Welcome to the Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary.
And our topic today is we'll take your pick either Ephesus or Artemis or both and the relationship that they have to one another. We're going to talk about the background to one of the epistles in the New Testament, the book of Ephesus, and then what that means for the way in which passages in the New Testament get read.
And my guests today are Gary Hoag, who is a visiting professor at a variety of schools, and also does work with relation to finances and stewardship with global trust partners where he's CEO. And Sandra Glahn, who is a fellow colleague here at Dallas, who is professor of what? Media.
Media Arts and Worship. I never get it in the right order. I want to start with worship, and then go to media and arts.
That's not a bad priority.
But that's okay, anyway. And we're discussing really the background to a book that Sandra has written called Nobody's Mother. That title is intriguing because I have a mom and you have a mom, and Gary has a mom. So, that's interesting. Artemis of the Ephesians.
So, I'm going to dive in. So, the first question to ask always in a topic like this is because this involves stuff like papyri and things like that which people handle on an everyday basis. And so, how did nice people like you get into a gig like this? Gary, I'm going to start with you. How did you become interested in Ephesus and the things surrounding Ephesus? Because Ephesus is a long way away.
I appreciate the invitation to be on today. And to answer that question, I wanted to pursue my PhD on wealth in ancient Ephesus in the first layer to Timothy because I simply wanted to know what did Paul want Tim to understand about handling riches in God's house? And so, that's how I got connected to wanting to research the social and cultural world of Ephesus.
Okay. And so, you dove in and got started. And I'm assuming it took you to some of these resources that we're going to be talking about. Is that what happened?
It did. Here's how it went. In my first year, I was studying under Phil Towner. And if you can imagine, he released the NICNT commentary in 2006. And six weeks after he released it, he agreed to be my advisor. And so, in the first year he said, "I want you to read all the secondary literature on the passages where riches were in view." I came back at the end of that year and said, "Wow." I said, "The debate swirls around rare language."
So, he says to me, "Go to Yale in year two." He says, "Go to Yale, sit down with Abraham Malherbe and ask him how he unlocked the medical imagery of Paul." And so, how I got deep into Ephesus and the Ephesian inscriptions and Artemis was I spent two years looking at tons of primary material. And significant among that was Ephesian inscriptions.
Interesting. So, Phil Towner, who by the way, I did my doctoral studies at Aberdeen, and Phil I think overlapped my last year there. So, that name goes way, way back for me. So, Sandra, how did you get involved with Ephesus and Artemis?
In my PhD program, which was aesthetic studies, I had three prongs, history, art and philosophy. And my history element, I could choose anywhere in the world for a 200-year period. So, I chose 100 BC to 100 AD in Ephesus.
And that pulled you into all the same materials.
That pulled me into all the same materials, lots of overlap, yup.
Okay. And I take it you guys ended up being in contact with each other, is that right? Or, I mean, we were chatting about that earlier. But…
Not until our dissertations were done.
Actually, yeah. I'll let Gary tell it.
Yeah, I think what it was, was, it was one of those cases where our research was happening in parallel tracks, like simultaneously. So, we might've been looking at similar material. Whereas, what I was looking at was epigraphic. So, I looked at the inscriptions of Ephesus, and by the way, because the year I was researching, I'm holding up the copy. I have one of the only sets of the Inscription von Ephesus. Blumberg offers or asks to borrow one sometimes.
But I basically immersed myself in the inscriptions because Malherbe said, "Gary…" He said, "Don't search ancient material. Everybody searches it, but they make one fatal error. They think they're searching everything available." And so, I started with epigraphic, then I went to numismatic. And then, I went to literary and I found lots of stuff that wasn't necessarily in the Greek English lexicons. And so, for me, it was like spending two or three years reconstructing the world of Ephesus based on all this really cool evidence. And so, I found it absolutely fascinating.
Interesting. We'll come back to these categories in a second. So…
And one day he walks into my office and said, "We need to meet." We are apparently doing parallel research. And I had no idea.
She published an article, right?
Yeah. Bibliotheca Sacra, run a two-article series.
And so, what years are we talking about here?
We were trying to decide, I think 2014, '15-ish maybe because we were both… I don't know…
Interesting. So, let's go through the categories, inscriptions, epigraphy, numismatics. Okay, these are not words people use in their everyday speech, so let's help them with this. Inscriptions, I'll let you… We'll alternate.
So, let's start with epigraphic.
Epigraphic evidence, which is inscription evidence. Ephesus gives us second or third to maybe Rome and Athens. Ephesus gives us thousands of inscriptions.
And when I was going through them, I noticed that basically they helped me understand the social and cultural rules, the expectations of people, the different patterns of behavior. It's like they provided snapshots of what life was like, and they even included names of different characters. For example, Towner said to me when he agreed to be my advisor, he said, "I want you to do one thing. I want you to unmask the opponents of Paul."
