The Sean McDowell Show - Excavated at Last! What Archaeology Could Reveal About Colossians.

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

For the first time in history, archaeologists are excavating the ancient city of Colossae, the very place Paul addressed his letter to the Colossians and to Philemon. Dr. Arnold explains the significance of Colossae in the New Testament world, the challenges of getting an excavation approved in modern Türkiye, and what discoveries could reveal about the spiritual and cultural background behind Paul’s warnings to the Colossian church. From mosaics hidden under farmland to ground-penetrating radar scans that point to buried temples, this is a fascinating look at how history, archaeology, and Scripture intersect. READ: *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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You've written the word biblical commentary second edition, and for the record, I've read about two-thirds of it. I worked through it. It's fascinating. We had you on earlier to talk about spiritual warfare, which is prevalent in Colossians, but you sent me these updates about the city of Colossi and the dig that is beginning there. It was not on my radar at all. And immediately, Clint, I thought, we've got to talk about this and bring it to our listeners and our viewers. So we're going to dive in, but thanks for coming back and you want to talk about this. Well, first of all, it's a real privilege to be with you, Sean. And yeah, I'm pumped about this. I first of you. I first of you. I first. visited the site of Colossian in 1985, which 40 years ago. Wow, that's 40 years ago. In the middle of my doctoral program. And I just hoped that someday they might excavate that site.

And so many years have gone by. And this summer, in July, excavation began. And it's very exciting to see what the possibilities might be of discovery there. So one of the updates you sent me, we're going to get into what it looks like now, what they expect to find, what an archaeological dig like this entails. But in one of your updates, you described this as truly a historic moment. Now, for somebody goes, come on, your scholar, this is an overstatement. Why do you think this is really historic?

Well, one of the key things for us as Christians is we have two New Testament books that were written to Christians at that site. We have Paul's letter to the Colossians. And then secondly, his letter to Philemon, which is a very brief letter. but it was written to that site as well. So for us as Christians, there's just so much significance to that. But it's historic because this site is ancient. It goes way back beyond the time of the New Testament,

into the Persian era, prior to that, the Hittite era, and even earlier settlement there. And so historically, there's tremendous possibility for gaining insight into the ancient Near East. I love that. So there's biblical insight. we can gain, but also just historical, cultural insight, both of those are at play. Huge, huge opportunity there.

Okay, so where is Colossi? Where will people find it? Right. If you had your Atlas Open or the maps at the back of your Bible and you locate where Ephesus is located, and then if you went about 100 miles just due east of Ephesus, there is Colossi. It's located in a triangle of cities in that area where Laotica, is located just 10 miles away, and Herapolis is located there as well.

So if you looked at a modern map and found and located the third largest city of Turkey, which is Izmir. Again, from there, it would just be about 100 miles, 110 miles, just due east. Modern-day Turkey. Yes, and I should have mentioned that. That's all right. And technically, we're supposed to call it Turkey. Oh, I actually didn't know that.

A couple of years ago, they changed the name of the country. So as not to confuse it with that bird that we eat at Thanksgiving. Okay. So if somebody were to go, would you say 100 miles due east of Ephesus, what would they find if they went to Klossi today? Well, that's a great question. When I went in 1985, there were no roads to the site. It's basically just wide open space.

There's farming and agriculture around there, orchards, and it took a couple of locals to help us locate, even where the site was at. But it's wide open space. There is a big mound that is there today. Its highest point is about 220 feet. Lower point is about 130. So this big mound looks like just.

a hill out in the middle of nowhere. And that would be the site of the Acropolis, the city on a hill there. Of course, over the centuries, it's just been covered with dirt. But you walk around it today, you see building material protruding out. My wife was walking around,

and she hit this bush and uncovered a mosaic. So it's all there tantalizing me. I grew up on a farm, and it was so difficult. to resist the temptation of just grabbing a shovel and starting to dig myself. Oh my goodness. Like, I can't even picture that, that this ancient city of Colossi, so significant, historically and bivocally, it's just kind of in the middle of farmland.

You can see cities coming out. There's dirt all over it. And I kind of learn, like, it looks like a hill, but it's called a tell, is when they'll have a city. And then sometimes because the base build a city on top of a city like a Jericho multiple times. And it just looks like a mound because dirt, I guess, just blows in over time. I mean, I don't even understand how it all gets there. Is that really what happens? That's exactly what happened. It's just accumulated over the years. And so the population

left the city probably around the 6th or 7th century AD, so a few hundred years right after Christ, but now we're talking 1,400, 1400 years of no occupation and big dust storms and just accumulation over the years. It just covers up the city. Now, a lot of it has been the building material that was open and exposed has been carted off and found its way into other building projects, into people's garages, into all kinds of things. So there's a lot of excavation that could take place in people's homes. Oh, that's really interesting. So tell us maybe a little bit more what Colossi was like at the time of Paul and Jesus,

how populous, what made Colossi different and unique compared to other cities. At the time of the Apostle Paul, it was a city that had become less significant than the others around it. So big city in the region then was Laudacea. But it was fairly recent. It had only been around for a couple hundred years. And Herapolis became a very large city. And Colossi kind of dwindled in size.

