Eruption of Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius, on the Bay of Naples, had been quiet for centuries when it erupted on 24 August AD 79 (some recent scholars argue for October). A column of ash and pumice rose more than thirty kilometres into the air, blanketed the Roman resort towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and a pyroclastic surge the next morning killed the survivors instantly. Some 16,000 people died. The cities lay sealed beneath ash until rediscovery in the eighteenth century, and they have given archaeology its most complete portrait of daily life in the early Roman Empire — the houses, shops, frescoes, graffiti, and food of the world the New Testament churches lived in. The Younger Pliny watched the eruption from across the bay and wrote two letters to Tacitus describing it; his uncle Pliny the Elder died on the beach trying to rescue people. The biblical relevance is contextual: only nine years before, in AD 70, Titus had burned the Temple and the city of Jerusalem at the end of the First Jewish Revolt. To the Christians of the empire, the volcano was a vivid reminder of the Lord’s words: "the day of the Lord will come like a thief… the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the elements will be dissolved with fire" (2 Pet 3:10).