By EmmaLee Italia | Correspondent

The Adult Faith Formation team of St. Paul Parish, Princeton, has made an effort to provide parishioners with monthly faith enrichment programs that appeal to multiple subject interests. And often they find talented speakers right within their own backyard.

Such was the case Jan. 19, when parishioner Dr. Catherine Vanderpool presented, “The World of St. Paul: Archaeology’s record from the Eastern Mediterranean in the first century C.E.” A retired executive vice president of the American School of Classical Studies, Princeton, Dr. Vanderpool gave participants a glimpse into the world St. Paul traveled during his ministry.

In choosing the topic for this month’s talk, event organizer Claire Gmachl explained that the parish’s Adult Faith Formation group had placed a note in the parish bulletin several months ago, asking for suggestions.

“We try to have a variety of subjects,” Gmachl said. “We received several emails with ideas for different speakers.”

“This is a large turnout,” Dr. Vanderpool said at the beginning of her talk in the nearly filled spiritual center. “I thought we’d have an intimate gathering of 20 people ... it’s an honor to be here!”

In high school in the Princeton area, while studying the ancient history of Greece, Rome and Egypt, Dr. Vanderpool found herself longing to see those places. Her options for a career in the early 1960s that would allow her to do so were limited.

“My choices were to become a stewardess or become an archaeologist,” she said with a smile, “so I decided to pursue archaeology.”

Dr. Vanderpool did just that, earning a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pa., and a doctorate in classical archaeology from Columbia University, N.Y. She then lived and worked in Greece for 16 years. Returning to Princeton in 1986, she worked at ASCS, which has major excavations and libraries in Greece, serving 1996-2006 as executive vice president, and from 1996-2010 as president of the school’s Gennadius Library.

She shared her love of the ancient sites of the Eastern Mediterranean – many of which St. Paul would have witnessed on his journeys, with the new Roman civilization being built right on top of the old Greek structures. Since retirement, her focus has been researching ancient Corinth, recently co-authoring a book detailing the discovery of a basilica in Corinth that dates back to the time of Christ.

“It’s very close to my heart ... Greece is my second home. I hope people will have a desire to see it for themselves,” Dr. Vanderpool said. “There’s such a wealth of ruins, whether in Paul’s time or other eras ... the only way to really feel it is to be there.”

The audience, however, did get to visit ancient Greece and Roman sites through Dr. Vanderpool’s extensive slide show – which included not only photographs of the sites as they look today, but also historic pictures of the first excavations, and even artists’ renderings of what they thought the city structures looked like in their prime.

“It’s a fascinating subject,” said Ania Tkacz, a resident of Bensalem, Pa., who works in the Princeton area. “I’m interested in biblical history and have seen documentaries online – but it’s nothing like hearing [about it] in person from someone who has hands-on knowledge.”

Dr. Vanderpool offered a chronology of the Roman conquests, and how the Roman Empire came to be divided into “the Latin West, and the Greek East, where Paul was born – culturally his world was mainly Greek.”

Born in Tarsus around 5 A.D., St. Paul began his series of missionary journeys around 44 A.D., traveling throughout the Mediterranean and eventually to Rome. His public ministry took place toward the end of the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus, adopted son of Julius Caesar, who helped bring about an end to civil war in the region, allowing a period of peace within the borders of the Roman Empire. Dr. Vanderpool explained that one of the reasons St. Paul was able to travel and spread Christianity so extensively was because of this relative peace in the empire, despite the warring occurring along its boundaries.

“In the first century A.D., people were moving around so much because of Augustus,” Vanderpool elaborated. She described how the freedom to move about within the Empire was instrumental to the spread of Paul’s message. “It had a lot to do with how the Church spread,” she continued. “People were free to come and go and find work and there was a tremendous surge of prosperity.”

Following the talk, Dr. Vanderpool took several questions from the audience on points of St. Paul’s journey, and how he was granted an audience with the Roman emperor. Those in attendance found the archaeological perspective on St. Paul’s journeys enlightening.

“When we think of Paul, we tend to think of him theologically,” said parishioner and Princeton filmmaker Robert Orlando. “It’s important to think of him in context – we have to understand how he spread Christianity using the Imperial cult.”

Jane Kupin, another parishioner, said she found the talk “very interesting, especially about Corinth. I’m reading about it now, and the Bible study group is getting ready to read Corinthians, so it ties it all together.”

Dr. Vanderpool hoped that her audience gained a greater understanding of St. Paul’s travels through her presentation.

“I think it’s very important for people to understand that Paul was a real person,” Dr. Vanderpool said. “This [research] makes him real – to see the sites he saw. He also worked on the economy [in the Roman Empire] ... he was a worker, and a great soul.”