The size of the mound where Colossi is located is only 25 acres, which is not very big. 40 acres is a quarter of a mile by a quarter of a mile. So we're talking something close to an eighth of a mile by an eighth of a mile. You know, not much bigger than a football field, really. That's the city center. The territory around it would have had. and many homes and a variety of things as well. So we don't know the exact population of what the city would have been during the Apostle Paul's time,

but it's a little town at that time. They did have a theater in the city that you can see the outlines of it today, and the estimates are that that theater would have contained or could have held as many as 7 or 8,000 people. Oh, yeah. So some have tried to infer population based on the size of the theater, but everything is a little bit slippery right now to figure out the size of the city. But, I mean, we know it because there was a thriving church there. So it was the population left 6,700, so 1,300 years ago.

Obviously, people weren't doing archaeological digs in the 10-100s or 1100s or 12th century. but why over the past couple centuries has this never been excavated before? Well, there was a period of time in there where scholars and people writing about the scripture were just not sure about where it was located. And so, in fact, some early biblical interpreters in the 1700s in the 1800s and 1800s confused the city of Colossi, or confused the city of Colossi mentioned in the New Testament with the site of the Colossus at Rhodes, which is an island out in the Mediterranean.

But the text of Colossians associates it very closely with Laida C. and Herapolis, and we knew where those sites were. So it wasn't until early 1800s that English explorers and antiquarians found and definitely identified the site. And we know it based on some inscriptions that have been discovered, some coins that have been discovered,

some coins that have been discovered that specifically mention Colossi. So there's really no debate now anymore that this is Colossi. Okay. So how much money and connections are necessary for something like this to happen? Like part of my question is, okay, so for a couple hundred years we've known where it's at, you went 1985 and it just looked like he was in the middle of nowhere. Nobody's doing anything. What does it take and why is it being done now?

It's not because there hasn't been interest in the excavation. Okay. In the 70s, there was a group called the Near East Archaeological Society and a guy named Harold Mayer that led that society. And he petitioned the Turkish government for permission to excavate the site of Colossi, actually multiple times, but it was always turned down. After that there was a group from Flinders University in Australia that petitioned the Turkish government always turned down. Then there was an archaeology department that surfaced at University of Pamukala, a big sounding Turkish word, which is the nearby city, one of the nearby cities, and there's a university there. And the chief excavator of Laotasia has just kind of lit things up with archaeology. And so he had a student named Bahadir Duman that was going to excavate the city.

I met him, we talked about it, and it was exciting. to see his vision for that, but then his professor assigned him to a different city called Tripolis. Okay. Oh, no, it's not going to happen. I am going to die before this thing get excavated. Oh, no. And then a few years ago, it was announced that another student of Chalalal Shemchek, the chief archaeologists there, would be the one to carry the mantle and excavate Colossi.

And so that was just the beginning, because then it had to go through. a massive application process with the Turkish government, the Turkish Ministry of Tourism and Culture, and that received final approval just this year in January. And so excavation actually began in July. Okay. So we're in August. So, I mean, we're talking, it's just breaking news right now that this is taking place. So it just, in our age of instant things, like somebody sends out a text or a

sends out an Instagram post or TikTok video or an X, whatever it is, it just moves a little more slowly because there's political things at play, there's economics, there's relationships, there's a whole lot of factors that have to coalesce together for this even to be possible, which is probably true for any archaeological dig. Yeah, it's exactly right. There's just been a lot of steps along the way. And one of the other steps that I hadn't even thought about is this land was owned by a farmer. And so you can't just go in and start digging up a farmer's fuel. A farmer owned

colossi. I mean, just like, it's so interesting to think about how like these guys out farming trying to care for his family, like one of the most important cities in the Bible. Like, you can't make this stuff up. So the local municipality had to negotiate with a farmer for a land swap deal. And I don't know all the details surrounding that. But there was a lot of, a lot behind the scenes it was taking place, but they finally secured the property. They can go in and they can excavate,

which they've already done. But to get this thing off the ground, the archaeologist, and I should mention his name, his name is Dr. Barish-Yenar, and he's a professor, and he's an archaeologist. He and his wife are archaeologists.

