Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 26:1 (NA 1975)
Article: Alexandria Troas
Author: Colin J. Hemer

TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 79

Alexandria Troas

C. J. Hemer

The Tyndale Biblical Archaeology Lecture 1973*

*Delivered at Tyndale House, Cambridge, 11 July 1973.

The Substance of this lecture falls into two parts. In the first some account of a neglected New Testament city in the context of the historical geography of its district is attempted. This will illustrate the singularly strategic part it was equipped to play in the dissemination of Christianity. Then such aspects of several New Testament critical problems as may be clarified by the study of their setting in this city will be discussed.

I.

The fame of Alexandria Troas has been overshadowed by that of its neighbour Ilium or Troy. Many early travellers visited it in their search for Troy, and some identified it as Troy.1 Their error rested in part upon problems in the ancient authorities. Troy itself has in any case nothing of the visual scale and splendour with which the poetic imagination has endowed it.

It is one of the minor mysteries of New Testament history that the site of Troas has been so strangely neglected subsequently. The starting point for any new study must be the short

TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 80

account in W. Leaf, Strabo on the Troad, Cambridge U.P. (1923) 233-240. Leaf’s valuable book was the only volume ever published of a projected series of topographical commentaries on Strabo’s description of Asia Minor.

The neglect of Troas is doubtless partly due to the remarkable deficiency of the usual sources of information. Strabo’s Geography is the principal primary literary source. The geographer devotes a quarter of his whole account of Asia Minor to the Troad, only perhaps one-sixtieth of its total area (Leaf, xxv). Yet he dismisses Troas, the largest city of the area in his day, in a few words, and only gives information about it in a confused parenthesis when dealing with Ilium (13.1.26 = p. 593).2 This extraordinary omission is discussed by Leaf (xxxi- xxxii). Strabo was more interested in the historical glories of Troy than in this upstart commercial seaport,3 and his source is Demetrius of Scepsis, a man who bore Troas a grudge for temporarily absorbing his own city and who accordingly treated it with silent contempt.

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Other ancient references are few and unimportant. Epigraphic materials are sparse and scattered. But so far as I know no attempt has been made to assemble a complete list even of tho...