Saint Timothy, First Bishop of Ephesus

"As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia..." (1 Timothy 1:3). With that sentence, the young man from Lystra received the hardest assignment of the apostolic age: shepherding the church of Asia's capital — a congregation of ex-magicians and ex-Artemis-pilgrims, in a city that had already rioted against his mentor. Two books of the New Testament are Paul's letters to him at this post.

Paul's son in the faith

Timothy was half Greek, half Jewish — raised on the Scriptures by his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois (2 Timothy 1:5), recruited young by Paul, and trusted absolutely. No co-worker appears more often in Paul's letters: he is co-sender of six of them, and Paul's praise is unmatched — "I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state" (Philippians 2:20). He shared Paul's Ephesus years too, serving him here before being sent ahead to Macedonia (Acts 19:22).

The letters to Ephesus's bishop

First and Second Timothy read differently once you stand in this city. Warnings against "fables and endless genealogies" and teachers craving novelty fit the speculative religious bazaar Ephesus was; counsel about wealth suits the city of bankers; and the famous charge to "keep that which is committed to thy trust" (1 Timothy 6:20) is spoken to a man guarding Paul's largest legacy. Second Timothy — Paul's last surviving letter, written awaiting execution — begs Timothy to come to Rome quickly, and remembers with warmth the Ephesian Onesiphorus, who "oft refreshed me... and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well" (2 Timothy 1:16–18).

The martyrdom tradition

The Church's tradition gives Timothy an Ephesian death worthy of his post. Serving as the city's bishop into old age, he is said to have confronted a wild pagan festival — the Katagogia, with its masked processions — and been beaten to death by the revelers around the year 97. His relics were later translated with great honor to Constantinople. The Orthodox and Catholic churches both venerate him as the first bishop of Ephesus; his successors would include the bishops addressed in Revelation 2 and the hosts of the great Council of 431.

Timothy's Ephesus today

Walk the marble street and you walk his parish rounds. The households of the Terrace Houses, the crowds by the theater, the synagogue community, the pilgrim traffic of the Artemis temple — this was Timothy's daily mission field for three decades. We like to read a paragraph of 1 Timothy on site; it turns a ruin into a diocese.