They've both worked extensively on the city of Laetacea. So he has a lot of experience, and he's gathered a team of about 13, Turkish archaeologists, anthropologists, and so on, to form this initial team. To get it off the ground, they needed a little over $400,000 for startup costs. A lot of that was equipment. They needed, by law of the Turkish government, an excavation house, where they could meet, where they could securely place any valuable things that they found.

and just a variety of things like that. And fortunately, they were able to raise quite a bit of that. And I should say that this is not a project. This project needs to be funded by private donations, individuals and corporate. It's not receiving much from the Turkish government to go. Wait, why does it need to be? Is it just to protect certain things? Just the Turkish government doesn't have funding for all.

the digs that are around in Turkey. You walk 10 feet in a new archaeological site. It seems like in Turkey. That's incredible. Just loaded with archaeological sites. So, yeah, so there's an ongoing need for funding, and the excavation can actually go year-round in not just a seasonal excavation, depending on the funding that comes in.

So what is this process like? It's starting in July. I mean, just trucks coming in, like just paint the picture for us of how they start in one end and start moving across. They clamp to the top and dig down. How long does this take? Like, I don't even have a sense of how you would dig a place like Colossi. Yeah, this is an interesting phenomenon. It's very different than archaeology in Israel. But the first thing that they did was Boris Yenar is an expert with ground penetrating radar. And so he went around the site with his ground penetrating radar and located the likely spot of principal and important buildings up on that mound. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day. The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage inspire and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy Daily Bible Trivia and Humor, a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith.

Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. Unbelievable. And through that, it was able to identify, yeah, when we get the green light, this is where we're going to start because there's probably a temple right here. And so this seems like a productive way to start. This July, where they started was not on the mound, but on the ground below it, where there is a necropolis, a cemetery, graves, and they began excavating these. These would date probably to the Roman and maybe early Byzantine era.

But within those, you can often find inscriptions writing on stone. You can find coins. you can find a variety of other things. Now, you mentioned earlier, yeah, it's never been excavated. Well, unofficially, some of these things have been excavated with people going in and robbing graves. That's unfortunate. So your expertise, obviously, you wrote this whole commentary. I don't know how many pages of this thing is, 800 pages with footnotes.

How could an excavation like this illuminate or maybe even help us understand the truth behind the book of Collegiate? Yeah, that's a really good question because, I mean, one way we can look at it is whatever is found will not change the theological truths that are in that book. So the fact that Jesus is Lord and he's proclaimed as Lord through this book, that's not going to change by any excavation. Our salvation in Christ, forgiveness of sins, all of that's going to remain the same. So where does the excavation lead us? there's some weird stuff going on in Colossians. It's often referred to as the Colossian heresy. In other words, there's this problem looming in the background where Paul warns the

Colossian believers about a false teaching that's emerging. And he says, don't let anyone disqualify you from the prize. Don't let anyone deceive you. Don't let anyone judge you. I mean, there's looming a set of teacher. or false teachers that are saying some weird things. And I say weird things because from our vantage point, it truly seems weird. You go to Colossians 218, and Paul is describing some of these things that these guys are

teaching, and he is warning them about the practice of worship of angels. Like, okay, what's going on there? Are groups of people going off on Sunday evening and grabbing their guitars and, you You know, singing hymns of praise to angels. What is this worship of angels? That's a unique word for worship there. It's hardly ever used. And it has more to do with rituals involving angels.

There's visionary experience. There is taboos you find in Colossians 221. These statements do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. There's mutilation of the body. Like how you make sense of all of this? And at one point, it's even called a philosophy. In 2-8, right? Yeah, chapter 2-8.

And it's like, what philosophy does all of that? You know, there's not many platonists running around worshipping angels and visionary experience. And so these things lend themselves very distinctly toward illumination from any insight we can gain about the religious background of the people who are becoming Christians. Got it. So there could be clues and hints of what lies behind Paul's cautions to the people that lived there. Now, you say a few times that you have a few theories that could be proven correct, could be challenges. Is there any part of this? You're like, oh, man, I've put myself out there with this theory and I could be disproven. Or do you just look at it like, you know what? I'm a scholar. I make the best assessment. I know I have. And if I'm wrong about this, great, we're closer to the truth.

