Acts 19 starts with Paul leaving Apollos in charge of the church in
Corinth while he continues his missionary journey. It ends with Paul’s
encounter with an angry mob.
And, as a recent article in Biblical Archaeological Review tells us, it’s a very reliable depiction of life in the Roman world.
Upon his arrival in Ephesus, Paul meets some believers whose
instruction was incomplete. He teaches them about the Holy Spirit and
baptizes them in the name of the Lord Jesus. But then things get
interesting.
Paul’s message offends both the Jewish and Gentile establishments in
what was either the second or third largest city in the Roman Empire.
The response of some people in the synagogue was the usual: obstinacy,
disbelief, and disparagement.
But for the Gentiles, the problem was literally closer to home: their
pocketbooks. What Acts calls “a serious disturbance” broke out when a
silversmith named Demetrius told his fellow silversmiths that Paul’s
monotheism was bad for business.
To understand why, it helps to understand what made Ephesus famous: a
shrine to Artemis, also known as “Diana,” the goddess associated with,
among other things, childbirth, children, virginity and the hunt.
Actually calling the temple to Artemis in Ephesus a “shrine” is a gross
understatement. The temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient
World. At 425 feet long by 200 feet wide, it was four times the size of
the Parthenon. The structure was held by 127 columns that were 60 feet
tall and 7 feet in diameter.
That meant anything—including Paul and his gospel of the risen
Jesus—calling into question the cult of Artemis not only threatened
their livelihood, it also threatened Ephesus’s stature within the
Empire.
So the good people of Ephesus rioted, yelling “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.”
As the article shows, the account of Paul’s adventures in Ephesus is
filled with details that demonstrate intimate knowledge about Ephesus
and its way of life. For instance, the reference to silversmiths. In
1984, a monument was discovered that corroborated Luke’s account of
their prominence in Ephesus. The inscription stated that the monument
had been paid for by the silversmiths and called their city the
“greatest metropolis of Asia, [and] the thrice-honored temple guardian
of the venerable Ephesians.”
In others words, theirs was a status quo worth rioting to preserve.
Note that both the inscription and Acts 19 uses the same Greek word, neokoros, “guardian,” in describing Ephesus’s relationship to the temple cult.
Then there’s the seemingly-obscure reference to “the great Artemis and
of her image that fell from the sky.” As Biblical Archaeological Review
tells readers, “The origin of Ephesian Artemis is traditionally
associated with a meteorite that was worshiped in early Ephesus.”
As the article concludes, “Luke knew what he was talking about in
recording the riot in the theater. His claim at the outset of the
two-part work (Luke and Acts) to have ‘investigated everything
accurately and reported them orderly’ is substantiated in Acts 19.”
As the brilliant comic actor Kenneth Mars said in Mel Brooks’ Young
Frankenstein, “A riot is an ugly thing.” But a riot that substantiates
the historicity of the Acts of the Apostles? Well, that’s a beautiful
thing.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
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