EPHESUS: FIRST AND GREATEST

Revelation 2:1—7 (contd)

WHEN we know something of the history of Ephesus and learn something about its conditions at this time, it is easy to see why it comes first in the list of the seven churches.
Pergamum was the official capital of the province of Asia, but Ephesus was by far its greatest city. It claimed as its proud title ‘The first and the greatest metropolis of Asia’. A Roman writer called it Lumen Asiae, the Light of Asia. Let us look at the factors which gave it its pre-eminent greatness.
(1) In the time of John, Ephesus was the greatest harbour in Asia. All the roads of the Cayster Valley–the Cayster was the river on which it stood–converged upon it. But the roads came from further afield than that. It was at Ephesus that the road from the far-off Euphrates and Mesopotamia reached the Mediterranean, having come by way of Colosse and Laodicea. It was at Ephesus that the road from Galatia reached the sea, having come by way of Sardis. And from the south came the road from the rich Maeander Valley. Strabo, the ancient geographer, called Ephesus ‘the Market of Asia’–and it may well be that, in Revelation 18:12—13, John was setting down a description of the varied riches of the market place at Ephesus.
Ephesus was the gateway of Asia. One of its distinctions, laid down by statute, was that when the Roman proconsul came to take up office as governor of Asia, he must disembark at Ephesus and enter his province there. For all the travellers and the trade, from the Cayster and the Maeander Valleys, from Galatia, from the Euphrates and from Mesopotamia, Ephesus was the highway to Rome. In later times, when the Christians were brought from Asia to be flung to the lions in the arena in Rome, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, called Ephesus the Highway of the Martyrs.
Its position made Ephesus the wealthiest and the greatest city in all Asia–and, because it resembled so well John Bunyan’s picture in The Pilgrim’s Progress, it has been aptly called the Vanity Fair of the ancient world.
(2) Ephesus had certain important political distinctions. It was a free city. In the Roman Empire, certain cities were free cities; they had had that honour conferred upon them because of their services to the empire. A free city was within its own limits self-governing, and it was exempted from ever having Roman troops garrisoned there. It was an assize town. The Roman governors made periodic tours of their provinces; and, at certain specially chosen cities and towns, courts were held where the governor tried the most important cases. Further, each year, Ephesus held the most famous games in Asia, which attracted people from all over the province.
(3) Ephesus was the centre of the worship of Artemis or, as the Authorized Version calls her, Diana of the Ephesians. The Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was 425 feet long by 220 feet wide; it had 120 columns, each sixty feet high and the gift of a king; and thirty-six of them were richly gilded and inlaid. Ancient temples consisted mostly of colonnades with only the centre portion roofed over. The centre portion of the Temple of Artemis was roofed over with cypress wood. The image of Artemis was one of the most sacred images in the ancient world. It was by no means beautiful but a squat, black, many-breasted figure, so ancient that no one knew where it had come from. We have only to read Acts 19 to see how precious Artemis and her temple were to Ephesus. Ephesus also had famous temples to the godhead of the Roman emperors Claudius and Nero, and in future years it was to add temples to Hadrian and Severus. In Ephesus, the ancient religion was at its strongest.
(4) Ephesus was a notorious centre of superstition. It was famous for the Ephesian Letters, small objects and charms which were supposed to be infallible remedies for sickness, to bring children to those who were childless and to ensure success in any undertaking; and people came from all over the world to buy them.
(5) The population of Ephesus was very mixed. Its citizens were divided into six tribes. One consisted of those who were descendants of the original natives of the country; one consisted of those who were direct descendants of the original colonists from Athens; three consisted of other Greeks; and one, most probably, consisted of Jews. Besides being a centre of religion, the Temple of Artemis was also a centre of crime and immorality. The temple area was a recognized place offering asylum; criminals were safe if they could reach it. The temple possessed hundreds of priestesses who were sacred prostitutes. All this combined to make Ephesus a notoriously evil place. Heraclitus, one of the most famous of ancient philosophers, was known as ‘the weeping philosopher’. His explanation of his tears was that no one could live in Ephesus without weeping at its immorality.
Such was Ephesus; a more unpromising soil for the sowing of the seed of Christianity can scarcely be imagined; and yet it was there that Christianity had some of its greatest triumphs. R. C. Trench, the nineteenth-century Archbishop of Dublin, writes: ‘Nowhere did the word of God find a kindlier soil, strike root more deeply or bear fairer fruits of faith and love.’
Paul stayed longer in Ephesus than in any other city (Acts 20:31). It was with Ephesus that Timothy had a connection, so that he is called its first bishop (1 Timothy 1:3). It is in Ephesus that we find Aquila, Priscilla and Apollos (Acts 18:19, 18:24, 18:26). Surely Paul was closer to no one than to the Ephesian elders, as his farewell address so beautifully shows (Acts 20:17—38). Later on, John was the leading figure of Ephesus. Legend has it that he brought Mary the mother of Jesus to Ephesus and that she was buried there. When Ignatius of Antioch wrote to Ephesus, on his way to being martyred in Rome, he could write: ‘You were ever of one mind with the apostles in the power of Jesus Christ.’
There can be few places which better prove the conquering power of the Christian faith.
We may note one more thing. We have spoken of Ephesus as the greatest harbour of Asia. Today there is little left of Ephesus but ruins, and it is now at least six miles from the sea. The coast is now a harbourless line of sandy beach, unapproachable by a ship. What was once the Gulf of Ephesus and the harbour is a marsh dense with reeds. It was always a battle to keep the harbour of Ephesus open because of the silt which the Cayster brings down. The battle was lost, and Ephesus vanished from the scene.

Barclay, W. (2004). The Revelation of John (3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., Vol. 1, pp. 65—68). Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press.

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