LANDS AND PLACES
For most of the early part of church history, the city of Ephesus played acrucial role in the development of the Christian church. It had a large Jewish community and synagogue where Paul and others engaged the Jews in theological debates about the true Messiah. Also, it had a sizeable cosmopolitan community with access to trade routes and shipping lanes that allowed Christian evangelists to spread their teachings throughout the region. And it had a supportive Christian community committed to advancing the gospel to the world.
Ephesus was located on the eastern coast of Anatolia in modern-day Turkey, approximately 40 miles (65 km) south of Izmir. In antiquity, it sat at the mouth of the Cayster River that formed the prosperous Ephesian harbor. Centuries of silting, however, have since filled in the harbor, and now the ancient ruins lie approximately five miles (8 km) from the present coastline.
The city gained its prosperity through its trade networks. Ships traveling along the Ionian coast frequently stopped at Ephesus to provision their vessels and worship at the Artimesium. They transported merchandise from all around the Mediterranean Sea, and their crews spent their money at the local brothels, temples, and businesses. Merchants also brought wares from inland along the Persian Royal Road that terminated at nearby Sardis. Darius the Great had rebuilt the Persian Royal Road that stretched 1677 miles (2699 km) from Sardis to Susa to Persepolis to provide easy access to the Mediterranean. It took nine days for couriers to cover the distance and 90 days to walk the same route. The road leads to the Persian heartland and then connected with the Silk Road, bringing riches from Asia to the Ionian coast. Guards were stationed at posts along the road that housed fresh horses for the couriers, food, water and a secure place to sleep. Such “postmen” carried messages along their route and protected travelers in enclosed fortresses called caravanserai. Later, the Romans improved large sections of the road by adding a fixed curb and a hard gravel foundation to make it less vulnerable to weather conditions.
Greek merchants, seeking to find an excellent harbor along the Ionian coast and open a doorway into the Anatolian interior, had established the city of Ephesus. Strabo credits the Athenian prince Androclus as the initial founder who created the Greek settlement near the base of Mt. Pion (PanayirDagi) between 1100–1000 BC. The original inhabitants, the Leleges and Carians, worshipped a fertility goddess named Cybele. The Greeks equated the goddess with their own Artemis, merging the two to form Artemis of the Ephesians.
By the mid-sixth century BC Croesus, the king of Lydia, had conquered Ephesus and moved the city closer to the Cayster River. He built a new temple for Artemis of the Ephesians called the Artemisium, but the Persians captured the city at 547 BC. When Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, his generals Lysimachus and Seleucus I assumed control of the city. They relocated it from the marshy swamp to higher ground, its present site. During the next two centuries, Ephesus changed hands between the Seleucids, the Ptolemies, and the king of Pergamum until the Romans finally seized it.
The city reached it speak during the Roman and Byzantine periods during which the population may have exceeded 200,000 people living within its walls. By the Christian era, the two main reasons for Ephesus’ economic success had vanished. The Artemisium Temple was abandoned, and the harbor had been completely silted up. Attempts at dredging the harbor proved unsuccessful, and Hadrian’s attempt to divert the river failed to return Ephesus to its former glory. The city fell into decline until the mid-fifteenth century AD when the Ottoman Turks completely abandoned the city and left it in ruins.
The NT mentions Ephesus 20 times as a place where the early Christian community settled and used as a base of operations for evangelizing western Anatolia. Paul often visited Ephesus and lived there for at least two years, evangelizing the nearby city-states of Asia Minor. It was also where the church commissioned Timothy, Tychicus, and Trophimus(1 Tim. 1:3; 2 Tim. 4:12; Acts 21:29) to take the gospel throughout the region and later where Paul ordainedTimothy as the bishop of Ephesus. During his imprisonment in Rome, he wrote a letter to the Ephesians, sharing the message of grace and a letter to Timothy, encouraging him to continue his ministry in Ephesus. It is also where some of the disciples of John the Baptist gathered and heard the gospel message for the first time before being baptized by the Spirit. One disciple, Apollos, continued his ministry in Achaia and Corinth (Acts 18:24–19:7).
Jesus addresses the church at Ephesus in the book of Revelation by first praising them for their faithfulness in the wake of persecution and false teachings and then chastising them for falling away from their “first love.” He also encourages the church to repent and return to the kind of deeds they had done when they first heard the gospel message and were filled with the Holy Spirit (Rev. 2:1-7). According to a later tradition, the apostle John moved to Ephesus with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and lived there until she died.
When the Romans arrested John, they sent him to Patmos, where he wrote the book of Revelation, including his message to the church at Ephesus. After his release from Patmos, he returned to Ephesus, where tradition says he wrote the Gospel of John and the Johannine letters. He lived a long life and eventually was buried there. Christians built the Basilica of St. John to commemorate his life and house his tomb.
Ephesus was also a place where Christians met with persecution. The temple of Artemis of the Ephesians had gained fame for its beauty, and local residents, mainly its craftsmen, took pride in their temple and their goddess. When Paul began to preach that gods made by human hands were not real, it incited a riot. A mob seized two of Paul’s companions and sought to kill them until a city official intervened. Other Christians stopped the apostle from helping his companions because they feared his death if he came to their aid (Acts 19:26-35). Later, on another journey, Paul chose to bypass Ephesus altogether in his haste to reach Jerusalem. Still unwelcome in the city, to have stopped there would have undoubtedly delayed his journey (Acts 20:16). Paul even mentions “fighting the wild beasts of Ephesus,” perhaps another reference to his persecution (1 Cor. 15:32). Tradition also holds that Timothy was martyred at Ephesus when he preached against idolatry.
Although most of the monuments at the Ephesus Archaeological Park date from the second century AD, the theater mentioned in Acts 19 remains. It probably held close to 25,000 people when the riot broke out. One can only imagine the sound of such a large crowd shouting with one voice, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.”
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Matthews,Greco-Roman Cities of Aegean Turkey: History, Archaeology, Architecture.