Divine Detour
This is our 100th story! Thank you so much for listening to our last 100 stories!
To reiterate, when our Blessed Lord declared Peter the rock on which His Church would be built, he was standing in front of a massive rock that literally sat atop the pagan gates of Hell.
The rock of Caesarea Philippi. For scale, note the tiny people at the cave entrance. That cave is the mythical entrance to Hades. In front of the cave a number of temples stood, including one dedicated to Pan.
St. John the Baptist rebuking Herod for marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias. Note Herodias’ daughter, Salome, seated in the middle. Her inappropriate dance led to the execution of the Baptist. Salome was married to Philip the Tetrarch, her uncle, who ruled over territory north of Galilee, a territory that included Caesarea Philippi. One of our early drafts told the story from Salome’s perspective, perhaps nervous that the wonderworking cousin of the Baptist was entering her husband’s territory.
A copy of a statue of Pan by Heliodorus of Rhodes, currently in the Louvre. Pan was a god of nature, of shepherds, some kinds of music, and a whole bunch of more disturbing junk. According to Plutarch, he was declared dead under the reign of Tiberius.