This is my friend Levent Oral standing beneath beautiful bouganvillia in the Turkish town where his parents live— Chesme, a beautiful seaside resort town.  Levent runs a tour company called Tutku Tours out of Izmir, another beautiful Turkish seaside town.   Levent has become a good friend over the last decade or so,  and since he has entered the story of my life has certainly changed and for the better.   When I first met Levent, things were pretty difficult for me, at work,  at home, most anywhere.   The Brother of Jesus book tour had gone well and this had just further complicated my life with more demands and requests from everywhere, it seemed.  It was a little surreal for a Biblical scholar to have a book on the NY Times bestseller list. So much for the right to privacy after that.   

And God brought Levent into my life in the midst of that melee and madness.   It was as if God was saying—- ‘You know Ben, you need to get away.’   And I did.  And then along came Levent.   The first tour I did with him he was just the land company for another travel outfit in the U.S.  But we immediately hit it off.  And Levent came up with this mad scheme to show me every site I was even remotely interested in,  in Turkey.   He wanted me to know the history and beauty and sheer wonder of this land.  He had a kind of twinkle in his eye and a child-like glee in showing off his wonderful country, and I was hooked.

Before I knew it, every May was like Mardi Gras for me.  I’d get on the plane and go somewhere wonderful in Turkey, before giving my lecture at the annual Ephesus meeting at the end of May.   This coming May, Lord willing,  I am going to Ararat and also to Gobecklitepe Temple.  But in previous years we’ve gone to Antioch, and Tarsus, and Haran, and Hatusha, and Konya, and Antalya, and  the islands off the coast of Turkey, and Perge, and Hierapolis, and Istanbul, and Iznik (Nicea), and Aphrodisias and Gaziantep and Urfa and Mt. Nimrud, and time fails me to tell you of the tons of other places.  Mostly, I have done this in the company of an even more intrepid explorer, my friend and fellow NT scholar Mark Fairchild,  an excellent photographer who I am convinced has more pictures of Turkey than even the President of Turkey.

Levent is a dream-weaver, a person who loves to make other peoples dreams come true.  And I have to tell you, I had no idea what I was in for when he started loading up my May dance card with Turkish sites.  It is and has been a blast, and an eye-opening experience.  Turkey is far and away the biggest, most beautiful,  most well endowed with Biblical and Greco-Roman and ANE sites country of all the Lands of the Bible.  Shoot, you could stuff all the other lands of the Bible into Turkey and have room left over.   It’s enormous and gorgeous.  Many other Lands of the Bible countries such as Israel get more publicity, more notoriety, more tourists,  but for actual physical beauty,  great food, nice people,  fabulous archaeological sites, and fun at the beach,  Turkey wins hands down.  No wonder St. Paul spent so much time here and the Beloved Disciple lived and died here, as did John of Patmos.

This is my tribute to Levent and his ministry of tourism, and that is what it is— a ministry of tourism,  to open a window on the past for those who love the Bible, and then open the door and invite them to ‘Come and See’.  Levent has made many of my dreams come true, and I owe him a lot of thanks.   My suggestion to you, is that you should get hold of this gentle, tall man,  and book a tour with him  (info@tutkutours.com)  for your church or school or students or family or friends.  I promise you, it will be a life changing experience, even an experience of Biblical proportions!  And then of course, at the end of the day, you can sit down with Levent, drink some wonderful  vishne suyu (cherry juice), and eat some dolma and have a Magnum Bar (try the Fistik one) and just smile watching the waves come in at the Mezza Luna harbor restaurant in Izmir.   Its the Turkish version of a Biblical man sitting under his vine and fig tree and welcoming guests to a feast.  

I have a Proverb for you Levent—–

Proverbs 18:24
 “A man who has friends must himself be friendly, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”   That’s you brother Levent.