Ephesus Now
Sean has been writing about Ephesians and how relevant it is to us now. I’d like to paint the cultural picture in which this book was written. It relates. We are living Ephesus now.
This book of the Bible is named after the city of Ephesus, a popular port city and leader in Asia. However, it was not written solely for the church there. Scholars, such as John Stott, note that this book does not have a personal greeting to individuals there (normally Paul gives a list of men and women to thank and greet), it is in a prayer-lyrical format that applies generally to all believers, and Colossians 4:16 mentions a circulating letter that had been read to the Laodiceans.[1] All this evidence helps us conclude that this was a general letter to all believers in the Asian region who were mostly Gentile (non-Jews) given their geography. So that means it applies to anyone anywhere who is reading it!
Ephesus now
Paul’s letters build on one another (like this blog)! His letter to the Colossians shows how Jesus is completely sufficient to save us as preeminent over all creation (Colossians 1:14, 19, 2:9). Ephesians says God is uniting all things to Christ (Ephesians 1:9,10). He is breaking down the hostility. Between women and men. Between ethnicities (Jew and non-Jew). Within our own bodies. He is uniting us to himself in all things, making a new creation out of the old. This is very radical news.
Divisions were as strong in the 1st Century as they are now. Paul is appealing to Gentiles who felt that the Jews had not welcomed them well—you have been welcomed by Jesus—he is the one that matters. He assures them that it was God’s plan all along to unite different ethnicities to himself (Ephesians 1:9, 3:6). He assures the powerless in the 1st Century Middle Eastern world – wives, children and slaves that they are all equal members of the church, which is Christ’s own body—loved and cherished by him (5:29). He is speaking to the newcomers, the powerless saying you are equally saved by grace through faith “and this is not your own doing, this is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:10). The wealthy Jewish Roman citizen and the child of a Gentile slave are all saved by grace and brought together in Jesus Christ. He is our only rallying point. He is our peace. Whatever you know of his grace, of his forgiveness, is what I need to hear.
Although this book was not written to Ephesus proper, it does bear its name. It is helpful to know what the culture was like. It is symbolic of ours now. Our Trinity School of Ministry professor, Dr. Erika Moore, always says, “Context is king!” Let’s look at the hostile world of Ephesus. In order to do that we have to look at the book of Acts and Timothy.
a depiction of the Temple of Artemis in its prime
The city of Ephesus housed the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world. The Middle Eastern Scholar, and author of Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, Dr. Ken Bailey, describes how the Greek goddess was worshipped[2]. The temple was enormous, towering over the city: 127 columns, 65 feet high, the building’s width was 221 feet by 425 feet long. It was controlled by a leadership of virgins and castrated men, called Magabizes. Under them were thousands of female priestess-slaves called heirodules. Under them were musicians, receptionists, cleaners, acrobats, flute players, etc. Our daughter loves Greek myths and Artemis is her favorite. Artemis is goddess of the hunt and chastity. She never marries. She hunts with a bow and arrow. Girl power! Like all Greek gods, she is capricious. She is jealous and has run-ins with lovers. Her idol is a topless woman with rows of breasts. There’s a fun-loving kid’s version and then the real thing. The Apostle Paul had a run-in with the goddess-worship economic backbone of Ephesus. Acts 19:23-29 tells the story of how the idol makers rioted and tried to kill him because his converts ceased to worship (and buy) idols of Artemis. Artemis was big business.
idol of Artemis
Perhaps Artemis was a release valve in the patriarchal society of first Century Middle East? Scholars like Philip Payne, Man and Woman One in Christ, have done the work to paint the picture of male-female relations in the first century. The Greeks loved Artemis’s girl-power. But they also embraced sexism, hierarchy, and paternalism. Plato wrote, “Do you know, then, of anything practiced by mankind in which the masculine sex does not surpass the female on all these points…?”[3] Aristotle’s democratic views included the votes of land-owning men (not women, not slaves) (see Aristotle’s Politics https://iep.utm.edu/aris-pol/). Jewish and Greek prayers alike expressed thanks that they were “not made a woman.”[4] Women were not allowed to read the Jewish Talmud. Demosthenes wrote this of Greek life: “We have courtesans for the sake of pleasure; we have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation; we have wives for the purpose of having children legitimately and of having a guardian for all our household affairs.”[5] In his Commentary on Galatians, William Barclay writes, “In Jewish law a woman was not a person, but a thing. She had no legal rights whatsoever; she was absolutely her husband’s possession to do with as he willed.”[6] He goes on to note, “Broadly speaking, a husband, under Jewish law, could divorce his wife for any cause; a wife could divorce her husband for no cause.”[7] In the midst of this culture that “kept women down” rose the temple of Artemis.
Artemis Temple worship included castrating men and enslaving young women as “priestesses”. Artemis’s temple dominated the skyline and the culture. This goddess-worship is a cross between Amazonian-warrior women who only work with castrated males and Hugh Hefner’s Playhouse of prostitution where women are sexually enslaved and objectified. The best of both worlds! In a patriarchal, misogynistic society, women got to have their revenge. Retribution. The minority finally gets to power and wants to make their abuser hurt. Castrate the males! Yet, at the same time, men got to have their mistresses (both male and female) and “practice their spirituality.” Objectify the women! Marry a woman, but stray from her with your idols and your pleasure partners. Is it so different now? If anything, we’ve gained more equality where women treat men as they have been treated. Damien Rice celebrates this “equality” in his song, “Woman like a Man” (warning! This is very explicit with tons of swear words, so I shouldn’t recommend it, but it’s also very repetitive so you get the gist simply from the title.) Women, like men, are equally broken and we have equal access to show it. For example, with screens at our fingertips, both sexes are addicted to pornography, fantasy, and escape. But in Paul’s day, there was no “equality” among the sexes. There was Artemis. She gave women a sense of power. It didn’t help. In the face of the abuse of power, what we need is not retribution, revenge, or rage. We need reconciliation – with Jesus first. Then others.
