Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and we are doing a speed run. I say speed in quotes. We're doing a speed run through the multiple ancient eras of our favorite Bible town, Colossae. We're looking at all the flags that flew over that important city, the city that is the city in view in the little New Testament book of Philemon, on which this season is focused. As you no doubt have completely on mental lockdown at this point, the seven flags over Colossae that we are considering, or the super ancient ones that don't have a name, then Phrygia, then Samaria, then Lydia, then Persia, then the Greeks, which is very multifaceted, and then the Romans, which we'll talk about next time around. Today we're talking about the very end of the Greek age of Colossae before the Romans came to town. I'm going to have my close personal friend dating all the way back to my first day of college, Jeffrey Foote, play some music right now, and then we'll pick up where we left off. There's one more group of people we haven't talked about. The quick version is this there's a little kingdom in northwest Turkey, Asia Minor, called Pergamemnon. Do not confuse this with the town of Perga, that some of Paul's journeys take him through or near. Perga in the Bible is south-central Turkey, more or less north of Cyprus. That is not the town that we have in view when we're talking about Pergamemnon. The Pergamemnon Kingdom, and briefly lived mini-empire, is in northwest Turkey. The people who rule the kingdom of Pergamemnon are called the Attalid Dynasty. So when you see the little port town of Italia, A-T-T-A-L-I-A, that Paul, I believe, passed through very briefly, that is named for this family that was a part of this kingdom. Now, this dynasty, the Attelids, they were kind of rogues. They sort of emerged out of the tension between Alexander's generals and their descendants, and they carved out a little existence for themselves north of Colossae and Sardis. And eventually they got along pretty well with the Romans, and the Romans felt like they could use the Attelids or the Kingdom of Pergamemnon as sort of a proxy to destabilize and eventually conquer Asia Minor, ancient Phrygia, ancient Lydia, all of this stuff. Eventually, the Roman designs on this part of the world boil to a surface for the first time in the Roman Seleucid Wars of 192 to 188 BC. The Attelids support the Romans in all of this, which is kind of funny because the Attolids are more Greek. You'd think they would like the Seleucids, but they didn't. They like the Italians, they like the Romans, team Italy. And so the Romans are like, hey, thank you. And now we are going to bequeath northwestern Turkey to you. And the Attolids are like, yay, hooray! We're real boys and we have our own kingdom. This is great. And they rule for a while up there, but really Rome is eliminating their actual rivals with stuff like this. And with the Seleucids weakened by the Roman Seleucid War. And then, of course, right after the Roman Seleucid War, you have the Maccabean Revolt, which further weakens the Seleucids. And if you recall, one little detail we talked about when we were talking about the Maccabees, you know, then there's trouble in the East that the Seleucids have to go deal with in Old Persia. They're just spread too thin. They're right in the middle of the map, in the middle of the board. It's not a good deal for them. The Seleucids are getting hollowed out, and the Attolids aren't particularly powerful either. Well, depending on right where you draw the boundary lines, maybe Colossae is technically under the control of the Attelids for a little while. Maybe Colossae is just on the other side of the line. I don't know quite how to tell which is which. But eventually the Romans use their culture, their troops, and their economy to put a stranglehold on this short-lived Attilid dynasty or the kingdom of Pergamemnon. And they are the Pergamemnon is just absorbed into Rome in the late 100s BC. So I suppose it is at this point around 130-ish BC that we gotta say the sixth flag over Colossae gets taken down the flagpole. And up goes the next flag, the seventh, which is Rome. And if you're keeping score at home, again for our purposes, Rome is the final flag over Colossae. But really, it's not even if you're keeping score at home. Rome is the final flag over Colossae because the town finally goes defunct several hundred years into the time of the Roman Empire. And well, that's just kind of that. But for the purposes of this podcast and this season, all we have left is to talk about the legacy of Rome, the rules of Rome, what Rome had in place at the time that the book of Philemon was written, and then boom, we got this thing on lockdown. And let me tell you, as we get ready to turn the page here to the Roman stuff, what we just did together is weird. Most of the time, students of the Bible or people who are going to church, they don't have the time or the patience to do what you just did to lock this stuff in. But you are close to having the seven flags over colossa on complete lockdown, which is awesome and an achievement. And as you walk down the street, you know, if you were to just pull anybody aside, do you know how many people know what you know? I mean, people don't know this stuff, but it's so important to what makes the Bible the Bible. And we're gonna be, and we're just so much better positioned to understand these people and to think about what's going on here and to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who are receiving this letter, the people on the fringes of this letter. Just nice job. I study this stuff, some of this stuff I have on lockdown just because of what I do for a living and what I went to school for, but I'm learning a bunch of this stuff along with you. I don't remember all these dates and stuff off the top of my head. So don't be discouraged if you don't have it all immediately. But the point is, you got the framework. I've got the framework. I think it's going to be hugely to our advantage moving forward. And I would like to give you a high five. Nice job on this. Also, given how long it took, I could totally understand why other people are like, yeah, just skip to the thing. Like, let's let's just get to it. We don't, I don't, I don't have to do all the history stuff to understand the thing. Well, they can do it their way. We're gonna do it our way. Moving forward to the final flag over Colosse and really just the current historical context of the book of Philemon next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.