Rome as the New Jerusalem

chapter 9
Rome as the New Jerusalem
The Parable Gospel According To Luke-Acts

“Aphrodisias,” said Octavian, when not yet Caesar Augustus, “is the one city from all of Asia I have selected to be my own,” and its citizens carved that accolade on the archive wall of their theater. Since the Greek goddess Aphrodite was the Roman goddess Venus, from whom Augustus’s family was allegedly descended, that city was most fortunately named at that precise historical moment. Two thousand years later, Kenan Erim, who excavated the site and is buried inside the gate of Aphrodite’s temple, claimed, “Of all the Graeco- Roman sites of Anatolia, Aphrodisias is the most hauntingly beautiful.” And the poet L. G. Harvey proclaimed it “beautiful enough to last forever.”...