With Paul in Port

Blog 1 – Finike, Turkey, Aug. 25, 2012
Welcome to the first of about fifteen Paul Blogs (or “Plogs”). I’ve resolved to write one each week during this fall sabbatical. There are many reasons people write blogs, I suppose, but I may be one of the few who are doing this in order to keep from going crazy from sheer isolation.

As on the first sabbatical, I am living aboard SailingActs, but rather than voyaging the routes of Paul with Janet, I will spend almost the entire time in the Finike marina. This is deliberate. The sabbatical research project is called “Ports of Paul” and Dr. Mark Wilson, director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey and I are working together with the goal of understanding and describing all of the ports mentioned in Acts. And not only the ports, but the people who lived in them, who traveled through them. We want to focus on the system of Mediterranean connections, and how these connections shaped the people who used them. And by doing so, we want to better understand Paul and the Acts story.

Its been ten days since I arrived in Antalya on Turkish Airlines. I then took the two-hour dolmus ride south along the magnificent, rugged Lycian coast to Finike, walked to the marina from the bus station and boarded SailingActs. I am home! But in those ten days, I’ve become closely acquainted with isolation in a way quite different from my previous 61 years of living closely with others.

The isolation is deliberate. I want to experience just a little of what it is like, for about two months, to live like Paul did during some of his journeys. Paul was either fully engaged with others or was isolated. It seems that during the times of Paul’s enforced isolation, drifting aboard a ship on a windless day, in prison, waiting in port cities for the next cargo ship, it was during these times that Paul thought and wrote.

Isolation for Paul then, and for me now means:

– being confined to a very small space day after day
– living in a port city with no other Christians in the area
– having no interruptions. This seems like a luxury, but after two days, it becomes clear that self-generated interruption, eg. being distracted, is worse because there is no one to blame, no excuses for not achieving your goals that day
– no wife present to share and celebrate with, who balances, cautions, critiques and grounds their spouse.
– a sharp and dramatic contrast from being with others 24/7 to being alone. I had been traveling in the Middle East with students and friends for the previous six months on cross-cultural study.

During the next two months, I will also do some field research which includes on-site exploration of several of the most isolated and well preserved first century harbors mentioned in Acts. These include Patara, Andriake, and the recently identified harbor of Perge. I plan to take the dingy into the silted-in, swamp-like areas in order to view the Roman ruins on shore from a first-century sea-traveler’s perspective. I’ll share some of the photos when this happens.

There is another reason I want to blog during this time. There is so much that we do not know about Paul and what it was like to live as a follower of Jesus in the Roman Empire. There are hints in Acts and in the Epistles, but we use our imagination to fill in the gaps. Each week I would like to throw out questions and ideas for you to consider and respond to. Because, as you might imagine, even crazy ideas can seem entirely rational to someone in isolation. Your responses will help develop and test ideas.

Question for fun: Let’s say Paul lived to be about my age now, 62. How many years of Paul’s life were spent in port cities and on ships, that is, either on or close to the Mediterranean Sea? (I define a port city as a city on are near a good harbor, with “near” meaning less than a day away by river or road.) Leave a comment or send me an email with your estimate at stutzmal@emu.edu. I’m currently researching this and will mention the “winner” in next week’s blog.