An Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara follows the first Christian cities of the Aegean in two days. This route flies to Izmir, visits Ephesus and sleeps near it, then returns the next evening. For island trips, open Greece Tours on the homepage.
Day one covers the old churches of Izmir and the road to Selcuk. Day two covers Ephesus and the hill above it. Each card below opens a live GetYourGuide booking page.
Who were Priscilla, Aquila and Apollos on an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara?
Aquila and Priscilla were Jewish tentmakers, and Apollos was an eloquent Jew born in Alexandria. The Acts of the Apostles, chapter eighteen, places all three in Ephesus. That city features on an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara, with the night in Selcuk.
In that chapter, Aquila is a Jew of Pontus by birth. Pontus lies in Anatolia, on the southern shore of the Black Sea. The text adds that he had lately come from Italy with his wife Priscilla. Their road leads on to Ephesus, a stop on an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
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Tent making was the trade of Aquila and Priscilla, as the chapter says. Paul practised the same trade, so he lived and worked with them. The text gives that shared craft as the reason for the shared home. That makes the couple hosts, and the letters keep them in that role.
Paul sailed for Syria and took the couple with him. His ship stopped at Ephesus. There he left them behind, entered the synagogue and spoke with the Jews. The pair stay in Ephesus, a city seen on an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Apollos arrives next, after Paul has left the city. The text calls him an Alexandrian Jew and an eloquent man. He knew the Scriptures well and taught accurately about Jesus. Scholars have wondered whether his Alexandrian background shaped his preaching, in the manner of the Alexandrian philosopher Philo.
The text says Apollos knew only the baptism of John. Priscilla and Aquila heard him speak boldly in the synagogue. They took him aside and explained the way of God more fully. That private talk after a public speech is the scene recalled on an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Apollos wanted to pass over into Achaia. The believers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. He thus leaves the city visited on an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara. Corinth was the provincial capital of Achaia, and chapter nineteen of Acts places him there.
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Paul names Apollos in his first letter to the Corinthians. He says he planted while Apollos watered. Scholars lean towards Ephesus as the place of writing, during Paul’s extended stay. The letter says Paul urged Apollos to visit Corinth, but Apollos declined for the time.
The same letter ends with greetings from Aquila and Priscilla and the assembly in their house. A Catholic reference work says the couple kept a church in their house at Ephesus. Scripture names the pair six times, and Aquila comes first in only two. The reason for naming Priscilla first at times is not known.
Martin Luther and later scholars proposed Apollos as the author of the letter to the Hebrews. Another proposal names Priscilla, though that view is not widely held among scholars. These puzzles gather round the three names read on an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
What did the scrolls of the Hall of Tyrannus hold beside an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara?
Spells, recipes and word formulas filled magic scrolls of the Roman world. Acts names the Ephesian scrolls without quoting them. Papyri and writers supply the contents beside an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara, Ephesian letters being one formula.
Acts gives the hall a man’s name, but no street and no size. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls the building a schola, or lecture-hall, and Tyrannus a rhetorician. Dictionaries list three senses for the Greek schole: rest or leisure, learned conversation, and a place of lecture.
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Philosophers and sophists gave public talks in the gymnasia, and covered porticoes served as lecture space. Roman gymnasia gave rhetoricians and philosophers an exedra, a recess opening onto the peristyle, for debates. Curved high-backed stone benches ringed such a recess, a suitable place for conversation.
In the time of the writer Lucian, Ionia was the centre of rhetorical learning. The top schools stood in Ephesus and Smyrna. Set that remark beside an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara. Vedius Gymnasium, opened in the middle of the second century, joined Roman baths to a Greek gymnasium.
The Greek of Acts chapter nineteen calls the burned books biblous, the plural of biblos. That word names the inner bark of the papyrus plant. Papyrus sheets were joined side by side and rolled into a scroll. Lines ran along the fibres, parallel to the long edges.
The Greek Magical Papyri come from Egypt and run from the second century BC to the fifth century AD. Their pages hold spells, recipes, formulas and prayers, plus love charms and cures. Acts names sorcery scrolls beside an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara, Egypt giving the surviving examples.
