RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

the astonishing missionary journeys of the apostle andrewSea. You can imagine, these were all important routes and a simple, unostentatiousman like St. Andrew could take any of them easily.RTE: Were the ancient and classical maps more accurate than later medievalmaps in the West?GEORGE: Yes, later Christians would say, “Paradise was here, the earth wasflat, etc.,” but if you look at the old Greek maps, they not only knew the earthwas round, but the longitudes and latitudes are the same on their maps aswe know them today. They are not exactly the same because we count oursfrom Greenwich and they didn’t, but you can correlate them precisely. Youcan even find America and Australia on some maps (i.e. the map of Cratesthe Maleot in 150 B.C.). This is why I believe we can accurately locate theseplaces from the old traditions. When barbaric peoples invaded the olderChristian civilizations and became Christian themselves, this was right spiritually,but it was a catastrophe for civilization. Night fell on education andlearning, although spiritually and culturally it was a dawn for the barbarians.It was their time, for the first time in history.RTE: Although there were dangers from bandits and smugglers, there probablyweren’t the kind of border controls we have now.GEORGE: Yes, but even now there are dangers. Going to Siberia isn’t anysafer now than it was 2,000 years ago, but there was often another attitudetowards travelers then. Although there were always dangers, in manyancient cultures a traveler was sacred, he was from far away and people didn’twant to despoil him; they wanted to hear about his country and his civilization.You didn’t need visas, documents, you were not even in need offriends because you were a special person, a traveler. You were coming withfar-off ideas, different beliefs, strange dress. You were more often a personto admire than someone to fight or to steal from. In the ancient world passingtravelers were laden with gifts – this was Marco Polo’s experience. Thosewere different times. With my own decades of traveling to difficult and exoticplaces, it is easy for me to understand how St. Andrew could have traveledas extensively as the traditions recount.RTE: When we first spoke about your research you made the remark thatwhen the Lord told the apostles to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth,they did not think this meant their descendants. They took this literally.Mosaic of St. Andrew from St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai.7