Number 28 | February 17, 2004

Cities of the New Testament: Ephesus
This issue of Ekklesia Then & Now, the second in a series on the cities of the New Testament, will explore the geography, history, culture, religion, and people of Ephesus. The first of this series examined Corinth.

Geography

Ephesus sits on the west coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) almost directly across the Aegaen from Athens and Corinth. Settled near the mouth of the Cayster River, the city provided a sheltered harbor, a reliable water source, and easy access to the interior, so it became a major trading port.
Over the centuries, the main settlement moved to at least five locations within the same general area. In the first century, the site (known by historians and archaeologists as Ephesus III) was at the base of Mount Koressos.
In Roman times, three major land routes converged in Ephesus: the coastal road north to Smyrna and Pergamos, the eastern road to the Lycus Valley (Laodicea, Colosse, and Hierapolis), and the northeast road to Sardis and the province of Galatia.
The deposits of the River Cayster routinely silted up the man-made harbor but also left a fertile plain. With these assets, Ephesus prospered and with a population approaching 250,000 by the middle of the first century, it was the perhaps the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire.

History

The history of Ephesus, like many ancient cities, is the stuff of myth and mystery. The area may have been originally settled by the legendary Amazons, a tribe of female warriors, but it is not until about 1000 B.C. that it enters recorded history. At that time, the indigenous settlers were driven out by Androclus of Athens. According to legend, Athenian sages prophesied that Androclus would be led to the site of a new settlement by a wild boar and a fish. Supposedly, Androclus was cooking fish when a spark from the fire ignited bushes, driving out a wild boar. Androclus pursued and killed the boar, founding his new city on the spot.

In the 7th century B.C. Ephesus was destroyed by invading Cimmerians but for most of the next 1000 years, the city seems to have skillfully or luckily avoided the routine sacks experienced by many ancient cities. It did so largely by submitting to each successive conqueror.
In the 6th century B.C., the city was seized by Lydian King Croesus, and during his domination, the first Artemision (Temple of Artemis) was built on a Cybele (earth mother goddess) site, but by 546 Ephesus and all of Anatolia came under the Persian rule of Cyrus the Great.
Later, after the death of Persian King Darius, his son Xerxes may have used Ephesus as the launching point for his imperialistic invasions of Greece, and when he was turned back, he left his children in Ephesus for protection.
For the next 200 years, Ephesus bounced back and forth between Greek and Persian rule until Alexander the Great took a distinct interest in the city, primarily because of its association with Artemision, which had been destroyed by fire in 356.

Alexander's offer to rebuild the Temple represented a significant political challenge to the Ephesians since he wanted his name put along side that of Artemis. Displaying substantial diplomatic skill, the Ephesian priests declined Alexander's offer, claiming it was not proper for one god to build a shrine to another. Instead, the reconstruction was funded through local contributions, but it was not completed until about 250 B.C.
After Alexander's death in 323, Ephesus was politically adrift until Greek General Lysimachus regained control in 286. Following his death in 281, the Seleucid dynasty took control of Ephesus until their defeat by Romans at Magnesia in 189. The Romans gave control of Ephesus to Pergamon, and upon the death of the Attalus III, the last Pergamon king, Ephesus became a city of the Roman Empire. Anthony and Cleopatra wintered there is 33 BC.
Under the Romans, particularly beginning with Augustus, Ephesus enjoyed a great golden age lasting into the third century A.D. Most of the buildings in the extensive archaeological site date to this period.

Augustus (23 BC-14 AD) built a huge triple gate at the entrance of the commercial agora. Nero (54-68 AD) rebuilt the stadium. Domitian (81-96 AD) erected a temple to himself on Curetes Street, and his son Trajan (98-117) added the Nymphaion. Hadrian (117-138) established Ephesus as the Imperial Capital of Asia in 125 and inaugurated games in his honor. A temple was dedicated to Hadrian in 129 and Antonius Pius (138-161) built a great gynasium.

Religion and Culture
Ephesus was all about Artemis when Christianity arrived in about AD 51. For 1000 years, the cult of the mother goddess had dominated the region like no pagan religion anywhere in the world.
Her temple was more than just a religious shrine. It was a source of immense civic pride, an assurance of protection, a secure bank, a treasure trove of priceless artwork, and most importantly, the center of the city's thriving economy.
Said to have been rebuilt seven times, the Temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the World alongside the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassusos, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Temple of New Testament times was completed in about 250 B.C., and was at the time the largest structure in the Greek world.

