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EPHESUS

(Gk. Éphesos)

Colonnaded road at Ephesus, once lined with shops, leading from the harbor to the theater (Phoenix Data Systems, Neal and Joel Bierling)

An early Greek colony in southwestern Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor and a member of the 12-city Ionian league (Strabo Geog. 8.7.1). According to legend Ephesus was founded (ca. 900 b.c.e.) by Androclus, son of Codrus, king of Athens (Strabo 14.1.3; Pausanias Descr. Gr. 7.2.7). The city was originally located on the south side of the Cayster River, but through centuries of silting is now located 10 km. (6 mi.) inland. Strabo described Ephesus as the largest commercial center in Asia (14.1.24). The narrowing of the entrance to the harbor by Attalos III (ca. 159-138) apparently unwittingly facilitated the silting up of the harbor (Strabo 14.1.24). Most modern estimates of the population of Ephesus during the Roman Empire are based on the supposition that the city had ca. 40 thousand male citizens, with an estimated total population of ca. 200 to 225 thousand. This is based on erroneously reading the number 40 thousand in an inscription which actually has the figure 1040, so the figures of 200 to 225 thousand, while not impossibly large, are not based on actual evidence from antiquity.

Throughout its long and complex history, Ephesus was subject to a series of kingdoms and empires. Its history can be divided into three periods. (1) Foundation to 555. Little of Ephesus is known from its foundation ca. 900 until it was captured by Croesus, king of Lydia, ca. 555 (Herodotus Hist. 1.26). (2) Ephesus was captured by Cyrus of Persia ca. 546, and following the Greco-Persian wars became part of the Delian League (an Athenian maritime confederacy), but revolted against Athens in 412 and sided with Sparta during the rest of the Peloponnesian War (431-404). In 386, as a result of “the King’s Peace,” Ephesus was again under subjection to the Persians. When Ionia was liberated by Alexander in 334, Ephesus came under the control of a series of Hellenistic rulers. (3) Ephesus the Hellenistic and Roman city (ca. 290 b.c.e. to 1000 c.e.). Lysimachus controlled the region around Ephesus after the death of Alexander and pacified the region ca. 302 (Pausanias 1.9.7). He built a wall 10 km. (6 mi.) in circumference around the city ca. 287 (Strabo 14.1.21). In 197 Antiochus III of Syria conquered the southern coast of Asia Minor and made Ephesus his second capital. Ephesus was subject to Eumenes of Pergamum in 190, and was under the Pergamene rulers until 133, when Attalos III of Pergamum died and willed his empire to Rome. Thereafter it became the official residence of the governor of the Roman province of Asia. Ephesus was originally located on Mt. Pion, but was moved by the Lydian king Croesus to a level region east of Pion. The worship of Ephesian Artemis predates the Greek colonization of Ionia (Pausanias 7.2.6). Ephesian Artemis was originally an Anatolian goddess of hunting and fertility named Cybele in Phrygia and Ma in Cappadocia. The Ephesians later claimed that Apollo and Artemis had been born, not in Delos, but in Ephesus (Tacitus Ann. 3.60-63; cf. Strabo 14.1.20). The earliest temple to Artemis was destroyed by the Cimmerians ca. 660. This was rebuilt twice, followed by a major reconstruction begun by Croesus ca. 550 but unfinished until ca. 430. In 356 the earlier temple was destroyed by fire and rebuilt under the supervision of the Macedonian architect Deinocrates (Vitruvius 1.1.4). The resultant edifice was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (Pausanias 4.31.8; 7.5.4). The Artemision (Acts 19:23-41) was located NE of the city, and was famous as a place of sanctuary in the ancient world (Pausanias 7.2.8; Strabo 14.1.23; Josephus Ant. 15.89). Though it was destroyed by the Ostrogoths in 263 c.e., the great altar, located west of the temple precinct, has been excavated. In 29 b.c.e. the Romans in the province of Asia received permission from Octavian, soon to become the emperor Augustus, to dedicate a temple in Ephesus to Roma and Divus Julius jointly (Dio Cassius Hist. 51.20.6-7). During the Roman imperial period, cities honored by being chosen as sites for the erection of temples to patron deities (i.e., Artemis) and the imperial cult assumed the title “temple-keeper” (Acts 19:35), applied to cities in Roman Asia by the mid-1st century c.e. which had been granted the right to build temples in honor of important deities. The buildings excavated by archaeologists include a library built in honor of the Roman governor of Asia, C. Julius Celsus Polemeanus (106-107), a temple in honor of Hadrian (117-138), erected toward the beginning of his reign and containing an important series of friezes, a fountain in honor of Trajan, and traces of a temple in honor of Domitian and a temple of Serapis (2nd century), with massive facade of eight stone columns 14 m. (46 ft.) high and nearly 1.5 m. (5 ft.) in diameter. The theater (cf. Acts 19:23-41), which could accommodate ca. 24 thousand people, has also been excavated.