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Hans Dieter Betz reads the papyri as a fraction of lost magical books. He says suppression drove magicians and their books underground. Pliny the Elder names the magician Osthanes as the first writer of magic, in the fifth century BC. Modern historians do not support Pliny’s claims.
The Ephesian letters include a widely known group of six words: askion, kataskion, lix, tetrax, damnameneus and aision. The formula is attested from the fifth or fourth century BC. Its name ties it to Ephesus beside an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara. Himera in Sicily gave a damaged inscription that seems to carry a version.
Clement of Alexandria held that the words drew their power from the sound, so a wrong pronunciation spoiled them. Androcydes read aski as darkness and kataski as brightness. Plutarch tells that Magi told people thought possessed to recite the letters. A comic poet, Anaxilas, put them on a character’s belt.
A lead tablet from Phalasarna carries a variant of the letters beside an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara. Lead tablets were thin sheets, scratched in tiny letters, then rolled, folded or pierced with nails. Amulets guarded against curses and the evil eye, and they can be shortened forms of papyrus formulas.
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Which officials appear in Ephesus for an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara?
Asiarchs, a town clerk and proconsuls appear at Ephesus in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter nineteen. Inscriptions confirm grammateus as the title of the city’s chief magistrate. Those offices set the Roman scene for an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara, Selcuk night included.
The Greek word grammateus, from gramma, means a writer, and professionally a scribe or secretary. A standard lexicon calls the clerk a public scribe or recorder whose office and influence differed from state to state. English Bibles give the word as town clerk or city clerk.
Ephesus ranked the clerk among the city’s senior civic officials. The post carried enough weight that the clerk’s name dated official documents found in the city. Acts names no holder, so only the title reaches readers for an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Ekklesia, the Greek word for an assembly, means literally a calling out. Lexicons define it as a called-out assembly of citizens. From Thucydides onward, Greek writers used it for the people’s meeting convened at the public place of council to deliberate. Acts uses the word for two kinds of gathering.
Two verses use ekklesia for a gathering formed by chance, and one uses it for the lawful assembly. Translations read lawful assembly or regular assembly. The theatre was that assembly’s meeting place, which sets the scene for an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
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Agoraios, the Greek behind courts, relates to the marketplace. Strong’s glosses it as forensic times, and a standard lexicon reads it as judicial days or assemblies. The Greek for proconsul, anthypatos, means instead of the highest officer. The chapter carries both words for an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Asia first took in the lands of Mysia, the Troad, Aeolis, Lydia, Ionia and Caria. Bithynia lay to its north, Lycia to its south and Galatia to its east. It ranked among the richest provinces of the Empire. Each city managed its own economy, taxes and law within its territory.
In a senatorial province such as Asia, the Senate named the governor, by lot or on its advice. In imperial provinces, the emperor appointed legates to govern in his name. The governor was the province’s chief judge. A quaestor was normally his second-in-command, and advisers called comites formed his staff.
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Asiarch was a prominent post in Asia, and its exact nature is not entirely clear. Reference works call the Asiarchs probably the annual representatives of the chief cities. Cities elected them, and the proconsul confirmed them, a useful fact for an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Asiarchs presided over the provincial assembly, the koinon. A federation of the province’s cities, the League of Asia, ran the imperial cult and festivals. The traditional view treats Asiarch and archiereus, the high priest of Asia, as one office. The building inscription on the Fountain of Trajan calls Tiberius Claudius Aristion an asiarch.
Which old churches of Izmir stand as buildings during an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara?
Izmir holds four old church buildings that differ in plan and stone. Saint Polycarp dates from the early seventeenth century, and the Anglican church of Saint John from the late nineteenth. Each can be compared during an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara, plan by plan.
The Church of St Polycarp went up in sixteen twenty-five and carries the name of the bishop of Smyrna. Its plan is a rectangular basilica, laid out from east to west. Its walls are stone and brick. That date makes it the oldest church studied during an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Southwest of the church rises a bell tower with an octagonal body. The earthquake of sixteen eighty-eight damaged the building, and repairs were completed between sixteen ninety and sixteen ninety-one. A restoration in seventeen seventy-five made it a basilica of three naves. Frescoes of the life of the patron saint were painted by the French architect Raymond Charles Pere.