The building was made of marble, with a decorated façade overlooking a spacious courtyard. Marble steps surrounding the building platform led to the high terrace which was slightly larger than a modern football field—approximately 260 feet by 430 feet. The columns were 60 feet high with Ionic capitals and carved circular sides. There were 127 columns in total, aligned over the whole platform area, except for the central house of the goddess.
The contemporary writings about the temple were effusive, none less so than Antipater of Sidon, who in the second century BC wrote:

"I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon, on which is a road for chariots. And the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossos of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus, but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said ‘Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.’"

What Ephesian could help but look upon the Temple and feel pride in being an Ephesian?

While Artemis was by no means the only diety celebrated in Ephesus, she was by far the dominant one. Sarapis and Isis were introduced to Ephesus by Egyptian traders, and there is evidence of the worship of Zeus, Athena, Dionysus, Nemesis, Pan, Poseidon, and Pluto among others. The cult of Artemis was closely connected with the practice of magic. Superstition surrounded the Ephesia Grammata, six mystic letters that were supposedly inscribed on the statue of Artemis at Ephesus used verbally and written to avert evil.
The Temple served as a bank because of its strength, and as a museum protecting important works of art. Also, given that the Temple was historically a place of refuge, it is not surprising that legends would emerge associating an inscription with protection.
There was also a substantial Jewish community in Ephesus, as attested by the first century Jewish historian Josephus. These were Jews of the Hellensitic diaspora, a voluntary migration of Jews into the Greek world. Of necessity perhaps, these Jews accommodated a number of pagan myths into their monotheistic beliefs and conversely, their beliefs worked their way into pagan legends.

The Ekklesia

There is no record of Christianity in Ephesus before the arrival of Paul and his companions in about AD 51 when he stopped there briefly on his way back to Antioch at the end of his second missionary journey. As was his custom, Paul spoke in the synagogue, and he apparently had a receptive audience. He promised to return if God permitted and left Aquila and Priscilla to tend to the infant ekklesia (Acts 18:19-21).
He returned some months later with a substantial entourage, including John Mark, Timothy, Aristarchus, Luke, and Titus.
Paul spent three months preaching in the synagogue(s), then moved his operations to the "school of Tyrannus," some sort of public hall Paul was able to use outside of "normal" business hours (after 11 am).
While there are a number of incidents associated with Ephesus in the Book of Acts, by far the most important is the riot of the silversmiths. Given the importance of the Temple of Artemis in the psyche of the Ephesians, it is not at all surprising that people took exception to how Paul and other Christians must have viewed the pagan goddess.

To attack Artemis was to attack Ephesus itself. It is easy to write off Demitrius, the silversmith who incited the mob, as a greedy merchant distraught about lost receipts, but there is more to his objection that economics:

"About that time there occurred no small disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsmen; these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business. 'You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all. Not only is there danger that this trade of ours fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be regarded as worthless and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence.'" [Acts 19:23-27]

Certainly Demetrius was concerned about his livelihood, and if he had a family who could blame him? His last phrase goes beyond his individual concerns. "What will happen to our city?" he seems to be saying. Paul was challenging 1000 years of tradition, seven iterations of the Temple, countless survived invasions —challenging the history of a people with the unbelievable story of a god-man from the backwater province of Judea. For nearly two years, preaching at odd hours from a rented hall, this strange but compelling teacher had slowly convinced a growing minority of Ephesians of the truth of this fantastic tale. And his time in Ephesus has been so successful that he's even sending new missionary teams off to the lesser cities of Asia. It's as if a preacher from Mississippi showed up in Hollywood and started convincing entertainment moguls to stop producing shows and America's televisions and movie screens went blank. Imagine the backlash!

