Imaginatively Missional
Archaeology has been an under-utilized tool in missiology. A few scholars studying the colonial era have suggested that the discipline is important in understanding the development of missions (Graham 1998; Ross 2018). As might be expected, archaeology of the colonial era reveals the impact of the missionary’s material culture on the material culture of indigenous …
What does this mean for the Christianity of the 21st century? For the house church movement, it means that we should not think of oikos as a monolithic and normative form for the ekklēsia. Instead, the house church served a purpose at a particular point in history. In the first century, the oikos provided a place of gathering that was relatively …
Excavation of Laodicea began in full force in 2002. This is not to suggest that there were not others who attempted an excavation prior. Indeed, a Canadian excavation began in 1961 while an Italian one conducted a topographical and archaeological survey in 1993. Today, a team from Pamukkale University and the Municipality of Denizli work …
Christianity arrives in Laodicea near the middle of the first century. The missionary endeavors of Paul and at least 20 of his associates began in Ephesus in the late 40s with Paul leaving the area known as Roman Asia (in Asia Minor) in the early 50s (Cooper 2020). Paul and Timothy testify to the Colossians …
Named after Laodike, the wife of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus II, Laodicea was constructed around 260 BC upon of an earlier settlement known as the city of Zeus, Diospolis (Pliny the Elder NH 5.105). Indeed, on the eastern city gate entrance leading to the colonnaded Syrian road (fig. 1), a Greek dedicatory inscription honors Zeus …
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