Early Christian History of The City of Ephesus)

There's an ancient city in Turkey that, according to tradition, was the final resting place of Mary and John the Apostle. It was one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, a major center for trade and commerce, which also became one of the most important cities for early Christianity. According to this tradition, when Jesus was on the cross, he instructed John to take care of his mother for him. John would later leave the Holy Land and travel to this city. The tradition also suggests that John kept this promise and brought Mary with him to the city, where they each spent the rest of their lives and where he wrote the Gospel of John. St. Paul also lived in the city and contributed significantly to the growth of its early Christian community. As a result, it became one of the seven churches of Asia, that is, one of the seven largest Christian communities in the Roman province of Asia. And in 431 AD, the city hosted a council to settle once and for all a centuries-old theological dispute about the nature of Jesus. Its outcome still affects Christian doctrine today. This was the Council of Ephesus. Christianity was born in the midst of the Pax Romana, a 200-year period of relative peace and economic prosperity in the Roman Empire. This peace allowed for a healthy economy and the free flow of goods, people, and ideas across the Mediterranean, which was essentially a big Roman lake. So the success of the Roman Empire laid the groundwork that enabled Christianity to spread fairly quickly among the Romans. In my video on Caesarea, I explained how Christians leaving the Holy Land in the first century were traveling on that vast trade network, which brought them all over the Empire, including to Rome itself and to Ephesus. John the Apostle would have been one of those early Christians who hit the waves. It's not clear why he went to Ephesus, but it's possible that he fled persecution in Jerusalem or that he simply saw it as a good location to establish a new church. It was a very large Roman city after all, and large population centers always tend to pull more people towards them. So maybe he saw this large urban community as good potential for seeking new converts. It's also important to understand that John and Mary's presence in Ephesus is a tradition, not evidence-based history. There is some indirect literary evidence for John's presence, such as early church fathers mentioning that he was here, and there always was a strong association between John and Ephesus, but it is a tradition. John established the first Christian community in Ephesus and is believed to have written the Gospel of John here too, sometime between 90 and 100 AD. He's believed to have died in Ephesus, the only Apostle to die a natural death, unlike the 11 others who were executed violently by the Romans. Next to the modern town of Seljuq, just 400 meters from the old Temple of Artemis, is the Basilica of St. John. It's a Byzantine church built on a hill where he's believed to be buried. This is a reconstruction of what they think it looked like. This basilica was commissioned by Justinian, the most well-known Byzantine emperor, who also built the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. As you can tell, there are architectural similarities to the Hagia Sophia. The basilica was completed in 565 AD, and when it existed, it was considered one of the holiest churches of its time, attracting many pilgrims to John's tomb. His tomb is believed to be right here, under the altar, in the center of the cross shape that forms the basilica. So it was built around his tomb as a point of reference, which was already believed to be his burial site long before the basilica was built. There would have been a smaller church on that spot. In the site of Roman Ephesus, just three kilometers away, there is the Church of Mary. It was built earlier than St. John, in the early 400s, and later served as the location of the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. In this council, bishops and church leaders from all corners of the empire gathered to address a major theological dispute within Christianity. What is the nature of Christ? Meaning, what is the relationship between his divine and human nature? The two main players were Nestorius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, and Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, two major Christian cities. They represented different theological perspectives. Nestorius argued that Jesus had two separate natures, one divine and one human, Jesus the God and Jesus the man. He asserted that there is a distinction between these two natures. Cyril, on the other hand, argued that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human at the same time. The outcome of the council rejected Nestorius' position and affirmed Cyril's position that Jesus is both human and divine at the same time. The reason why this is relevant to this video is that the outcome of this council still holds today as the foundational pillar of Christian doctrine in many denominations. And all this was decided here, at the Church of Mary, in Ephesus. It's also important because this was one of the first major splits within Christianity into different branches. Even before the Great Schism of the 11th century, which separated Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Nestorius and his followers were excommunicated by the Council of Ephesus, and Nestorianism was deemed a heresy. It didn't die as a theology, however, and emerged into the Assyrian Church of the East, which historically had communities in the Middle East. The Assyrian Church still exists today and still follows Nestorianism as its central theology. Nestorius would be happy to know that his perspective never died out. Important as it was, the Church of Mary was never believed to be the burial site of Mary. Three kilometers south of the Roman city is the House of Mary, close to the peak of Mount Caressus, and lying about 400 meters above sea level. This is believed to be the house where she spent her last years, living in seclusion, but always under the watchful eye and protection of John, who was always nearby at Ephesus. Again, this is a tradition, so take it with a grain of salt. The house was only discovered in the 19th century, and much of what you see today is a reconstruction. There is also a competing tradition that states she never left Jerusalem at all, and was buried in a tomb