Or somewhere in between both those. That's a threatening question. No, actually in the preface, I say with the impending excavation of Colossians, I wonder how many times I'm going to have to say I'm sorry for getting it wrong. And I'm happy to. I'm really, honestly, very happy to because the exciting part is to get to the truth of what was going on, to find out what was really happening there. And so anything that, any insight we can gain into the religious background of the people becoming Christians might help. help to explain this problem that Paul is facing and it was coming up in the church. Of course, the other thing that is a possibility in the excavation is if we could find a Jewish synagogue there, that would lend a lot of insight if you had inscriptions, Jewish

inscriptions, various other kinds of Jewish symbols, artwork, anything out of a synagogue, would help us better understand what the nature of the problem was there. I've seen this problem as a mixture of religious traditions, thus a syncretism. Yeah. And one of the things that's mentioned in Colossians, too, is the worship of Sabbaths. Which sounds Jewish, right? Very Jewish. It has to be. It's uniquely Jewish. So how does this mix in with things that sound very much like pagan Greek religion?

So this is the challenge to make sure people are tracking is that part of Colossians, Paul is warning against certain philosophies. Now, he's not saying against philosophy per se. That's not it. But which philosophies that involve Sabbaths, right? That sounds Jewish. But then you've got new moons. Okay, is that also Jewish or some other practice? And so, you know, worshiping of angels clearly wasn't a normative Jewish practice.

No. So we're trying to find inscriptions or buildings that really reveal to us what was going on at that time and hence brings clarity to the book of Colossians. It's kind of amazing to me. I mean, in some ways I get goosebumps thinking about it. Like this book was written 2000-ish years ago. And there could be like some major breakthroughs, theologically, in this dig. I mean, you think about all the church historians through history and theologians and biblical scholars who are. who've wrestled with these passages, and maybe we get to live in a time where we uncover something

and goes, whoa, this is what Paul meant? Like, that's a pretty phenomenal thing. Like, it's hard to get, in some ways, more exciting than that, huh? It's really huge potential. And one way of putting it, I mean, it theoretically could solve the riddle of what the Colossian heresy was all about. I really think it could. key inscriptions that give us those kinds of insights would be really helpful. That'd be awesome.

Well, I hope you're found right in your commentary. Me too. Of course we do, right? But, you know, everybody's got a theory about it. Are there other cities comparable to Colossi that have been excavated? Like Ephesus, 100 miles west, obviously much bigger. But there's some comparable cities that have been excavated that might give us a clue of certain things we could find or how this might unfold. Yeah, just 10 miles away is the city of Herapolis.

And it's a beautiful site. And you're familiar with it from the apostle or evangelist Philip. Yep. And who was buried there. And that was a fairly recent discovery that they found his tomb and martyrian there. But one of the things that has been discovered there is they discover lots of inscriptions, temples, and a variety of things that give us insight into the religious background. But fairly recently in the necropolis or the graveyard at Herapolis, and it's immense there in

Herapolis, it goes on for a mile and a half because there was thought to be an ancient opening into the underworld in Herapolis. But they found an inscription on silver in a tomb that was rolled up. And they unrolled it and looked at it. And it was basically an invocation. It calls upon angels. It calls upon Michael and Gabriel and the heavenly harmony. And then it calls on a pagan deity, Abra Sox, to protect the one who wears this from any kind of injury.

Now, one of the theories that I have regarding the background of Colossians is that this worship of angels has to do with invixt. invoking angels for protection. And this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about of just calling on names of power who could provide protection for me. And that's where we have to recognize that the worldview of people at that time is so vastly different than it is for us here in the United States. They really were afraid of being cursed. And for cursing back then, it was a situation of people calling on spirits, people calling

on underworld spirits and various deities to come and cause harm. So how do you protect yourself against that? And one of the ways they did that was invoking angels. Interesting. So that ties to what the worship of angels meant, 10 miles away, days to the same time, bivocally significant. That's pretty fascinating. How long is this going to take?

Now, I realize there's funding issues. there could be some political lockdown. Like nobody has control over this. But if things, what reasonably could we expect for this dig? Now, maybe in some ways it goes on, like on and on. It never really stops. But to say we've sufficiently excavated it two years, five years, 50 years, like how long would something like this take? Well, if we looked at Ephesus, we would see a site that has been excavated since the late 1800s.

and they're now estimating that 15% of the site has been excavated. Are you serious? Fifteen percent of all of that? It was a massive site, though. It's a massive site, and they've got a lot more work to do. Colossi is a lot more compact. And if we look at what's happened in the last 20 years with Laodicea, I mean, you cannot believe what's gone on in Laudacea.

