Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And the last couple days we've been talking about the parallel between what it is that makes you you, which is a very complex story that involves a lot of different people groups and a lot of different places and a lot of different cultures and a lot of history. We've been talking about the parallels between that story we're all kind of familiar with about ourselves, and the story of the town of Colasse and the surrounding people group that Colasse was a part of. What makes Kalasse Colasse? And particularly what makes a person that we know lived in Colasse named Philemon, to whom a book of the Bible was written? What makes Philemon Philemon? Well, in the same way that to really answer that question about yourself, it's much bigger than just your personality. You got to look at all kinds of things that you're made of historically and culturally and ethnically. So likewise it is the same for Colasse and the people who lived there in the first century and Philemon to whom the book of Philemon was written. So specifically, we've been looking at the different flags that flew over Colossae at different times. And the first one we looked at was a super ancient flag. I don't even know what this one looks like. It's real hard to pin down. We go back to maybe the 1600s BC, the very beginnings of this region and the people who are from there and the town of Colasse and the larger Phrygian people group. I mean, we're getting all the way back into stuff that is at least the time of the Exodus or before. And maybe, depending on what we make of this mythical, maybe real character, Nanakus, the earliest king of this region, maybe it goes all the way back to the time of the biblical flood. Oh, and by the way, side note, I got curious about that. Like, you know, I kind of remember this little rumor, this little detail about Nanakus, this mythical regional king. But I went and pulled on that thread a little bit, and it turns out there's a coin that was issued during the mid-Roman Empire and distributed in this part of the world, what we call historic Phrygia, that shows what looks like Noah and his wife in a floating ark, and it has the Greek name for Noah on it. So I don't know what we make of that, but it's just kind of fun to further the conversation we were having the other day about uh Noah and Nanakus and how all of that fits together. I mean, maybe there was some sort of correspondence or association. I've also, since we talked the other day, read the suggestion that maybe Enoch is the character, like the you know, the super old pre-flood character in the Old Testament. Maybe Enoch is the character who corresponds with Nanakus. Maybe it's the same guy. I don't know. Kind of fun. Whatever the case. The first flag over the Colossian people, over the Phrygian people, is very, very ancient, very hard to nail down, and takes us back into the mists of history and mythology, and that's a lot of fun. The second flag that we talked about last time around runs from roughly 1200 BC to basically 676 BC. And this is the truly Phrygian era of Phrygia and Colossae. Two great kings, one from humble beginnings named Gordias, who founded their great capital city of Gordium, and his son Midas, the legends say everything he touched turned to gold. Some people thought that most of this was all mythological as well, but relatively recent excavations have turned up a whole bunch of things from this era around ancient Gordium, including a tomb associated with Midas and burial artifacts in there. So we've learned a lot more about this golden age of Phrygia, and the most golden age of Phrygia is pretty close to the very end, 720 BC to 695 BC. Why am I telling you these dates? Well, one, because I'm trying to give you a mental timeline of how we run all the way up to the version of Colossae and Phrygia that we encounter in the New Testament, but also because I'm trying to put Colossae and Phrygia on a timeline you're more familiar with, that being the timeline of the Bible. So the first flag, you know, we're kind of positioning that relative to the most ancient part of that first flag being maybe even flood times, the more recent ancient past, like the first reference to that town, first inscription, maybe corresponds with Exodus times or pre-Exodus times. Well, now this second flag, the truly Phrygian age of Phrygia, it corresponds with roughly the time of the conquest or just after Joshua's conquest, as recorded in the book of Joshua. And this Phrygian age runs all the way through the age of the judges. So the entire book of Judges, all of the hundreds of years of crazy stuff, crazy chaotic stuff that was happening there with these little people groups coming and going. Well, that's a time when Phrygia was really dominant. That's when the second flag over Colossae was happening. The era of the judges politically in this part of the world is a lot like when you're following a sports season and you're like, yeah, there's really no dominant team. Anybody could win the championship this year. During the time of the judges, there's all these little people groups that come and go and oppress or fight with the Israelite, the Hebrew people. And way up north, basically out of the picture, they're not really on screen during the book of Judges, you have the Phrygians. Then they're thriving up in that direction in the same environment that is allowing all of these people groups to come and go and cycle through the several hundred years covered in the story of the judges. So this second flag, the era of Phrygia proper, corresponds with the end of the conquest in Joshua, the whole era of the judges. Phrygia is still up north being Phrygia when Saul becomes king. And we go from the era of the judges into the era of the United Kingdom. Phrygia is still Phrygia around 1000-ish BC. When David and Solomon are kings, Phrygia is still Phrygia. When the temple is being built, probably the Phrygians were well aware of Solomon's wealth and what was going on down in that direction. Phrygia was still Phrygia when the northern and southern kingdoms split in two. And now you've got Israel in the north and Judah in the south. And Phrygia is barely still Phrygia in 722 BC, when their neighbors, the Phrygians' neighbors, the Assyrians, come south and wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel and put an end to its wicked line of kings. Now, Assyria was a wrecking ball directly. They got put to the walls of the northern kingdom of Israel. But when you've got a power big enough to do that, it's applying pressure even to the parts of the world that it isn't attacking per se. And Assyria doesn't prove to be the ruin of Phrygia. But I think it's reasonable to say the chaos caused by the wicked Assyrians was probably a contributing factor to the downfall of Phrygia and the end of its golden age. Around 675, I mean some people are saying specifically, 676 BC, a group that maybe you've never heard of called the Cimmerians, come in from kind of Armenia. I mean, they're sort of like Southern Russians in a way, the Scythians, horse people, tribesmen from the north. They're a part of a people group that the later Persians never conquered. They're just this gigantic horse people wild card from the middle of Central Asia that people kind of forget exist. We don't know a lot about the Samarians. And let me just be really clear. Cimaria is spelled C-I-M-M-E-R-I-A. Not to be confused with Sumeria, S-U-M-E-R-I-A, sometimes called Sumer, not to be confused with Samaria, S-A-M-A-R-I-A. The people who live in Samaria are called Samaritans, like the woman at the well in John chapter 4. So all of these names really lump together, but we're talking about Cimmeria. Like think Cinnamon. It kind of reminds me of that word. C-I-M-M-E-R-I-A. The Cimmerians are a ferocious people group, kind of in the style, think like the Huns who just come in and wreck everything, but they don't know how to govern. They don't really have any plan to establish a long-term bureaucracy or anything. They just kind of come and go and cause chaos. The Cimerians or Cimeria is the third flag over Phrygia, over Colossae, and it is a very short-lived flag. Only from about 676 to 620 do we have the Sumerians in Central Turkey in what we would call Phrygia. So, how much are the Sumerians going to leave a legacy or influence the people of Colossae or Philemon 650, 700 years later? Probably not very much. Probably the biggest legacy of that short-lived third flag over Phrygia is just that it puts an end to the golden age of Phrygia and shakes up the ant farm of history once again, so that the next group can come in and establish the next very influential flag over Phrygia. And you'll be excited to know that this next group, much like the Phrygians, also has a musical mode and scale named after them. It's very exciting. Gird yourselves, friends, because there are more flags over Colossae and Phrygia to be explored. And oh dang it, we're gonna explore them. That's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.