And by the time I'm working through it, I said, "Oh, well, I can find all these characters that Paul says to watch out for. And 1 and 2 Timothy, I can show you where they appear in all the different inscriptions." And he says to me, "Wait, how did you do that?" And I said, "Only because I spent years studying these different lists and these different inscriptions that all of a sudden these characters came to life for me." And the reality is, in the inscription evidence, nobody's reading it, Darrell. Nobody's…
Yeah, that's right. They sit there.
Because they're not digitized, so no one's actually looking at them.
So, what's in these inscriptions? Or what kind of variety do you see in inscriptions when you read them? In other words, what are you reading?
Okay, I'll rattle off a few things, and then have Sandra comment.
One, you see benefaction inscriptions, so all praise be to Celsus, for out of his great goodness gave us this library for everybody to enjoy.
Okay, so benefactor is someone who, sorry, I'm going to be translating all the way through this.
So, you don't have income taxes…
… and you get a rich person to underwrite the gymnasium or the coliseum or the whatever…
But then, they get their name.
It's like a patron, right?
It is a patron with big lettering.
Yeah, and that's a big deal in ancient society. The role of the benefactor is a huge deal.
So, I'm sorry, I'll probably be doing this all the way through.
Sure, sure. We don't even realize it because we were in that world.
Second example would be honorific inscriptions. In other words, not necessarily for benefactors, but to honor certain people for their roles in society. Another one would be like tombstones where we would learn about their faith, or…
Theodora was a good wife.
… about the God they trusted in on the tombstones. Another would be like where they would post laws or rules. But my favorite of all is the largest inscription in Ephesus number 27, The Caius Vibius Salutaris inscription, which basically summarizes how the celebration to the annual birth, the annual celebration to the birth of the goddess, Artemis, should be handled with its lotteries, distributions and procession. It's the biggest inscription. And if you just read that one, it can unlock a number of things when you think about Ephesus, 1 Timothy and Ephesians.
So, let's talk about ranges. So, some of these obviously are very short. A tombstone is not going to have a lot to it. But the number 27, which you have now made sacred, how long is that text?
It's in Guy Rogers book, The Sacred Identity of Ephesos, he translates that in his appendix, which is about, say, 30 pages long.
Okay. So, it's very significant piece of work is the point.
Yeah. So, the honorifics are interesting. You're in an honor shame culture where honoring people is a big deal. So, when you say we're tapping into the cultural ethos of a community with these resources, and they help open up. They open up elements of the everyday life and the everyday language of people, that kind of thing. The expressions and colloquialisms that come with it, as well as describing a little bit of the society.
So, it really is a glimpse in, and it's different than digging up a site where you're just got a room or something or a house that you're looking at, something like that. And it's not a formal text, like a letter, at least in one sense, although probably can overlap. So…
No scribe is editing it or giving a comment.
You're not worried that something got removed or added because it's in stone or in a writing.
What it is… It's what it is.
Another source is just lists. If you go to the fish market and you have all the experts in fishery.
I get your grocery list, right?
And you get groceries, you get curses.
You get sometimes prayers. You'll get lots of everyday sorts of items. I think one of the benefits of the list is, we're able to look at who's got a name that looks like it came from Hittite background.
Or you're getting a sense of immigration. You're getting a sense of class sometimes. And so, and you'll get lots of forms of the name Artemis. So, parents are naming their sons and daughters after her. We see one of those actually in Titus where it's Artemas gift of Artemis is somebody Paul is planning to send. So, you get a sense of how much somebody is worshiped even by how many kids are named after them.
Interesting. So, okay, so that's the inscriptions and epigraphic evidence. Numismatics, what's numismatics?
So, I would describe it as numismatic evidence. And so, one of my favorites that is pictured in my published work, Wealth in Ancient Ephesus, is the coins show Artemis holding the Artemisium. And so, I think of that childhood song, "He's got the whole world in his hands." So, it looks like she's got the whole Artemisium in her hands. And so, her name means strong limb.
And so, it's like, she is watching out for the wealth of the ancient world because other ancient sources described the Artemisium as the Central Bank of Asia where the kings of their store, their wealth. And so, this was this place where Artemis is viewed as watching over it. So, on the coins she's depicted, they're holding it.
So, numistics are about the study of the coins and the inscriptions that are on them, the images that are on them, and that kind, the slogans that are on them. So, again, short texts on the one hand. But certainly, things, phrases that might've very well widely circulated because they were on the currency that people were using.
And Darrell, it's like if we pull a coin out of our pocket, and I think Sandra would agree, our coins in America say, "In God we trust." So, it gives you a sense of the history. And so, when you pull out this coin, it's basically their coin said, "In Artemis we trust." And when you look at the inscriptions, the inscriptions talk about celebrating the Eusebeia, the piety of the wealthy people toward Artemis. And so, they show us that she was the center of all life, whether it's in the inscriptions or on the coins.
So, you sometimes hear about papyri, where do they fit in this conversation? Is that a separate category? Or is that's kind of like the epigraphic evidence, but a slightly different form?