There is very little actual evidence for the presence of Judaism in Ephesus during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Alexander the Great had granted civil rights to the Jews of Ionia, and they actually received isonomia (i.e., their own laws and customs were respected equally with those of the Greeks) from Antiochus II (Josephus Ag. Ap. 1.22). The presence of a synagogue in Ephesus is mentioned in Acts 18:26; 19:8, though no archaeological remains and comparatively few Jewish inscriptions have been found. Josephus indicates that there was a large Jewish community in Ephesus by the mid-3rd century b.c.e. (Ant. 12.125-26, 166-68, 172-73).

Ephesus was an important center for early Christianity and is frequently mentioned in the NT. The Christian community there was probably founded by Paul (Irenaeus Adv. haer. 3.3.4). Paul wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus, where he had experienced the ready acceptance of the gospel (1 Cor. 16:8-9), and he also mentions the fact that he had “fought with beasts at Ephesus” (15:32). If taken literally, this could refer to the stadium which has been excavated. However, he may have spoken metaphorically, borrowing a phrase from Hellenistic moral philosophy’s description of a wise man’s struggle with hedonism. Paul’s first visit to Ephesus was comparatively brief (Acts 18:19-21). His second visit, however, lasted more than two years (Acts 19:1-41), though according to 20:31, he spent three years in Ephesus. While Acts 19 narrates several events in Ephesus, very little is actually revealed about the Christian community there. Acts 20:17-38 narrates a meeting at Miletus between Paul and the “elders” of the church at Ephesus, where he predicts that after he leaves (dies?) “savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them” (20:29-30). Since the deutero-Pauline letter Ephesians was probably not originally written to Ephesus, but is a circular letter of very general character, it reveals nothing about Christianity there during the late 1st century, when it was probably written. It is also striking that the message to the church at Ephesus in Rev. 2:1-7 shows no trace of Pauline influence.

Ignatius of Antioch wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus while on a forced march through the province of Asia on his way to Rome ca. 110. He mentions Onesimus as the bishop of Ephesus (Eph. 1:3; 6;2), whom some have tenuously linked with the runaway slave of the same name in Phlm. 10 (Col. 4:9), though the name was a relatively common slave name.

Ephesus is the traditional residence, in later life, of John the Apostle (Eusebius HE 3.1), who was thought to have lived into the reign of Trajan (98-117; Irenaeus Adv. haer. 3.3.4). According to tradition, he wrote his Gospel at Ephesus (HE 5.8.4), and was eventually buried there (3.39.5-6; 5.24.3). The Basilica of St. John was erected on the traditional site of his tomb during the reign of Justinian (527-565). Timothy is remembered as the first bishop of Ephesus (HE 3.4.5), a tradition probably based on 1 Tim. 1:3. Ephesus is also the site for Justin’s dialogue with Trypho the Jew (Dial. 2-8; Eusebius HE 4.18.6).

Bibliography. F. V. Filson, “Ephesus and the New Testament,” BA 8 (1945): 73-80, repr. in BAR 2, ed. D. N. Freedman and E. F. Campbell (Garden City, 1964), 343-52; S. J. Friesen, Twice Neokoros: Ephesus, Asia and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family (Leiden, 1993); G. H. R. Horsley, “The Inscriptions of Ephesos and the New Testament,” NovT 34 (1992): 105-68; D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor to the End of the Third Century After Christ, 2 vols. (1950, repr. New York, 1975); R. E. Oster, A Bibliography of Ancient Ephesus (Metuchen, 1987); R. Strelan, Paul, Artemis, and the Jews in Ephesus. BZNW 80 (Berlin, 1966); P. D. Warden and R. S. Bagnall, “The Forty Thousand Citizens of Ephesus,” Classical Philology 83 (1988): 220-23.

David E. Aune

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EPHESUS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)