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The Church of Saint Voukolos belongs to the later nineteenth century. Turkish texts spell the name Ayavukla or Aya Vukla. It has a single nave, a single apse and a single transept. Stone and brick form the walls. Compare the single nave with Saint Polycarp’s three naves during an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Franciscans built the church of Saint Mary, which opened in sixteen ninety-eight. Saint Mary adds a single-aisle plan to the comparison made during an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara. Konak holds the building, in the old Frankish neighbourhood. Its plan runs from east to west, with one main door and two side doors.
The north, south and east facades are quite plain in design. The main facade and the interior carry more ornament. The interior imitates antique architecture, with an iron ceiling and an elaborate apse. Windows, columns and materials show Renaissance and Baroque influences. The church has Corinthian columns.
The Anglican church of Saint John the Evangelist is neo-Gothic and dates from eighteen ninety-eight and eighteen ninety-nine. S. Watkins, an engineer of a British railway firm, drew the plans. The Anglican church closes the span of dates covered during an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara. Flying buttresses stand on the north side, and they are small.
Ephesus also features in Ephesus Sardis Biblical Tour From Izmir.
A rose window and a spire mark the west front. The floor rests on pieces of railway line placed vertically in the crypt. Charles Kempe made the east window in the early twentieth century. A vicarage was built next to the church in nineteen eleven.
The old churches of Izmir grew as a row of building campaigns. Saint Polycarp came first, and Saint Mary followed at the end of the seventeenth century. Saint Voukolos and the Anglican church belong to the later nineteenth century. These dates show the growth of Izmir’s church buildings during an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
What stands on Bulbul Hill near an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara?
Bulbul Hill is a limestone ridge about 350 metres high, and the wall of Lysimachus follows its crest. Nearly four kilometres long, the ridge rises near an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara. Strabo knew the ridge as Prion.
A narrow valley divides Panayir from Bulbul, a small mountain to the south. Writers spell its ancient name Preion, Preon or Prion. Strabo adds that the name Lepra Acte was given to Mount Prion, which lies above the city. A part of the city’s wall stands on that mountain, he says.
Geologists describe Bulbul and Panayir as horsts of limestone, or marble. A horst is a raised fault block, with lower ground on either side. Both stand on the southern flank of the Kucuk Menderes graben, a depressed block of the crust. Isolated smaller horsts stand alongside them near an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
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Lysimachus raised a massive defensive wall along the top of Bulbul toward the southeast. It then turns northeast across Panayir and round to the northern flank. An older Britannica entry says the line runs from the tower called the Prison of St Paul. It follows the crests of both hills near an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Tracheia, meaning rugged, was the name of the country alongside the mountain round Coressus, Strabo records. Estates behind Prion lay in what he calls opistholeprian territory, meaning the land behind Lepra. The same Britannica entry lists an Opistholeprian gymnasium near the Magnesian gate, a name built on the same word.
Strabo says the first settlers of Ephesus took in part of the country on the slopes of Coressus. Ephesus stood so until the time of Croesus, he writes. Later the people came down from the mountainside and lived round the temple. By tradition, colonists founded a settlement called Koressos in the middle of the eighth century BC.
John Turtle Wood explored the Odeum and the Great Theatre first, and found an inscription there. It states that processions reached the city from the temple by the Magnesian gate and returned by the Coressian gate. The text also showed Wood where to search for the Artemision, near an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
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Britannica’s older entry puts the city on the lower slopes of the hills Coressus and Prion. These rise out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the river Cayster. Lysimachus surrounded the city on the hills with a solid wall near an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.
Bulbul’s slope holds a cave called the Grotto of Paul. Its painting of Paul and his follower Thecla dates to the fifth or the sixth century. Both figures raise a right hand in a teaching gesture of equal authority. Undated graffiti invoking Paul mark the cave near an Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Ankara.