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"By this craft we have our wealth . . . . . this our craft is in danger . . . . , also that the
temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence destroyed,
whom all Asia and the world worshippeth."
So great was the magnificence of this temple that it was included in the seven wonders
of the world. The attitude of the Ephesians themselves towards it can be gauged from the
fact that an offer by Alexander to dedicate the spoils of a conquest to the building of the
temple, on condition that he should be permitted to inscribe his name on the front of the
building, was refused (Strabo).
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 Croesus.
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 Eph. 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 Eph. 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 disturbances" (Ant. 14: 10: 13).
In paragraph 17 of the same book we actually meet the word "fellow-citizens".