So, when Malherbe… And at least in my research, I'll let Sandra comment in on hers. When Malherbe and Towner directed me toward… They said, "Go toward literary evidence and look at anything that's primary material." So, I would search with TLG, and you can explain what TLG is in a minute. But I searched with TLG and looked for anything with an Ephesian provenance or a connection to Ephesus.
And so, that's when I discovered a story. And I can tell a little bit about Ephesiaca. But basically, for me, it was looking for any literary evidence that had any ancient connection to Ephesus.
And our best document is Acts 19.
So, you wonder, you read over in 1 Timothy 1, where Paul tells Timothy in verse 3, "I left you in Ephesus to teach certain people not to teach false doctrine." So, the first question is, what are some of the doctrines floating around? And we have a primary piece of evidence that says, well, magic and Artemis. And actually, the two are connected.
Okay. So, this sets the backdrop. So, this is where all this information is coming from and what you all were working with as you help us understand the environment of Ephesus. Obviously, we've said the word Artemis multiple times. So, she obviously… Let me say it this way, use a little flare here. She cast the shadow on Ephesus. Is that fair?
Yeah. I mean, she was… Again, when I spent time in the world of the inscriptions and the literary, she was a part of everyone's everyday life.
It's not just religion. There's not that category.
Right. Because religion and culture and economics and everything was connected.
So, and in fact, Acts 19 makes this clear that when there began to be a cultural reaction to the presence of the Christians…
And this was impacting the commerce of the silversmiths. The silversmiths union reacted and responded because they were being shut down from their means of living.
Right. And interestingly, we noticed there that it's male silver workers, which solves another question. Is this just a girl cult? Absolutely, not. This was in the same way that you don't just have women who are venerating Mary.
You don't have just women that are following Artemis. It's completely everybody.
Okay. So, let's talk about the casting of this shadow. First of all, let's talk… Ephesus, the Temple of Artemis was one of the wonders of the ancient world.
We'd probably argue the star wonder, right?
In Pausanias, just guide in Greece, he had the heptà theámata, or the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And it was actually number two of the seven. So, if you're listening, it was the ancient TripAdvisor. So, the ancient TripAdvisor said, "You have to see these seven locations." And the Artemisium was across between the Smithsonian and the Creation Museum because they learned they would go there to learn the origin of all life, and to see the artifacts of then the history of life.
Okay, and the temple… This is no small building that we're talking about, right?
This is a huge, huge place. Probably, when I say temple, probably the first building that might come to the mind of an average person would be the Parthenon and it happens…
Yeah, it's about four times that size.
Yeah, four times the Parthenon. I mean, my understanding is, think about it this way, think about an American football field from one end to the other. But probably, double or triple size in width, okay. So, length going one way and width going the other, and it's massive. And you look like you're ready to give us some statistics, so I won't get in your way.
No, no. I'm agreeing that I was trying to, for modern listeners, I was trying to picture because it's bigger than… And then, these football stadiums or even Olympic stadiums because of the width of it.
Yeah, exactly. That's the surprise. The length is almost end of an end zone to the other end of the end zone. But the width is, I think two and a half to three times the width of American… So, think about all that being a building, okay, not the enclosure around a football field that we get in a stadium, but the actual building itself with everything inside.
So, this is a massive spot. I sometimes preach on Ephesus, and I'll do a rendering of the temple, and I'll show it and talk about its size and people will be impressed. And then, I'll show a picture of what remains today.
Yeah, which is cobbled together from a bunch of stones that fell. It's one pillar.
Exactly. One pillar all by itself.
With a stork on top, I might add.
Someone is living on the top. Artemis, the sustenance of Artemis still lives in a very reduced form.
And the temple isn't just for worship. People are going to… Let's say, you're retiring from farm work, you're going to take your best implements and offer them to her. So, it can become a museum. It's the only place that's safe to leave money because it's guarded. They don't have banks. And so, you're going to get rich people coming from around the empire and depositing their funds there. So, it's sort of the bank, the temple, the everything, museum.
It's a kind of form of a public square, functioning public square, functioning public mall almost for…
The big thing for me about the precincts of the Artemisium was that in the story I discovered, which it's interesting, when I discovered it in 2008, it wasn't released in the famous Loeb Classical Library yet. And so, I go to my advisor, Towner, and I show him in the opening scene that women are wearing this prohibited hairstyle in 1 Timothy 2, that up until that point, scholars had said, "Well, we're not really sure what it refers to." And I said, "Look, all the girls are wearing it to show their piety to Goddess Artemis in the opening scene."
But then, as the story unfolds, this story called Ephesiaca, I discovered that every day the young gals would go and compete and not learn in silence with submission, but compete with competition and recitation to recite the Artemis myth, so that they could have one of four priestessly roles, so they could basically have these roles to serve the tens of thousands of tourists that came through and visited the Artemisium. And so, it was this place where you would've heard a lot of incantation going on in at least parts of the precincts every single day.
