Revelation

THE BOOK OF REVELATION: M. M. NINAN
Pheidias of Athens in the fifth century BC. The statue was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Antiochus IV made a temple for Apollo at Daphne, near Antioch using the same pattern and dimensions.
Pausanius provides a description of the statue of Zeus and the temple area at Olympia. Pausanius says a
woolen curtain, of eastern design, "adorned with Assyrian weaving and Phoenician purple", was dedicated
to Zeus at Olympia by Antiochus IV. Some scholars believe that the curtain was taken from the temple in
Jerusalem, when Antiochus plundered its treasures in BC 530. The columns were made of Pentelic marble,
in the Corinthian style. This enormous structure, the largest temple in Greece, was finally completed by the
Emperor Hadrian three centuries later, in the 2nd century AD. Its ruins can be still seen.
Pergamum was also the center for the worship of Serpent god Aesculapius - the god of medicine.
Pergamum had the greatest physicians of that time. We still have the intertwined serpent symbol for
medicine - though it is now being gradually replaced by the red cross symbol. Until a few decade ago the
medical symbol was the intertwined serpent called Aschelpion.
Aesclepium
The god of healing, Aesclepius received worship in cultic centers around the Greek and Roman world. This
large complex at Pergamum was originally constructed in the 4 th century B.C. and became an official center
in the 3rd c.
In the 2nd c. A.D., Hadrian further developed the center and it was added to the list of "wonders of the
world."
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