Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
The title of this monograph encapsulates well not only its contents, but also a significant aspect of my experience in writing it. For, three years into my research, in March 1999, I travelled to Thessalonica and environs with my wife, Sirscha, to see the various sites of archaeological significance. On the evening of 16 March, we left Thessalonica for Philippi in our rental car. By the time we had reached Asprovalta, outside Thessalonica, the rain was coming down in torrents. As I was driving around a bend in the road, I saw a car stationary in the road in front of me and braked, only to skid into the other side of the road, as though on black ice. In spite of my efforts to manoeuvre the car into the ditch, we careered head-on into an oncoming lorry.
In the crash my wife sustained a terrible head wound and three fractures in her left arm, and I fractures in my sternum, ribs and right leg (tibia and fibula). Astonishingly an ambulance happened to be passing by with two empty beds. My wife was taken to the Hippokratia hospital and I to Saint Paul's hospital in Thessalonica. For sixteen hours I lay in pain and despair, wondering whether my wife would survive and, if she did, whether she would have her mental faculties. During that time, the gentleman in the bed opposite me died and I heard his wife's scream of despair as she heard the news.
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- From Hope to Despair in ThessalonicaSituating 1 and 2 Thessalonians, pp. xiii - xvPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004