Okay. So, we've given a feel for the scope of this, that this drove… This not only drove the worship in the area, but it actually was a commercial center. It was a lot of attraction. Everyone interacted with the reality of what this meant for Ephesus. And Ephesus is no minor city in the ancient world. I mean, it's a crossroad city in many ways.
It's probably worth mentioning too, that it's considered the natal city for Artemis, that she is born there, that she has a twin. They assign him Delos even though they're twins. But that's her natal city. And I think in the same way that people in Bethlehem connect Jesus with that city and annual festivals, and that's where they get their identity and their income.
I'm not saying Artemis is anywhere close to Jesus. I'm just saying in terms of thinking about the connection of the city to a natal event, that's how they would've thought of Ephesus.
And what I would add to that is that when we read about things like endless genealogies and people connecting their genealogies linked to the nascent heresy or the local heresy, the people would process in this annual celebration of the birth of the goddess based on who could trace their Ionian roots back to the origin of the city.
And so, if you could trace your roots back to the origin of the city, you got to be in the front of the line.
So, it's like Daughters of the American Revolution, right?
That's it. That's it. That's it. If you could trace your roots, you got to carry the statues and you'd be in the front of the line.
Yeah, in an honor culture, exactly. So, I think we've painted the feel for how important and how almost omnipresent Artemis was in the city of Ephesus. So, now let's talk about what I think is the fun part of this, which is what did people say about Artemis in the past? And what did this research surface about Artemis as a result? So, let's talk first about the way Artemis has been portrayed and traditionally been portrayed that… And we'll just start there. So, I mean, she obviously is prominent, but who or what was Artemis in the view of a more traditional reading of who Artemis is?
So, one of the falsehoods I was trying to correct was that you'll read a lot of commentaries, a lot of folks saying she's a fertility goddess. And that comes from misunderstanding the statuary surrounding the Ephesian version.
Which if you go to Ephesus today, you can even see.
Yeah, and the one that dates back to the approximate time of the earliest Christians, you'll see a number of them that would've been in the temple. And so, the wrong thinking goes, those look like breasts. Breasts are connected with nurturing and fertility. Therefore, Artemis must be a fertility goddess.
Our best understanding now is those are closer to maybe Hittite magic, sacks that they're something you put on rather than a body part. And Artemis from antiquity and down to the time of the New Testament has consistently been a virgin goddess. She doesn't hate men. She is worshiped by men, but she's not interested in sex, love, marriage. She did love once, but he died. And so, that's the end of that.
But she's been very, very connected, especially in Ephesus with midwifery. The thought is that she provided a painless birth for her mother. Her arrows are thought to be euthanizing, but also pain-free birth.
And birth in an ancient world is a big deal.
The number one cause of death for women.
I think the only thing I would add to that, I would say amen to what Sandra just said. And I would add that in antiquity because in this whole Greek mindset, she helped her mother, Leto, deliver her twin brother Apollo. She became known as the Goddess of Childbearing. And so, one of the social and cultural pressures on all the gals was, you remain loyal to the goddess, otherwise you're going to die during childbearing.
So, if somebody died during childbearing, they'd be like, "Wow, she must not have been loyal to the goddess." So, don't you think that would make sure you would dot your i's and cross your T's and do whatever the social and religious pressure said you did. So, just like in the modern world, we have these religions that pressure people to say, "If you don't do all these things…" That's why, what I find is so beautiful is that the freedom that we see is you're going to be saved through childbearing if you continue in faith and modesty." That's part of what I connect in my doctoral research is that the pressure on these girls was, "Oh, I've got to remain loyal to the goddess." And the reality is, you can follow Jesus and not worry about what's going to happen during childbirth.
Okay. So, you've brought in one of the applications that comes out of this. So, I was going to save that for later, but we can do it now. And so, the point is, is that… I have to see if I'm coming a coin or phrase here. It's an anti-Artemarian text.
Yeah, it's a pro-Jesus text. How about that?
So, I think Paul is arguing that Jesus is better.
Anything that you look through from her, she's fake. She's God made with hands. That's not a real God. Jesus is better. And if you look at Acts 19, what's happening in the face of magic work is anything Paul touches, you take it to somebody and they're healed. And I think probably something similar is happening in his instruction to Timothy of their number one fear for a convert is, okay, this is where the rubber meets the road.
And he's saying, Jesus is better. Jesus is stronger.
Yeah, and where I would… You called it… Use your word again.
Yeah. By the way, Towner told me, "You can invent only one new word in your PhD." So, you have…
Okay, I'm done after 20 minutes. So, I just want you to know.
There's your bucket on for the next…
Here's what I would say to that. I would say, until I really dug into the ancient world and saw that in the ancient mindset that the Roma and Diana, and the Egyptian Isis and the Ephesian Artemis were this mystical, same lady, I didn't realize that in the legends, the reason it's an anti… I can't even say it because I haven't…
Okay, the reason it's that kind of a text is because in the legend of this goddess, she promoted that sin came into the world through man, and she promoted that the origin of all life was women. And so, that's why in 1 Timothy, it flips it and says, "These things aren't true." And so, it's literally deconstructing or demythologizing that which was part of everyday thinking in Ephesus saying, "You can't promote this any longer," because that's what everybody thought was common place.