in the Kedron Valley, just 200 meters from the old city. Needless to say, today the House of Mary near Ephesus is an important pilgrimage site for Catholics and Orthodox Christians alike. And even if you don't believe any of these traditions, you gotta admit that it's super interesting that Mary herself may have spent her last years in Ephesus. Another important character who spent time in Ephesus was St. Paul, who I seem to mention a lot in my videos, but this guy has seriously been everywhere. Here, we are dealing with historical information, not just tradition. On his second journey, he passed through the city, probably around 52 AD, but he stayed briefly. On his third journey, he came back to Ephesus, and lived here for almost three years, probably sometime between 54 and 57 AD. He most likely worked as a tentmaker, which was his craft, and continued what John started, by developing the Christian community even further. In theory, they would have been in Ephesus at the same time, but there is no mention anywhere that they met, so who knows. Paul made Ephesus the hub of his activities, preaching the gospel to the local Ephesians, and using it as a base to organize missionary activities into the hinterland. It's believed that he wrote his epistles to the Corinthians from Ephesus, that is, letters to the Christian community in Corinth, a city in Greece where he also lived for a year and a half. His ministry in Ephesus was crucial for the growth of the early Christian community here, but his work was not without its challenges. His stay in the city was notable because he rocked some boats as well. He first tried to preach to the local Jews in their synagogue. After all, Paul was Jewish, and he often went to the synagogues in the cities that he visited. But the Jews would have none of that, and resisted his teachings. He then moved his operations to the school of Tyrannus, probably an academy of some sort, where he would preach for the next two years. But the biggest resistance he got was from the devotees of the cult of Artemis, and the artisans who made money from crafting images and idols of the goddess. Ephesus had been the most important center for the worship of Artemis for a thousand years. Her worship was deeply ingrained in the city's culture and psyche, and old habits die hard. The temple of Artemis was the largest in the Mediterranean, and was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Even during Roman times, it was an important pilgrimage site that attracted pilgrims from all over the empire. And just like pilgrimage sites today are filled with religious tourism, and merchants whose livelihood depends on a constant influx of pilgrims, so them was the case. And the artisans who made the various images, statues, and trinkets associated with the goddess felt threatened by Paul's conspicuous preaching, and feared that the popularity of this new religion would threaten their businesses. A leader in the artisan guild named Demetrius gathered his colleagues in the great theater, in order to discuss what to do about Paul. Passions were running high, and this broke out into a riot that almost killed Paul, before he was whisked away by the authorities. This story illustrates the challenges of preaching Christianity in a city where the worship of a pagan deity was deeply ingrained in the culture and psyche, as well as in the local economy. This experience probably gave him good scare, or at the very least, he no longer felt welcome, because after the riot, he left Ephesus, and went to Macedonia, in northern Greece, continuing on his third journey, never to return to Ephesus again. But he kept in touch. In 62 AD, some five years later, while in Rome under house arrest as he was awaiting trial, he wrote his epistles to the Ephesians, letters to the Christians of Ephesus. In these letters, he provided them with spiritual mentorship and guidance, so he clearly kept his ties with the community, and continued to be a spiritual leader for them, even from afar, and five years later. This is quite considerable if you think about it. We're talking about the ancient world, where it would take weeks or months to make a trip or send a letter. It's not like logging into a Zoom call. Rome was his last stop. He stayed there, and a few years later, he was executed by the Emperor Nero during his persecution of Christians after the Great Fire of Rome. This persecution by Nero in 64 AD was the first of its kind enacted by the Roman government, and there would be many more to come. Paul is believed to have been beheaded, although this detail is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament. Paul had a strong impact on Ephesus, and it's thanks to him that the Christian community there grew to be one of the largest in the empire. Ephesus developed into one of the most important Christian cities in the early centuries. What's amazing is that we actually have an image of Paul at Ephesus. On the slope of Mount Caressus, overlooking the Roman city, is the cave of St. Paul. It's believed that he would come to this cave to pray and meditate. Today it's closed to the public, but inside is an artistic treasure. A fresco depicting St. Paul himself. It dates from the 5th century, so some 400 years after Paul. Therefore, we can't use it as an accurate representation of what Paul looked like. But it is a very rare depiction of Paul from the early Christian period, and one of the earliest ones at that, and it is a testament to the strong association that Paul has with Ephesus. The challenges that Paul faced on his own in the city would be experienced by the Christians of the empire at large, but much, much worse. The Roman Empire was generally tolerant to all forms of worship, so long as they paid homage to the Roman emperors and to the Roman gods, which the Christians refused to do. But as Christianity spread, and more and more Romans converted, it started to threaten the old pagan institutions. So the empire struck back, and Christianity would enter a dark chapter, and start to face many persecutions. And as the centuries passed, Ephesus would eventually decline as a city, and slowly get abandoned, which is the topic of my next video. If you want to get a better understanding of what Roman Ephesus was like when John and Paul were here, I highly recommend my video on the Roman city, which you can see by clicking on this video, and when the next video in the series will be ready, it'll appear below it. And please subscribe to my channel.