Faith and mythology
St Paul in Ephesus
Key answer
Ephesus is where the Acts of the Apostles places one of Paul's longest stays. Acts 19 describes his teaching in the city, conflict with those who profited from the cult of Artemis, and a public disturbance that filled the theatre — the same theatre visitors stand in today.
Historical Evidence
What the texts record
Acts 19 places Paul at Ephesus for an extended period, teaching first in the synagogue and then in a lecture hall, and reports that his preaching cut into the trade in silver shrines connected with Artemis. The chapter ends with a crowd filling the theatre and a city official calming it.
Early Christian letters also connect Paul to Ephesus, and 1 Corinthians is generally understood to have been written from the city. The theatre, the agora and the streets named in that account are excavated and standing.
Historical Evidence
Why the conflict was economic as well as religious
Ephesus lived partly on the cult of Artemis: pilgrims, festivals, dedications and the manufacture of votive objects. A message that attacked image-worship threatened an industry as well as a belief, which is exactly how Acts frames the dispute.
That the sanctuary was central to Ephesian economic life is well supported independently of the New Testament, by the site itself and by the city's inscriptions and coinage.
Tradition
Traditions attached to the site
Later tradition attaches specific places to Paul, including a cave with painted inscriptions on the hillside outside the city. Such identifications are transmitted local tradition and should be described as that, not as archaeologically identified Pauline sites.
For Christian visitors, the value of standing in the theatre is that the setting of Acts 19 is real and public. What happened there is held as belief and read from a text; the stone is what survives.
Common questions
Acts describes an extended stay of around three years, longer than his recorded time in most cities, with teaching in the synagogue and then in a hall in the city.
Acts describes a crowd filling the city's theatre, and the Great Theatre of Ephesus is excavated and open to visitors. The building is real; what took place inside it is known from the text.