A description of the temple is found in Pliny, who says it was 425 feet in length, 220 feet broad, and supported

by a hundred or more columns, each of which had been contributed by a prince, one of them being the famous

Among the privileges of the Temple of Ephesus was the right of asylum it gave to all who came within

bow-shot. This right attracted to its precincts the scum of the earth, and the nature of the worship of the goddess

completed the general atmosphere of corruption.

`Ionia had been the corruptress of Greece (hence the proverb "Ionian effeminacy"), Ephesus was the corruptress

of Ionia - the favourite scene of her most voluptuous love-tales, the lighted theatre of her ostentatious sins'

(Farrar).

Our Lord's saying, `To him that hath shall be given' is most certainly true with regard to the student of Scripture.

The more we bring, for example, to the epistle to the Ephesians, the more we take away. When we realize

something of the immoral atmosphere in which many of the Ephesian saints had been born and bred, and which

perhaps still shadowed the lives of their relatives, we can the better understand Paul's faithful reference to sensual

sins in Ephesians 5:3-5, and the depths suggested by his reference to the shameful things `which are done of them in

secret' (Eph. 5:12).

In Ephesians 2 the apostle stresses the `foundation' of the spiritual temple, and its `chief corner-stone'. This,

too, would have an appeal to the Ephesians, for they would know that in order to avoid damage by earthquake, the

upper foundations of the Temple of Diana had been built at vast cost on artificial foundations of skin and charcoal

laid over the marsh.

Again, the apostle emphasizes the privilege that the Ephesians possessed in Christ, of being `fellow-citizens'.

The following extract from Josephus will give some idea of the privileges that were granted by the state to the Jews

living in Ephesus.

`I have at my tribunal set these Jews, who are citizens of Rome, and follow the Jewish religious rites, and yet

live at Ephesus, free from going into the army, on account of the superstition they are under. This was done

before the twelfth of the calends of October, when Lucius Lentelus and Caius Marcellus were consuls ... and my

will is, that you take care no one give them any disturbance' (Ant. xiv. x. 13).

In paragraph 17 of the same book x. we actually meet the word `fellow-citizens'.

The temple of Diana was also a treasury, in which a large portion of the wealth of Western Asia was stored up.

Guhl, a German writer, says that the Ephesian Temple was, in the ancient world, rather what the Bank of England is

today. The emphasis on `riches' of grace and glory in the epistle to the Ephesians gathers fuller interest in the light

of this fact.

During the month of May a great fair was held, and Ephesus would swarm with people from all parts of Asia.

Pliny, the Roman, writing half a century after the time of Paul's visit to Ephesus, speaks of the utter neglect into

which heathen institutions had fallen in the neighbouring province of Bithynia, as a direct consequence of Christian

teaching - and this in spite of the fact that the Christians were a persecuted sect.

Paul's teaching concerning the vanity of idolatry was apparently well known, for Demetrius says:

`Not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people,

saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands' (Acts 19:26).

When personal interest, superstition, and racial pride combine, little more is required, and the words of

Demetrius act like a spark on tow. In verse 29 we read:

`The whole city was filled with confusion: and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's

companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theatre' (Acts 19:29).