The culture in Ephesus had infiltrated the church. Paul spent much of his time in Ephesus (Acts 19), planting the church, and then supporting Timothy who served there as a young, anxious pastor (I, II Timothy). He likely wrote his first letter to the Corinthians from there.[8] We can look to the pastoral problems in the book of Timothy to get a feel for the cultural context in Ephesus. The issues there are our issues now too. In his letters to Timothy, Paul instructs him on how to deal with falsehood in the church. He encourages women, who were uneducated in the culture, to learn the way all good disciples do (I Timothy 2:11).[9] These passages have been interpreted differently by Christians about the roles of women (no surprise there! After all, Ephesians is about reconciling the divisions and hostility between “others” in the church!). Paul wants them to learn so that they can help stand against falsehood. In a very knotty passage that has kept scholars arguing for centuries, Paul goes on to write that women will be “saved by childbearing” or “by the birth of the child” (I Timothy 2:15). The scholars I’ve mentioned agree that this is NOT saying women are saved by bearing children. That would oppose Paul’s thesis in Ephesians that we have all been saved by grace through faith and united to Christ (Ephesians 1:9, 10, 2:8) Paul means: women are saved by the birth of THE child, Jesus.[10] However, a different layer of meaning to the word “save” could imply “prospering.” Ken Bailey suggests that the admonition to bear children is because wives were refusing to, not as a mutual choice with their husbands, but as a rebellion. In this case, the meaning of this passage would say, a woman prospers when she bears children (unlike the false teachers who tell you otherwise) as long as she continues in this faith (of the Gospel).[11] So, don’t use the power over your body to fight with your husband. Do not conform to Artemis’s prostitute-filled “chastity” and castrated men. Children are good for women (and men), not bad.
As we look at some of the specific pastoral problems in Ephesus through Paul’s letter to Timothy, we see that Ephesus had a culture of retribution. This sounds all too familiar. You hurt me, I hurt you back. Women were as good as slaves in that society and here comes Artemis castrating men and running the economy with her many-breasted idols and priestess slaves. Bailey’s cultural interpretation seems to accord with Paul’s next line that a woman ought not “lord her authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:12). These women were no shrinking violets. They were women who have been empowered by Artemis in the culture. Even more so, they believed the Gospel: Jesus gave his life for men and women, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free (Galatians 3:28). The Gospel levels all hierarchies. They were freed by it. But they brought their sinful nature to their new spiritual family. I don’t know about you, but I know a few who still act out of their wounds (Christians included). I am first in line. We know the Gospel but we want others to hurt like we did. I’m sure you’ve never done that. However, Paul knew a few in Ephesus. It’s what Christ’s body is made of: sinners who he ripped out of death into his life. This book was written to uncover that sinful impulse in all of us. Instead of payback, Jesus reconciles us with his own blood: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Ephesians 1:7). The fruit of his spirit in us makes us forgive, not get revenge. Instead of lording our power over the other, we give them the voice.
The cover of Time Magazine this week lists the wars we continue to fight, “The History Wars: critical race theory, 1619, Board of Education, 1776, controversial issues of public policy and social affairs, concerned parents, patriotism, slavery, patriotic education, civil rights, inclusion, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Each war is fought on behalf the abused, the “kept down,” the minority. Each one shows that the injustices in Ephesus continue today. Who is able to heal this trauma? Whose blood is able to end our wars? Who can bring us together? There is One. He healed in the church in Ephesus. He heals now.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we can ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Ephesians 3:20, 21
[1] John Stott, The Message of Ephesians, The Bible Speaks Today, (Nottingham, England: InterVarsity Press, 1979), p. 24); William Barclay, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, The Daily Bible Study Series (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976) p. 70.
[2] Kenneth Bailey, Women in the New Testament: A Middle Eastern Cultural View, Theology Matters: A Publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry, Vol. 6 No 1 (Jan/Feb 2000): pg. 7.
[3] Plato, Resp. 1:447 cited in Philip Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009, p.
32.
[4] Philip Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009, p. 40.
[5] Ibid, p. 170.
[6] William Barclay, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, The Daily Bible Study Series (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), p. 168.
[7] Ibid., p. 169.
[8] Ibid, p. 9.
[9] Grant LeMarquand’s essay addresses this passage well, Women in the Ordained Ministry, Trinity School for Ministry, July 28, 2021 ,<https://www.tsm.edu/wp-content/uploads/LeMarquand%20-%20Women%20and%20the%20Ordained%20Ministry_0.pdf>.
[10] Kenneth Bailey, Women in the New Testament: A Middle Eastern Cultural View, Theology Matters: A Publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry, Vol. 6 No 1 (Jan/Feb 2000): pg. 10.
[11] Kenneth Bailey, Women in the New Testament: A Middle Eastern Cultural View, Theology Matters: A Publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry, Vol. 6 No 1 (Jan/Feb 2000): pg. 10.