So, he's correcting a wrong creation story, which…
Exactly, exactly. A wrong creation story and a wrong origin of sin story.
Interesting. So, let me go to another thing that you alluded to earlier, which is that this statue with which will be the
Yeah, I don't know what to quite happens.
This clothing that suggests magic, am I reading that right?
So, what's going on there?
There are a lot of questions about it. I would prefer to say what we've eliminated.
We've eliminated breasts. We've eliminated bull testicles, which is later a theory that tries to masculinize her sexual power. But it's pretty much undermines that. Some have thought that it was the opposite of a honeycomb because a bee is the symbol of the city of Ephesus.
And so, people have tried to see. And you could see bee imagery. Her legs look like a bee. But I think we have been slow to look to the Hittites and more look to European sources, and the Anatolian influences that are coming in from the Hittite influences. It seems that those are probably magic pouches and relating, connecting Artemis to magic. But I'm not going to die on that hill. I'm more concerned to say what she's not. She's not a fertility goddess.
But wouldn't the point be… Let me ask it this way, wouldn't the point be that Artemis is associated with certain kinds of powers?
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
And that's what's being celebrated.
And again, the passage that we're talking about, about childbirth is a counter to that.
And then, of course, it also explains one of the things that I like to point out about Ephesus, which is that because there were so many people who were having a change of heart and they were burning their magic books and setting them aside, why this is useless. We don't need to be a part of this anymore. And I like to make the observation that this change did not happen because the Ephesian city council met and passed a law…
… saying, "We're ruling out magic books."
Okay. It happened because of a change that Christ brought into the community and into the culture that caused them walking away from a certain activity that they said, "We aren't engaged in this anymore."
It didn't come from smashing statues of Artemis…
… and Paul calling people to… I mean, it was false. He didn't believe in it.
But he's also super savvy about how he talks about it.
Just to show how savvy we're talking about, now I'm going to jump to Mars Hill and to Athens because I actually think there's a huge lesson in this part of the passage…
… where Paul opens up on Mars Hill and he says, "I see that you're very religious in every respect." And this is coming from a person who in the end of Romans has some less than flattering things to say about idolatry. That's an understatement again.
Okay. All right. And someone who the passage in Acts itself begins by saying, he walked around and saw the idols and his spirit was provoked, okay. So, his blood pressure changed. That's my paraphrase of that. So, we know he's upset at what he's seeing, yet he walks into the audience who are connected to this style of life and he goes, "You know what? I see that you're pretty spiritual. Let's talk spiritual things."
Let me quote one of your poets.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Quotes poets down the road.
And because of my time in the semantic world of the inscriptions, I would say the reason he said that is one of the most common words you see celebrated in the honorific inscriptions is Eusebeia, which is piety.
So, he's going to walk in and say, "Wow, I see there's a lot of Eusebeia. There's a lot of piety. There's a lot of religiousness here." And so, he then uses that, at least Eusebeia…
That's the door he goes through.
He uses that as the doorway, yes, exactly.
Yeah. And so, the point I'd say, I see that you're very spiritual interested in spiritual things. Man, that's a topic I can talk about.
So, let's do it. And then, the next step, which is really interesting is, he takes where they are and says, "Do you really think this works in effect?" Because he says, "Do you think you can contain the creator God? The God has created everything all around this in a building?
Yeah, do you think you can represent him in something made with your own hands with classic Jewish argument about idolatry and the idols? But still, the point is, he's coming at them from where they are coming from, and that's his launch into the conversation. He's not just dumping his evangelistic agenda on them.
He's actually connecting to them before he goes there.
I see something similar with what he does in the introduction, the 1 Timothy where one of the myths about Artemis in Homer is that she asked to have many names, and she is called God and Lord and the female version of King. And usually, Paul just starts out with grace and peace to you. But he's like, he greets Timothy talking about the Savior, the Lord, the God…
It just pulls out all the…
And manifest is another one. And you see that in 1 Timothy. And so, it's like he inscribes her so-called majesty and redirects it to where it belongs. But never insulting her in the process.
No. Always in the way it's attached to Christ.
Just exalting Christ. Right.
Yeah, exactly, yeah. And you see a similar thing with the title Lord in the New Testament as a response to Caesar. And Caesar's claims of Lordship. So, this is a variety of environments, the same kind of move that you're seeing. So, what else should we be aware of in Ephesians as a result of some of the background?
I think we should hear from Gary about his work in the novel that was sent in the first century because it actually really helps us, I think, understand some of that.
Sure. So, let me go back to when I was digging into literary evidence. So, I go into this story and it's called Ephesiaca or published as Anthia and Habrocomes. Just think it's a story about a wealthy…
I saw it at the top of my New York Times bestseller list.
