The Questor

The Wild Gospel..… ….. One last time

Luke must have been very keen to maintain the momentum of his account of Paul’s travels because he hardly pauses for breath between telling us about the end of the second journey and starting on the third. In fact he doesn’t even start a new chapter in his book of the Acts of the Apostles!

You will recall that at the end of his second missionary journey, Paul returned to Antioch which was his base. He stayed there for some time before launching out on his third journey. As before, he started off by visiting the churches he had established in modern day Turkey to encourage them. Then, as he had promised when he briefly visited at the end of his second journey, he went to Ephesus.

Ephesus was quite a place in those days. It was a large and highly sophisticated Roman colony which boasted the second largest library in the world after Alexandria, the Library of Celsus. Its other principal features were its harbour which made it a natural centre for trade; and the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Artemis was the ‘mother goddess’ and the temple was built in 550BC. The Ephesians regarded themselves as the guardians of this sacred place – to which people flocked from all over the known world. The other significant feature of Ephesus was the theatre which held 24000 people.

You can visit Ephesus today and see the extent of the place. There has been a huge amount of reconstruction and excavation and it is amazing to walk through the city and imagine Paul there – making tents in the market place, visiting the library and the theatre – which is an awesome place where concerts are still held and which has amazing acoustics.

Paul spent over two years in Ephesus, teaching in the synagogue and then holding daily discussions in the lecture hall of Tyrannus so that all the Jews and Greeks in the province of Asia heard the Message of Jesus. The Bible tells us that God performed extraordinary miracles through Paul and that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to those who were ill and they were cured.

Then Paul’s success in preaching the Message of Jesus began to cause concern to the craftsmen who made their living from selling silver replicas of Artemis. One of them named Demetrius called them all together and told them that not only was their trade at risk but also Artemis herself might be discredited. He got them worked up into a frenzy and soon the whole city was in uproar. They grabbed two of Paul’s travelling companions and marched them off to the theatre. Paul wanted to go there and confront the crowd, but his friends persuaded him not to.

There was general confusion in the theatre with everyone yelling different things and some not knowing why they were there! This went on for two hours and then the city clerk took control of proceedings. When the people had quietened down, he reminded them that they had proper legal procedures