Sacred Ephesus

Paul’s stay in Ephesus lasted more than two years, three months in the synagogue and then two years in the hall of Tyrannus¹³, a stay he himself later remembered as three years²⁴. It ended in trouble. A silversmith named Demetrius stirred up his fellow craftsmen against Paul’s preaching, and the crowd poured into the theatre¹⁶. Paul stayed outside, held back by his disciples and by friendly Asiarchs, officials of the province²⁵. The building they packed was the Great Theatre, which still stands¹⁷.

Two places carry Paul’s name without evidence to match. The hilltop tower called “St Paul’s Prison” is part of the Hellenistic city wall²⁶, and nothing in Acts has Paul imprisoned in the city²⁷. The painting of Paul and Thecla in the Grotto of St Paul, a real cave church, shows that he was venerated here centuries later²⁸. Whether he also wrote Philippians or Philemon from an Ephesian prison is a scholarly argument that has never been settled²⁹.

The church of Ephesus was older than Paul’s long stay¹², and Eusebius passes on the tradition that Timothy became its first bishop³. When Revelation addresses it, the letter praises its endurance and its stand against false apostles and the Nicolaitans, then threatens to take away its lampstand unless it repents²⁰.

That church lived in a city with other loyalties. Ephesus prided itself on Artemis and her image¹⁸, and in AD 89/90 it became temple warden of the imperial cult³⁰, an honour it later held several times over³¹.

Christian tradition identifies John, son of Zebedee, with the Beloved Disciple, the author of the Fourth Gospel and John of Patmos, though many modern scholars regard some or all of them as different people³². At Ephesus his grave was honoured on Ayasuluk hill, and medieval pilgrims told of a healing dust that rose from it³³. This tomb, and no site connected with Mary, was what drew early Byzantine travellers: Egeria meant to visit in the 380s, and Willibald came in 724–726¹⁰.

Even the hill is named after him: Ayasuluk is a worn-down form of Hagios Theologos, the title given to John³⁴. Over the tomb Justinian raised the domed, cross-shaped Basilica of St John³⁵, with the grave in a crypt beneath the central dome³⁶. The church was already ruined by the end of the Middle Ages, shaken by an earthquake and laid waste by Timur’s troops in 1402³⁷.

On the mountain south of the ancient city stands Meryem Ana Evi, the House of the Virgin Mary, a small chapel³⁸. It owes its fame to a 19th-century book: the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a bedridden German nun, taken down by the poet Clemens Brentano³⁹. A French priest went looking with the book in 1881⁴⁰, and in 1891 Lazarist priests from Smyrna found the ruin again⁴¹.

No early church writer puts Mary in Ephesus; the older tradition, and the more widely followed, sets her death and burial in Jerusalem⁴². The Catholic Church encourages pilgrimage to the house but has made no ruling on whether she lived there⁴³. For Muslim visitors, who honour Maryam as the mother of Isa, it is a place of prayer too⁴⁴.

The Council of Ephesus, counted as the Third Ecumenical Council, was summoned by Emperor Theodosius II. Cyril of Alexandria opened it on 22 June 431 without waiting for John of Antioch and his bishops⁴⁵. Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, had preferred to call Mary Christotokos; the council removed him and affirmed her title Theotokos, "God-bearer"⁴⁶. About 160 bishops sat that first morning and 198 signed the deposition by evening; John of Antioch arrived five days later and held a rival meeting of about 43 bishops that deposed Cyril in turn⁴⁷. The quarrel was eased by the Formula of Reunion in 433, and the Church of the East still does not accept the council⁴⁸.

A second council met in August 449 under Dioscorus of Alexandria, restored Eutyches and deposed Flavian of Constantinople⁴⁹. Pope Leo I called it a latrocinium, a robbers’ synod, and two years later Chalcedon overturned its decisions. It is still rejected by Catholics, the Orthodox and most Protestants, and still accepted by the Oriental Orthodox churches⁵⁰.

The building traditionally named as the venue is the Church of Mary near the harbour, fitted into the long southern hall of the precinct of Zeus Olympios and Hadrian, itself about 263 m long⁵¹. Whether it was already a church dedicated to Mary in 431 is uncertain: excavation suggests the hall was converted for the council and could not have carried Mary’s name before about AD 500⁵². On its west side is an octagonal baptistery⁵³. When UNESCO inscribed Ephesus, it counted this church, the Basilica of St John and both councils among the city’s religious traditions⁵⁴.

In the Christian legend, young believers of Ephesus fleeing the persecution of Decius (249–251) took refuge in a cave, were sealed inside, and woke under Theodosius II (408–450) as a sign that the body will rise again⁵⁵. The oldest surviving telling is a Syriac poem by Jacob of Serugh, and in the 6th century Gregory of Tours carried the story to the Latin West⁵⁶. Accounts cannot even agree how long the sleep lasted: 373 years in Gregory, about 200 in the Turkish Ministry’s version⁵⁷.

The Qur’an tells a version in Sura 18, al-Kahf⁵⁸. It does not fix the number of sleepers and says that God knows best; Islamic tradition usually takes seven and names their dog Qitmir⁵⁹. The site at Ephesus is a late-antique cemetery and cave church on the eastern slope of Panayırdağ, dug by Austrian archaeologists in the late 1920s⁶⁰. They uncovered hundreds of 5th- and 6th-century burials, some with inscriptions calling on the Sleepers⁶¹. Ephesus is not the only claimant: the Ministry notes that Muslims mostly identify the cave with Tarsus or Afşin, and there are rival sites near Amman, in Damascus and in Nakhchivan⁶².

By the 190s the bishops of Ephesus were a family affair, and their bishop Polycrates claimed John as one of the city’s dead⁶³. Polycrates also led the Asian bishops in defending the Quartodeciman Easter, and Ephesus hosted a further council in 475⁶⁴. For Byzantine pilgrims the city meant three graves above all: John’s, the Seven Sleepers’ and Timothy’s memorial⁶⁵.

After Chalcedon the see answered to Constantinople, though it kept dozens of bishoprics under it into the 6th century⁶⁶. Arab raids began in the 650s⁶⁷, the Seljuks took Ephesus in 1090, and in 1439 its metropolitan, Mark of Ephesus, became the leading Orthodox voice against union at Florence⁶⁸.

Ayasuluk passed to the Aydınids in 1304, when Sasa Bey’s forces took the town⁶⁹. For a while St John’s basilica served as a mosque⁸, until İsa Bey had a new one built at the foot of the hill in 1375, the work of an architect from Damascus⁷. Marble from the abandoned Artemision had already gone into the basilica, and some of it went into the mosque as well⁷⁰.

Long before any church, Ephesus was the city of Artemis. The riot in Acts turned on her: Demetrius feared for his trade and for the goddess’s majesty⁷¹. Her temple became a quarry, and carved fragments of its Archaic phase have been recovered from the Basilica of St John⁷². UNESCO’s third criterion for the site traces this religious continuity from Cybele and Meter to Christianity⁵⁴, beginning at the Temple of Artemis.

The sacred sites are spread over several kilometres. The Great Theatre stands in the ancient city¹⁷ and the Church of Mary near its old harbour⁵¹; the Basilica of St John is on Ayasuluk hill with the İsa Bey Mosque below it⁸; and the House of the Virgin Mary is up on Bülbüldağ, a drive from the Upper Gate⁷³ and itself one of the four parts of the World Heritage property¹¹.

Opening times and entry charges change and are kept on one page, Ephesus tickets and opening hours; routes from İzmir, Selçuk and Kuşadası are on Getting to Ephesus, and the hill of Ayasuluk and its neighbours on Around Ephesus.