Ancient Ephesus and the Spread of Christianity
The Old and New Testaments of the
Bible are full of historical and spiritual events that seem to have taken place
in some surreal and distant land, like that of a children’s book. Often, the
stories are so inconceivable to modern Christians that they have lost their
literal sense, making it difficult to relate to them in a complete spiritual
sense. This certainly has been the case for myself. However, after walking the
streets of ancient Ephesus, I feel that I can personally relate to Paul’s
writings spiritually and understand more about Paul’s life and the people that
he influenced during his missionary journeys.
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| Venerating the tomb of the Apostle St. John |
Ancient
Ephesus holds such an important role in the spread of Christianity as well as a
lot of intriguing history that is not necessarily dogmatic, but spiritually
enlightening. For example, Mary’s house and the tomb of the Apostle John are
found here. Neither of these landmarks can be one hundred percent accurate and
must be taken with faith, but both landmarks indeed do have scriptural and
spiritual evidence for their credibility, and influence Christians today in
their spiritual life. I will touch more on this latter.
As for the ancient port town and
its influence in Christianity, this city was arguably the most important
location for the spread of Christianity through Asia Minor. What we can know
about Ephesus is that Paul lived in Ephesus for two years on his third
missionary journey and wrote his letters to the Thessalonians and Corinthians
from here.[1] We
know that the Ephesians worshiped the goddess of Artemis and Paul had to flea
Ephesus because the silversmiths saw a decline in the pagan worship and the
people began to turn against him.[2] We
also know that St. John lived in Ephesus while he wrote the Fourth Gospel
during the later part of his life and is traditionally buried in the former
Basilica of St. John which was built by the Emperor Justinian in the 6th
century.[3]