No, I think Shakespeare might have borrowed from it though. So…
So, here, let me, in plain terms, I'll call it's about a 50-page story.
It has five sections to it.
It's about a wealthy Ephesian couple. And in this story, it starts out, it's basically, we would call it Christmas Eve. It's like the Eve, the celebration of the birth of the goddess. Everybody's getting ready for the festivities. So, it's just take that Salutaris inscription, that's IvE 27, which is this really long inscription, which describes the annual celebration. So, if that inscription describes the celebration in a description, this is watching a movie of it happening.
So, they're all getting ready for the festivities. And when I discover in the opening scene, the women are all wearing this apparel that they're prohibited to wear in 1 Timothy 2…
And this hairstyle… And they're doing it to show their piety, the Goddess Artemis. I'm saying to myself, "Wow, this is…" And so, then as you go through the story, the story is this story of this couple, and let's just say their love for one another and their loyalty to the goddess.
Now, there's a lot of things that happen in the story, but what I'll tell you is, it simply adds to our knowledge. Now, when it was discovered, this is the interesting part of Ephesiaca. When it was discovered in 1726, it was dusted off. There's only one copy of it. It was found in a monastery. So, now it's in the library in Florence, Italy.
And so, when it was discovered, it was in 1726, it was thought to be Ephesus in the third century. That's why it was put on a shelf. And New Testament scholars never really looked at it because only Greek nerds, Greek classical scholars looked at it. In 1996, one of these beloved whatever, Greek nerd scholars dusted it off and said, "Hey…" James O'Sullivan. He said, "Hey, wait a minute, based on this, this, this, this, this all this archeological evidence that appeared between 1726 and 1996," he says, "This isn't Ephesus in the third century. This is Ephesus in 50 AD." So, now all of a sudden, if we take Luke's actually…
Yeah, we're right smack in the period, yeah.
That's right. So, Luke's, Acts, and the Apostles places, Paul and Ephesus 52 to 54. Now, we have a contemporary document to the ministry of Paul and Ephesus. So, wait a minute. So, now what we have is some of the rare terms and themes that appear in 1 Timothy, which have caused liberal scholars-
people to question Pauline authorship, for example…
… to say we don't even think Timothy wrote it to…
Wait a minute, if this brings to life some of these terms because they're used in this story.
Interesting. You keep holding up that Loeb Library, which volume are you holding up? I mean, first of all, I want to clear that that definitely is a used volume. So, if I bought it in a resale, I would probably talk about its character and that kind of thing with tabs no less. I hope it comes with the tabs when you resell it. But anyway…
Oh, I'll die with this one. This was volume 69.
The Loeb Classical Library. So…
So, in the front, what's the title on the front?
Title says, Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, and Xenophon of Ephesus, Anthia and Habrocomes.
There were go. That's what I was looking for.
So, it's a sweet little love story, but it has all kinds of stuff that tells us the actual practices of…
I don't know if I have that volume. I may have to go get it, but anyway.
You might have to. It's a good read.
So, listen, listen, there's one more thing. So, I'm defending… So, in the British system, you have to do, it's either two years, or excuse me, either four years or eight years part-time. I did the eight-year part-time program. So, I'm at the three-year mark, and I'm about to schedule my upgrade, right?
And this is released, and I'm like, "Oh, my goodness, what did Jeffrey Henderson say the dating of Ephesiaca was? So, I held my breath, and I open it up and they say… Basically, they say, "Wow, maybe Ephesiaca or this story, Anthia and Habrcomes, it has different titles. Maybe this story should be earlier after all." And so, they don't necessarily peg a date, but they allow for the earlier date.
So, the whispering about the date was going on when this volume was being produced? Is that what you're saying?
Literally, yes. So, it wasn't until this was released in 2009. And so, it was released literally right as I'm defending my upgrade and they're like, "Wow, you don't have to argue for an earlier date because they've already said it seems like it's the logical earlier date because of…"
Aren't you grateful when something like that appears while you're doing your work?
Here, I thought I was like, I thought I was bringing some new evidence to the table, and then boom, it's published. And I'm like, "Oh, my goodness. Please don't."
Yeah, exactly. So, we just had a dissertation nerd moment. I just want to…
We did. But it's helpful for Bible scholars. It's helpful for pastor just knowing that you have this fun story that is set in our city at the approximate time of the earliest Christians. It gives us all kinds of hints about what…
Sure. And this is actually one of the reasons why we did this particular Table Podcast is that, think of all the work that goes on in the background underneath all these passages in the Bible where you're asking, "What was going on in the period when?" And you just fill in that sentence, and you can think about all the various locations that you're dealing with in the New Testament, whether it be Rome or Corinth or Athens or Ephesus, whatever.
And people have spent years of their life working through this material to present it, so that you can get two or three sentences in a commentary that are accurate, okay?
All right. And that set the background. And that's what we're talking about. There's a layer of scholarship that usually goes unhidden. And mostly, unacknowledged other than in a footnote that is involved here. And yet, these little pieces add up and they help us to understand what's going on in the Bible.
