On "The Seven Churches of Asia" by A. Svoboda ***

This was not quite the book I was looking for, but being in the public domain, I took a gander at it. I was hoping for or expecting a sort of short history of the seven churches mentioned in Revelation, maybe a bit of discussion of culture of each community. Svoboda does supply that but really not much more than one could easily get from a short article on the subject or a Bible commentary. And with regard to the history, he usually provides everything from the founding to his contemporary day, so not much is focused on bibilical times. His focus, rather, is on archeology. There are lots of descriptions of buildings and of what remains of them. Indeed, what the book really reads like is a travel guide. It provides minimal cultural and historical detail and especially concentrates on the visual contemporary. Indeed, at the end of the book is an appendix with a run-down of how many days it would take to travel from one city to the other, with choices regarding which routes to take and suggestions regarding the best means to conduct one's trip. In that sense, it's an interesting artifact of its time. Svoboda suggests having bodyguards along some portions of the route, because of robbers, and even suggests speaking with specific knowledgeable people along the route. I don't think I'd have wanted to venture along such a route in the late 1800s, when Svoboda was writing.