The Apostle John spent the last years of his life in Ephesus, probably arriving there around AD 70. After Domitian came to power in 81, he took a special interest in Ephesus and erected both a temple and a gigantic statue of himself, which sat on the Temple portico. That the Ephesians were offended by this denigration of their goddess is demonstrated by the fact that they destroyed the status upon Domitians' death. Certainly, the Christian community was equally offended by emperor worship, just as the Jews were outraged some years earlier when Nero (54-68) ordered his likeness placed in the synagogues of the Empire. Perhaps the statue was the source of John's conflict with Domitian, one that led to his banishment to the island of Patmos.
Perhaps the mother-goddess cult won out in the end, however. There is a tradition that Mary, the mother of Jesus, went to Ephesus with John and died there. Late in his life, Paul had made several curious references to myths and women in his letter to Timothy in Ephesus:

• "...instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, 4nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies ..." [1 Timothy 1:3]
• "But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women..." [1 Timothy 4:7]
• "For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." [1 Timothy 2:13-14]

Jewish stories of Adam and Eve had apparently merged with the mother-goddess myths so that Eve had become a mother-goddess. For that cult, all life issued from the mother-goddess, so they would naturally claim that Eve preceeded Adam. Furthermore, wisdom came from the mother-goddess, so the revisionist version of creation would need to have Adam deceived by the serpeant.

Apparently, the ekklesia was not entirely successful in stamping out these syncretistic myths. The Goths sacked Ephesus and destroyed the Temple of Artemis in 262, leaving a vacuum which the new "Cult of the Virgin Mary" filled. Justification of that cult came at the Third Ecumenical Council in 431—a council held in Ephesus.

In a very real sense, the cult of the mother-goddess, no longer Cybele, Artemis, or even Eve, persists in the form of Mary.

While it was much earlier, we know from the letter in Revelation (2:1-7) that the church in Ephesus had "left your first love" by late in the first century. Perhaps the diplomatic accommodation practiced so successfully by the Ephesians over the centuries was so deeply ingrained in their collective psyche that many were incapable of keeping the truth of the gospel.

After its destruction in 262, Ephesus never again fully regained its pominence. The harbor silted over, reducing its reputation as a major port. It rose again from the late 4th into the early 6th century, but the city was again embattled, going back and forth between Byzantine and Arab control. It was again destroyed in 1090 by the Seljuk Turks. Ephesus emerged again in the early 14th century but was finally completely ruined in 1403, where it lay gathering layers of dust for the next 466 years until J.T. Wood began the first excavations of the site.
Today, located near the modern city of Selcuk, Ephesus is one of the richest archaeological sites from the New Testament period, visited by thousands of tourists each year. The river deposit have pushed the coastline about six miles from the site.
When visitors stand in the Great Theater, perhaps they can still hear the cry "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" Certainly, at least, there is very little Christianity left in the region of Ephesus and the people have indeed left the love of Christ to return to false gods.

Only one comment came in about the Ephesus issue with one subscriber taking me to task over the comments I made about the worship of Mary:

Regarding your comments on mother-god cult.... and Mary ...
Mary is blessed among women ... to 'all' generations ... our Saviour was of her flesh ... she indeed housed and made with God the Son of God ... His flesh that was crucified came from her vessel ... I believe she deserves to be honored ... and this is vein and thought that was preserved in that council ... and the vein in which most honor her today ... in the "Orthodox Faith" ... perhaps not in Catholicism. She is in effect our Mother-in-law and as well in the Mother of our salvation ...
WE are to HONOR our parents and in-laws ... in the natural ... how much more in the Spiritual ...
God Bless You.

DS: Mary holds a unique position in human history—no other woman bore the Son of God. The Bible tells us that God found favor with God and she was "blessed among women." Her faith is the face of an extraordinary mission is admirable, as is her unflinching devotion to Jesus. But Mary was blessed more for what God did than what she did, and there is a big difference between honor and worship. I might also quibble with the suggestion that Mary "made with God the Son of God," but that's less important than the appropriate status of Mary among us.
When a woman in one of the crowds around Jesus cried out, "Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed," Jesus responded, "On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it." [Luke 11:27-28] Certainly, Jesus meant no disrespect to Mary with this comment (nor did I with mine), but He redirected the focus of the woman's praise.
Yes, Mary deserves our honor, just as thousands of faithful saints preceeding us deserve our honor. But to worship her, to elevate her to the status of virtual goddess, dilutes the focus on the one and only author of our salvation.

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NEXT ISSUE: Free Will and Predestination (March 16)

© Richard M. Soule, 2004 Unlimited copy and distribution permission is hereby granted on the condition that this copyright notice is included.
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.