They help us see Paul's approach to mythology. They help us understand that Paul wasn't picking on women and their hair. He was actually, making a statement about how we exercise our piety. Just all kinds of ramifications for what Gary's work in wealth and just seeing how much wealth is in the city of Ephesus and how that explains to some degree why so much of 1 Timothy focuses on wealth.
Yeah, if you go through to Ephesus today and you just tour some of the sites. When I went, it's been in 2003, I think 2004… When the moment they found out I was a professor, they said, "Oh, let's take you to a part of Ephesus that most people don't get to tour through." And they walked me through some of the houses of the wealthy part of the city, and that kind of thing with the walls that were still had remnants of the paint, the one that looked like…
They're open to the public now.
Exactly, yeah. It's now public. But at that time, it wasn't. They're basically telling me, "You're going through some of the richest part of what Ephesus was at that time," and that kind of thing. And you get a sense of how vast the city, of course, you walk into that big theater, which wasn't all there during Paul's time. But a lot of it was, and you go, "This is a major metropolitan area. This is no minor location in terms of what's going on," because it could see thousands and thousands of people. I love telling my students when I'm there or talk about it on a picture, I say, "This is holding as many people as the basketball arena in Dallas." So…
Picture that with people yelling.
Greatness of the city of Ephesians for two hours.
You'll be a little intimidating.
Yeah, that's the feel of it.
I'd love to hear more from Sandra on this, but one of the biggest things I discovered in spending basically a decade living in the world. And if you're listening, this is what I mean by spending a decade in this ancient world. For about a decade, I can't say that I knew anything about what was going on in modern day football or baseball. I could tell you…
I could tell you more about the names on the Via Sacra, and that's called The Sacred Way in Ephesus. Then, I knew on the professional sports teams that everybody was talking about over coffee, donut…
So, you knew what Yelp, Ephesus looked like in the first century, is that what you're saying?
Exactly. Exactly. So, but this is what I would love to hear more from Sandra. And that is, what I found was going into it. And this is the British system really forced me to set aside any agenda going into my research. And when I did my research, I went in knowing that many women didn't really like Paul. And what I realized was, for me, the author of 1 Timothy, he actually was really kind to women. And the ancient world is what was mean and harsh to women.
I think as well, completely.
Absolutely. He's much more of an advocate even for women than I knew before I had the eyes to read the text, knowing his context, for sure, for sure.
And I never dreamed that in… I never dreamed that in wanting to know what did Paul want Tim to understand about handling riches and spread in the house of God? What did he want him to propagate or to communicate? I never realized that riches would be in view and the adornment of women, and that I would discover this ancient story and that I would use it as a Rosetta Stone next to the Greek text of 1 Timothy.
And I would discover, oh, my goodness, Paul was like their best friend. He was saying, "Look, you just got to let go of the heresy. You got to let go of the goddess being a part of every aspect of your life, and you're going to be saved through childbearing. And you don't have anything to worry about, and quit promoting your myth." And it's like, "Wait a minute. He's so kind."
And so, you know what then I discovered? I mean, people who really appreciated the social and cultural richness of the word of God, loved my research. People who had an agenda about the role of women, they wouldn't even look at it. They wouldn't even talk about it. Whereas, women would say like, "Wow, you just set me free. I didn't like Paul before. Now, I like him."
Yup, yeah. No, it is an important set of themes. And, of course, the 1 Corinthians, sorry, 1 Timothy 6 passage on wealth and riches is probably one of the… I'm now have a little pun. One of the richest texts on riches in the New Testament in terms of how… I can't tell you how many times I've taken people to that text and talked about its contents.
Wouldn't you say, Gary, that we came out focusing more on 1 Timothy than we did on the book of Ephesians that just were parallels?
Yeah, I think, for me, I simply… In looking at the world of Ephesus, just looking at Ephesus, it just dawned on me. No wonder when I read Ephesians, every other verse, it seems like talks about the riches of the glory and the riches and riches because it was like the Wall Street of the ancient world. And so, I just tell people simply, if you read Ephesus, you need to think it's the Wall Street of the ancient world, where wealth and religion and everything was wrapped up in the goddess, and they wanted you to wrap it all up in Jesus instead.
And, of course, one of the things now, I am going to cross over to Ephesians is the emphasis that's put on exaltation of Jesus in the book of Ephesus, which is like the Gospel of Luke and its sequel Acts. I had to get Luke…
That was subtle. Subtle and capital B.
Right. So, but if you think…
I appreciate it. But that whole exaltation theme and above all rule and principalities and powers, that's what's resonating in that first half of the book.
I read one thing that talked about a guy bringing his inheritance to Artemis. And then, when I reread Ephesians 1 about our inheritance, it was like, "Well, he takes his inheritance to his God. Our God gives us an inheritance. And oh, by the way, that inheritance is God himself."
It's just the contrast of that is really moving.
