Welcome to Ben Witherington, who now has a blog. In a recent entry he discusses the plight of the ancient city of Colossae in Turkey, and calls for some action in saving this unexcavated site. That reminded me that about a year ago a student in Australia happened on my website and e-mailed me to say that the university where she attended was in the midst of plans to excavate precisely Colossae. At that point, they had a website (dead link: http://wwwehlt.flinders.edu.au/colossae). Doing a search now, all I can find is a reference to an article on the Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia) site from 2002 by Michael Trainor, “Unearthing Ancient Colossae in Southern Turkey: Theology and Archaeology in Dialogue,” Compass: Review of Topical Theology 36 (2002): 40-46. I wonder what happened to that project? Does anyone know.

UPDATE: Ben Witherington now knows: Government red tape (see comments).

For a brief discussion and photos of the cities of the Lycos (or Lycus) valley, including Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae, go here.

As an aside, I am happy to find that another scholar of ancient religions (Witherington) still likes to endulge his Marvel comic book past from time to time. I also found that the negative reviews of Fantastic Four were overstated. But the acting could have been far better in the sense that, when these four discover they have been genetically altered and now have strange powers, they don’t seem too surprised or upset (with the exception of The Thing). “Hmmm, now I can stretch my body like rubber and squeeze under doors . . . interesting. So as I was saying . . .”