When I went there in 85, nothing had been excavated. Now so much of the city is excavated and a lot of restoration work has been done and I don't know what percentage of the city, but they have gone like gangbusters in excavating the city and restoring elements of the city and have found so many different things. In fact, in Laotica, they have found, I think the count is now up to 15 churches. Now, these are churches that existed from about the fourth century on, but building materials and sites relevant for 15 different churches in that area. So the Turkish way led by this chief archaeologist is to excavate year-round and to really make a lot of progress. and I could see that potentially happening at Colossi,

but it's dependent on funding. If they can get the funding that they need to go year round, they would do it. If they don't, they'll just go as they have funding for it. But because of the size and the way that they do excavation in that area of Turkey, it could happen pretty fast. And what does fast mean? Well, you know, I would say within the next 10 years,

If they went year-round, they would have a lot of the principal buildings uncovered. So you start thinking about going year-round. You said a team of 15 people working on this in different ways. And that can vary. That can go up and down. So you've got their salaries. You've got their living conditions. I mean, you've just got all the materials that they need.

I mean, this is a multi-million dollar endeavor, right? I mean, do we even have a sense of what it would cost? Probably so. And I mentioned they got started with $400,000, and that was to get the excavation house and everything else going on. So they can do a lot with very little. The exchange rate is right for us in helping them in this regard. But they can do it quite a bit with very little.

But according to the funding they get, they can just speed the whole process. up. What assurances do we have that they're going to do this carefully? They're going to do it well. Mike, tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, yeah. I think the assurance that we have is seeing what they've already done. So if we look at what has happened at Laotica and at Herapolis, but particularly Laoticaea, because that chief archaeologist is giving oversight to Colossi. For every dollar, they spend digging, they spend $10 in restoration.

Oh. So there's a massive amount of resources that have put in restoring and preserving. They've built a beautiful museum at Hurapolis where they house the various things that they found that are of value like

statues and coins and all of these sorts of things. And then things that aren't going to be disturbed by being on site, remain on site, and they just erect them. So they've set up many columns around the agora. They've set up old temples that have fallen and crumpled

because that place is really susceptible to earthquakes. And they're doing the kind of reinforcing that should keep it from falling in the event of another earthquake. Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning, Plus reading plans, devotions and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead?

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How often are you able to go? So lately it's been every year. Okay. And so I don't have plans for this coming year, but I do from two years from now. Amazing. So last couple of questions is, I imagine, I guess there's funding that's needed. If there's some people watching, like, you know what, I motivate help with the funding or second, others just want to kind of follow the story and the progress. What would you say to those two people? For anybody that's interested in maybe helping out with the excavation or in terms of providing some funding or just want to follow more closely what's happening,

there is an email that you can email to get more information. And it's simply colossi. Dot Excavation at Gmail.com. So C-O-L-O-S-S-A-E. That's correct, yeah. ...excavation. Dot g-mail. At g-mell.

Oh, sorry, at g-mail.com. That's it. And we'll send you all the information you need. So you'll just send updates of what's happening. There's regular updates that are going out through that email. And people can track it. The archaeologist is also creating a Twitter feed and a website. And those are still in progress, but we'll update people through the email when those go live.

Do they need or could they use labor? I've done shows in the past where I've had archaeologists on and come for a week and just dig and move dirt and just help. Do they need that? Or is it more like, you know what, just send the funds? Let us do our thing. Like, what if some family is like, we want to go for a week and just experience this? Is that even possible? It may very well be in the future.

Right now, there's not that opportunity because they're just getting rolling. As things develop, though, and the dust settles a little bit, there will be likely opportunity for that kind of thing. What a cool thing to do. At the time we're recording this in a couple weeks, I'm taking my... my almost 13-year-old son to Egypt. Now, we're not doing any cool Indiana Jones archaeological dig, but it's important for me to take him to see different places in the world. I can imagine if they're like, hey, you can just come for a week and just serve

and see this firsthand and see the area. Like, there's a decent chance. I'd grab my son or somebody and come, and I imagine some people watching, just to be able to experience that and help out. So keep us posted on that as well on the email if you can send the powers that be. Did I miss anything? Anything else about the story that would be helpful or interesting to folks? Well, I don't think you want this to be a 15-hour podcast. I don't. There's so much more I could mention it. It's just very exciting to me.

But we've covered a lot of the basics and, yeah, great questions and look forward to seeing what they find there. Awesome. Partly what I learned about this is you have in your commentary, again, I've read about two-thirds of this. My Bible studied for a while as I was reading the gospel, John, almost every day. every day. Then I've been reading Colossians, obviously, a lot shorter daily, and then I was just kind of working through some of the content in here learning it. So it is an academic commentary, but somebody's like, I want to go deeper and just study this book. This intrigues me. Your Word biblical commentary, Colossian second edition, Clint Arnold is excellent. So thanks for coming on. Those of you watch and listen in, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot more content

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