Yeah. So, again, the reason we did this was to show that one, give a little glimpse about what it takes to do this kind of research and how one goes about it, and whatever it requires. Hold up that stack of books again that you had. I just want to…
For your audio only. It's 3 feet high.
I know you guys can't see it, but this is the 10, whatever, all the volumes of The Inscription von Ephesus.
And it's one-page at a time, right?
Honestly, what was providential for me was the language I studied in high school was German. And so, all the notes in…
Of course, they're German.
And so, I was like… But let's go back to this because if someone's listening and they want to do research, and this is what Sandra asked me before we started today like, what are you looking at? There is so much more to be drawn out of these inscriptions.
Oh, a lot of it hasn't been read yet.
Right, right. Nobody's reading it.
And I go back to a Malherbe's advice, don't search ancient material. Everybody searches it with an agenda. Just go read it. And if you read it, you'll enter into that world without an agenda, and you'll discover new things that you never dreamed.
You get context that way.
Whereas, when you search, you tend to go, "Oh, it's this line, and it's this line, and it's this line. And that…"
And you also miss or can miss the related terms that are on the same topic, that will open up even more. I mean, you can give your life to just wrestling with one of these themes if they're full enough and never roam from that space. I mean, it's that vast. And so, when you hear people who do deep scholarships say, "The more I do deep scholarship, the more I'm aware of what I don't know." So, you understand where that's coming from. So…
I want to share what Abraham Malherbe did with me though. If anyone's listening and they work with the next generation of scholar, this was really profound for me. So, Towner called Malherbe. And so, Malherbe said he would agree to meet with me. And this is what he said, "Bring your Greek New Testament, a tape recorder and a pen and pencil or a pen and paper."
And so, I get to his house and he agrees to spend three hours with me. And we read through 1 Timothy in Greek. This is all we did. We read through the whole text in Greek and every three verses, he would stop and wax eloquent on how words appeared in the moral and ethical philosophers. And so, if you look at my transcription of the meeting, it was like 17 pages. It was like all Abe and then me. And then, all Abe and then me.
But this is what was key. I said, about halfway through this time, I said, "How do you know all this?" And he said, "Well, for about 17 years, every day when I went into work, I would read a little bit from the ancient world. Just every day, I would be reading, reading material." And so, he entered that world.
So, when a word appeared in 1 Thessalonians or word appeared here, he was like, "Oh, I see it here, here, here, here, here" in all these places, many of which maybe weren't cataloged or whatever. And so, I would just encourage people when you enter into then that primary material and you read it, and then you go read just in one sitting, you read like 1 Timothy in Greek. All of a sudden, you go, "Wait a minute. I saw that word, that word, that word that…" And then, all these things that you didn't have an agenda to find, jump out to you.
Yup. You're reminding me of the conversations I used to have with Martin Hengel when I was in Germany. And he would have this vast room of library, and we would talk about something, we'd hit something. What he would do is, "Wait a second." He would get up and he'd pull a book off. And sometimes, he had it marked. And sometimes, he didn't. And he'd say, "That reminds me of this."
And the knowledge that he had of what he had around him was endless, immense. And almost always really, really insightful about what the connection was and how it helped illuminate a text, that kind of thing. So, yeah, we're talking about a level of work and scholarship here that just is trying to wrestle with understanding the culture and the history in which the Bible is immersed. And oftentimes, people think of the Bible as its own game, but it is actually interacting with a world around it that you understand much better. Once you understand the conversation, you understand the text much better.
Yeah. I want to thank y'all for taking the time to be with us, and to walk us through this kind of background to a particular text. I think it's been instructive to people. And we really do appreciate your taking the time. And you know what? Sandra, I didn't actually ask you to explain what you mean by nobody's mother. So, let me close with doing that.
Artemis not a fertility goddess.
She's a confirmed virgin.
And if people get nothing else from my book, I hope that they'll quit saying she's a fertility goddess because there are a whole lot of historians out there that roll their eyes at us when we say that.
So, she's nobody's mother.
We all of us have mothers, but apparently Artemis ain't one of them.
She's not that she's nobody's child.
She's somebody's child. She's Zeus's child.
But she's nobody's mother.
All right. She's nobody's progeny… And, oh, she has no progeny, but she's everybody's progeny.
No, no, She's the daughter of Zeus and Lato. A little dalliance there on the side of… So, we could do a book on Zeus called Everybody's Father, but that's a whole different… Whole different book.
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, there'll probably isn't enough. There probably has been a lot written about that.
Only people with a classical education would even understand what you're saying.
Yeah, what I'm talking about.
Yeah, I understand. We need to have a little 30 second bit of humor bit and say, "And now, study up in order so you can get this joke."
So, you can get the joke.
I appreciate it, Gary. Really do appreciate you taking the time with us.
It's good to talk with you, Gary. Thanks, Darrell.
… real joy. And we thank you for being a part of The Table. We'll hope you join us again soon. If you want to see one of the other episodes of The Table, we have almost 600 of them now, I've done over the last decade. It's voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and we hope you'll join us again soon.
