Acts 19:23

THE RIOT AT EPHESUS

And about that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way. For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Diana, brought no little business unto the craftsmen; whom he gathered together, with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs ye know that by this business we have our wealth.

EPHESUS

Only a miserable village remains near the site of this once proud city of a third of a million. Its history reaches back more than a millennium B.C.; but it was the Ionians who built the first of five great temples dedicated to the ancient fertility goddess, Artemis, giving the name "Ionian" to the distinctive columns which adorned the temples. The history of Ephesus is, in fact, the history of those temples. The fourth temple burned the night Alexander the Great was born (October, 356 B,C.), and by 350 B.C. the fifth was under construction, requiring some 120 years to build. Alexander offered to finish it, with the provision that his name would adorn it; but the offer was declined on the basis that it would be improper to have the "names of two gods" on one temple!

The location of the fifth temple of Artemis was about a mile from Ephesus, north northeast of the city on a level plain, the city itself occupying a strategic location on the Cayster river, the central stream lying between the Hermus and the Maeander. In ancient times a seaport, Ephesus "retreated inland" some seven miles as the Cayster silted the harbor and extended the delta.

The temple's center of devotion was an image of Artemis which reportedly fell from heaven, the same being no doubt a meteorite, the many strange blobs upon which gave a rough appearance of a many-breasted female, encased from the waist downward in a coffin. Blaiklock wrote that "The sacred stone was lost somewhere in the ruins of Ephesus, or concealed in the hills by its last devotees, and probably still exists."[32]

The temple was a vast structure, four times the size of the Greek Parthenon of Pericles, having some 80,000 square feet.[33]

The great Ephesian temple of Artemis (loosely identified with Diana) was ranked by ancient writers as one of the seven wonders of the world, its importance deriving not merely from its architectural beauty and size, but from the status which the temple management enjoyed as "banker of the whole world." It has been said that the temple of Diana was the equivalent in ancient pagan society to the Bank of England in modern times. The principal industry of Ephesus was that of manufacturing and selling images.

Demetrius ... This man was a thorough pagan, named after one of the agricultural gods whose worship had been absorbed by the temple; he was the embodiment of selfishness and carnality. His first words in gathering the mob regarded "our wealth"; and he left no doubt of the basis of his opposition to Paul. Thus, the ancient pagan priests and their supporting craftsmen were one in heart with the high priestly concessionaires in the temple of God in Jerusalem.

[32] E. M. Blaiklock, Cities of the New Testament (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1965), p. 63.

[33] The Encyclopedia Britannica and the New Bible Dictionary provide the above information on Ephesus and the temple of Artemis.