by a non-Israelite living in Jerusalem during the reigns of David and Solomon.   How do they know it came from the time of David and Solomon?  The fragment—along with six other fragments of similar jars—was used as fill to support the second floor of a tenth-century B.C. building so the inscription had to be at least as old as the building built on top of it.  If the inscription can ever be deciphered, it may well shed light on business or taxation in ancient Israel, and it may well become more evidence of a Davidic kingship.

Light on the Time of the Early Church

Legio: Excavations at the Camp of the Roman Sixth Ferrata Legion in Israel (5)
During the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian (117–138 A.D.), two Roman legions were stationed in the province of Judea: Legio X Fretensis in Jerusalem and Legio VI Ferrata (the Sixth Ironclad Legion)  in the north.  Until recently, the exact location of the castra (“camp” in the sense of a permanent military base) of the Sixth Legion had not been confirmed, but textual evidence placed it in the Jezreel Valley along the road from Caesarea to Beth Shean in the vicinity of Megiddo.  The Sixth Legion was sent to the area sometime before the Bar-Kokhba rebellion (132–136 A.D.), and it remained stationed in Judea for another hundred years.
Based in the Jezreel Valley somewhere near Tel Megiddo, the Legio VI Ferrata was well situated to control imperial roads, with direct access to the Galilee and inland valleys of northern Palestine—important centers of the local, occasionally uproarious, Jewish population. An Arab village named el-Lajjun preserved the Latin nickname “Legio,” providing strong evidence for the location of the castra nearby. Consequently, the broad area south of Tel Megiddo has been known in modern archaeological circles as “Legio.”   The excavation of a Roman military headquarters with clear ties to major political and cultural events in the formative years of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity is exciting in itself, but Legio also provides an incredible new window into the Roman military occupation of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. No military headquarters of this type for this particular period had yet been excavated in the entire Eastern Roman Empire.
The discovery of the site of the Sixth Legion's headquarters takes on added meaning for Christians in the light of an earlier excavation.  A large structure with a mosaic floor, which served as a Christian prayer hall, was exposed in excavations conducted in 2003–2005 in the Megiddo prison near Tel Megiddo. "The structure is dated to the 3rdcentury A.D. The mosaic is decorated with geometric patterns, a medallion with fish and three inscriptions in Greek, one commemorating an officer in the Roman army who contributed toward the construction of the mosaic; a second honoring the memory of four women, and a third mentioning a woman who donated a table (altar) as a memorial to the God, Jesus Christ. The fish that adorn the floor of the mosaic became a symbol in Early Christianity—the word fish (ichthys in Greek) making a combination of letters which mean "Jesus Christ, son of God, savior". The combination of the three mosaic inscriptions from the 3rd century which connect a Roman army officer with Christianity in a prayer hall is an extraordinarily find, which predates the recognition of Christianity as an official religion of the Empire.  The finds at the Megiddo Christian Prayer Hall provide unique archaeological evidence for Christian presence in the Land of Israel prior to the reign of Constantine—a period which has so far been explored mainly according to literary sources."(6)   Obviously, the Roman Sixth Legion had enough Christians within it by the year 200 A.D. to make a special prayer room necessary.  This is not far removed from Peter's encounter with Cornelius who was probably a member of this Legion.

Philip, Hierapolis and the Gateway to Hell
The modern name of Hierapolis, Pamukkale, is Turkish for “Castle of Cotton,” a name inspired by the white stone cascades near the site that recall the flower of the cotton plant. Earthquakes have opened up huge holes and given rise to hot springs that have resulted in these “cotton flowers,” which actually comprise the world’s most lavish formation of this kind.
These geological phenomena have always defined the site. As early as the third century B.C. it was widely known as a thermal spa. The name of the city, Hierapolis, may have been connected with the place of the sanctuary of Apollo or perhaps with Hiera, wife of the son of Heracles. In any event, Hierapolis became a thriving Roman city dedicated to Apollo. His temple, the remains of which still survive, was the focus of the site. A prestigious oracle (similar to the one at Delphi) operated from Apollo’s temple. Ancient doctors treated the sick and the dying with the medicinal waters of the hot springs.
Pluto's Gate in ancient Hierapolis was considered a gateway to hell and sacred to the underworld deity Pluto. Italian archaeologists excavating the Phrygian city of Hierapolis in southwestern Turkey have uncovered the remains of Pluto’s Gate, a site considered an entrance into the underworld in the Greco-Roman period. The apostle Philip preached and died at Hierapolis according to the Acts of Philip.  This thriving Roman city became an important Christian center.
"Shrouded in misty poisonous vapors, Pluto’s Gate, or the Plutonium, was a cave entrance sacred to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. According to the first-century geographer Strabo, the site was home to rituals in which any animals entering the enclosure “meet with sudden death." Hierapolis archaeologist Francesco D’Andria reconstructed the route of the area’s thermal spring to discover Pluto’s Gate, which was destroyed by Christians in the sixth century. The Plutonium’s infamous mystique is not just the stuff of legend; during the excavation, several birds were killed by carbon dioxide emissions as they approached the Plutonium cave’s entrance."(7)
  Pluto's Gate is not the first discovery at D’Andria’s excavation at Hierapolis, located next to the often-visited hot springs and travertines at the World Heritage Site of Pamukkale. According to the apocryphal Acts of Philip, the apostle Philip preached and converted many Hierapolis residents, yet he was martyred there nonetheless. An octagonal church was built in Hierapolis to memorialize the saint, and a sixth-century bread stamp depicts Philip standing at the very site. These discoveries were followed by the excavation of a small church that D’Andria believes to be the tomb of St. Philip.

____________________
 1 Much of the information presented below comes from the Bible History Daily website published by Biblical Archaeology Review.  The original article can be found at  this address: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/top-10-archaeological-finds-in-2013/.
 2 Hathor was an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of joy, feminine love, and motherhood. She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt.  Apparently the Hebrew name sounded to Egyptians like the name of the goddess with which they were familiar.
 3 Hershel Shanks, "Newly Discovered:  A Fortified City From King David's Time," Biblical Archaeology Review  (Jan/Feb 2009).
  4Bible History Daily for July 18, 2013  quoted from http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/king-david%E2%80%99s-palace-at-khirbet-qeiyafa/
 5 This section is taken directly from  http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-sites/legio/.
 6 Taken from the web site:   https://sites.google.com/site/megiddoexpedition/additional-information/an-early-christian-prayer-hall
 7Noah Wiener, 'Hierapolis and the Gateway to Hell,"Bible and Archaeology News (4/1/2013) http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/hierapolis-and-the-gateway-to-hell/