The Ephesian Gospel (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: rich alike with the learning of Jewish Hellenists, the wisdom of Greek philosophy, and the enthusiasm of Phrygian mystics, and they bore much fruit for the Church of all future time. At various periods of her history Ephesus had shown a tendency to raise human beings to divine rank. Plutarch says that Lysander, after his victory over Athens, was the first of the Greeks to receive divine honours. These honours came from the lonians. As Grote says:1 Altars were erected to him; pseans or hymns were composed in his honour; the Ephesians set up his statue in the temple of their goddess Artemis; while the Samians not only erected a statue to him at Olympia, but even altered the name of their great festival?the Hersea?to Lysandria. When Alexander the Great was in Asia, he offered to rebuild the temple of Artemis, then in ruins, if the Ephesians would allow him to inscribe on it his name as dedicator. The Ephesians refused; and the reason which they gave for refusal, if politic, was also characteristic of them: It is not right for one deity to dedicate a temple to another. The Seleucid kings of Syria and the Ptolemies of Egypt succeeded one anotherin facile deification by the degenerate lonians. In B.c. 47 Julius Caesar was deified by the Ephesians with the titles of Saviour and Benefactor.1 We see, then, that the people of Ephesus were, beyond all peoples, ready to bestow divine honours on generals and kings. 1 Part II. ch Ixv. i W. W. Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 144. EPHESUS AND ST PAUL The importance of Ephesus for Christianity begins with the visit of St Paul, about A.d. 50-55. Every event in the three years' stay of the Apostle which is recorded in Acts is characteristic. He found himself in the midst of a society in which religion, good and bad, was the...