Videos—3MJ: Ephesus
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Ephesus—Life
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Life: Ephesos Museum (Selçuk)
The Ephesus Museum at Selçuk is one of the best in this area of Turkey. Not long after our visit, the museum was closed for complete renovations until 2015.
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Life: Curetes Street
The main street of Ephesus is Curetes Street, which runs from the upper level of the city with its administrative and civic buildings to the lower level that connects to the theater and harbor.
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Life: Library of Celsus
The Library of Celsus is one of the most outstanding ruins to be seen in ancient Ephesus. The library was constructed only twenty years after Revelation was written. Thus, the building is a near contemporary of the church addressed in Rev 2.
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Life: Pollio Aqueduct
The remains of the Pollio Aqueduct are rarely seen by tour groups to Ephesus. The aqueduct is accessed only by hiking down a hillside to a valley and mountain stream below. This aqueduct was the main water supply for the city of Ephesus. Pollio is the name of the family that played a significant role in the life of the city as patrons and civic benefactors.
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Life: Roman Latrines
The Roman latrine system produced a degree of sanitation for urban residents not seen in Europe until the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.
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Life: Peristyle Homes
The Roman peristyle home was a home with an open courtyard surrounded by colonnaded porches on all four sides. The area often was planted with a garden or greenery. These broad areas made natural meeting spaces for early Christian worship, if a church was fortunate enough to have an owner of such a home as patron to the church. Lydia (Acts 16:15), Jason (Acts 17:5), Gaius (Rom 16:23), and Phoebe (Rom 16:1), along with others, were probably such patrons.
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Life: Terrace Homes
The terrace homes of Ephesus are a series of seven palatial homes cascading down the mountainside onto Curetes Street, varying in size from 1,000 to 6000 sqft and dating to the first century. Thus, the apostle Paul would have passed by these homes regularly during his three-year, 3MJ visit to Ephesus. Roman life is on grand display in these buildings. The luxurious homes represent the wealthiest Ephesians, including high-ranking officers, governors, and rich tradesmen. The homes were inhabited continuously until completely destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in AD 262. They were opened to public viewing only recently in the last fifteen years.
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Life: Ephesian Gladiators
A gladiator burial ground recently was discovered at Ephesus just beyond the stadium in 1993. The area is not accessible to tourists nor marked on site, because, once excavated, the site find was covered back over. The burial finds were extraordinary, preserving actual gladiator burial remains, which revealed a wealth of information previously unknown about actual gladiatorial life. For example, gladiator diet was high in wheat and barley as staple food (cf. the scientific report here).
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Life: Ephesos Museum (Selçuk)
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Ephesus—3MJ
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3MJ: Harbor Street
Harbor Street was one of the grand avenues of the ancient world, one of only three that was lighted at night. Down this street came the commercial traffic for the market of Ephesus at the other end of the street from the harbor. Across from the market was the grand theater of Ephesus. The sea has retreated several miles from the ancient harbor docks because of silting over the centuries.
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3MJ: Ephesian Market
The riot that drove Paul out of Ephesus and brought his Ephesian ministry to an abrupt end started in the market, which was directly across the street from the theater at the eastern end of Harbor Street. Goods flowing into the Ephesian harbor would be ported down Harbor Street to the market. Demetrius the silversmith, a leading silver tradesman, made his living from the silver figurines of the goddess Artemis sold in the market shops.
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3MJ: Artemis Worship
Artemis (Diana for the Romans), twin sister of Apollo by Zeus and Leto, was the goddess of wild animals, the hunt, vegetation, chastity, and childbirth, so, a favorite in rural areas. She often is pictured with bow and arrow. One of her greatest shrines in the ancient world was at Ephesus, where archeologists found this beautifully preserved statue of Artemis pictured here. The temple of Artemis in Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Silversmiths at Ephesus made figurines for sale in the market as a part of devotion to this goddess. Paul’s gospel preaching negatively impacted the sales of the figurines, and Demetrius, the leader of the silversmiths in Ephesus, stirred up a mob against Paul in the market that spilled over into the theater across the street.
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3MJ: Prytaneion and the Town Clerk
The Prytaneion was the town clerk’s office in the administrative center of the upper city’s state agora. When the silversmiths created a riot that spilled over into the theater, the town clerk barely was able to get control of the crowd fearing the wrath of the Romans for allowing public disturbance violating the Pax Romana. Interestingly, the town clerk did not respond immediately. Learn the practical reason why in the movie.
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3MJ: Ephesian Theater
The theater at Ephesus remains fairly well preserved and was crucially located at the intersection of the Marble Way coming from the business and governmental district of the upper city and Harbor Street coming from the port of the lower city. The famous incident of the riot of the silversmiths recorded in Acts 19 puts this particular theater front and center in the New Testament story.
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3MJ: Corinthian Correspondence
During Paul’s three-year stay at Ephesus a leadership crisis developed in the Corinthian church. Paul’s authority was being rejected in favor of those whom he sarcastically dubbed the “super-apostles” (2 Cor. 11:5). We know of three letters Paul wrote to Corinth from Ephesus during this time, one letter which we have, 1 Corinthians, and two Paul mentions but we do not have. The first video is focused on the sequence of these letters written from Ephesus. The second video relates to all the letters of Paul that have some relationship to the city of Corinth. The image to the left shows the beginning of 1 Corinthians (1:1–2) from the Greek manuscript Sinaiticus.
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3MJ: Harbor Street
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