Articles on Biblical Ephesus

About three years, longer than anywhere else on his journeys. Acts 19 counts three months in the synagogue followed by two years of daily teaching in the hall of Tyrannus, and in his farewell to the Ephesian elders Paul speaks of three years among them (Acts 20:31). The stay falls roughly between AD 52 and 55.

Because more of the New Testament runs through it than through any city except Jerusalem and Antioch. Paul based his Asian mission here for three years and wrote 1 Corinthians from it. A letter of the canon carries the city's name. Both letters to Timothy were sent here. Revelation's first letter is addressed to its church. And the strongest early traditions place John's later life, his Gospel and Mary's final years in or beside the city.

It thrived for centuries — hosting the Council of 431 that declared Mary Theotokos — then declined with the city itself. The harbour silted up, the population drifted to the hill around St John's basilica and later to Selcuk, and earthquakes, malaria and Arab raids finished the work. By the fifteenth century the great city was empty. The church of Revelation 2:5, warned that its lampstand could be removed, was in the end removed with its city.

Early tradition says so, and it is old and consistent: Irenaeus, writing in the second century and claiming a line back to Polycarp who knew John, places the Evangelist at Ephesus into the reign of Trajan. Modern scholarship is divided about authorship, but the Ephesian connection itself is among the better-attested traditions of the early church — and his tomb has been venerated on Ayasuluk Hill since antiquity.

The craftsman who started the riot of Acts 19. He made silver shrines of Artemis, saw Paul's preaching threatening both the trade and the goddess, and gathered his fellow workers with an argument that mixed piety and profit. The resulting crowd filled the theater and chanted "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" for two hours before the town clerk dispersed them.