An Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul follows the written record of two early Christian cities 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.
How was the letter to the Ephesians copied across the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Scribes copied the letter by hand into papyrus codices, and Papyrus 46, of the early third century, holds it. Readers weigh that book across the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Cairo and Yale keeping further leaves.
Ephesians is a letter of Paul and the tenth book of the New Testament. It follows Galatians and comes before Philippians. Paul’s letters to churches run from the longest Greek text to the shortest. Galatians is the one anomaly, since it precedes the longer Ephesians. Ancient collections grouped letters by addressee or subject.
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The letter has two halves. The first runs through chapter three and ends with a doxology, a line of praise. The second opens in chapter four with an appeal to live a life worthy of a calling. A reader can follow that plan across the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Britannica counts 155 verses.
Koine Greek was the language of the original text. Chapter one has 23 verses. Verses three to fourteen can be punctuated as a single Greek sentence. The greeting follows Paul’s usual address format. Verse one names Paul as an apostle by the will of God. Verse two wishes the readers grace and peace.
Verse one addresses the saints who are in Ephesus. Those two words are missing from the earliest manuscripts of the letter. Papyrus 46 lacks them, and so do the first hands of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Scholars study that gap across the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Correctors added the words to Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus in later hands. Church writers noticed the gap as well. Basil said he knew of old manuscripts that lacked the words. Origen did not know them in his text. The Catholic Encyclopedia holds that they do not belong to the primitive text.
The Catholic Encyclopedia says the greater number of scholars call it circular. On that view it went to a group of churches in Asia Minor, not one congregation. Certain critics read the words who are as followed by a blank for each receiving church. Readers weigh that idea across the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Tychicus appears in the closing lines. The text sends him to the readers to encourage them. One theory has him fill the blank as he handed over each copy. The letter greets nobody by name and names no event in any one congregation. One scholarly note says the writer addresses a community unknown to him personally.
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Papyrus 46 is a codex of Paul’s letters with every page numbered. Ephesians follows the two Corinthian letters and comes before Galatians. Readers compare that codex across the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Palaeographers date its handwriting to the early third century. Of its 104 leaves, 86 survive, 56 in Dublin and 30 in Michigan.
Papyrus 49 is a leaf of the third century that Yale University Library keeps. It carries parts of chapters four and five. Papyrus 92 dates to the turn of the third and fourth centuries and holds parts of chapter one. It also holds verses of Second Thessalonians, and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo keeps it.
Kenyon argued that the scribes of Codex Vaticanus copied a model that set Hebrews between Galatians and Ephesians. Codex Sinaiticus lists Ephesians between Galatians and Philippians. Paul’s associates routed his letters, as readers learn across the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Scribes made duplicate copies for clients, and writers kept one copy for themselves.
What did Paul write from Ephesus within the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Corinth received First Corinthians from Ephesus, where chapter sixteen has Paul staying until Pentecost. Readers meet that letter within the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Stephanas, Chloe’s household and the churches of Asia appear in its pages.
Chapter sixteen holds the clearest clue to the place of writing. Paul tells the Corinthians that he will stay at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a wide opening for work has appeared. Barnes calls that verse proof of the setting. Calvin and the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary agree. This route reaches Ephesus on its second day.
Pentecost came fifty days after the Passover, as Barnes notes. Chapter five of the letter speaks of the Passover. Ellicott puts the writing at about Easter-time, and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown places it in the weeks before Pentecost. The letter sits within the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Passover and Pentecost frame the stay.
Scholars date the letter between the early and the late fifties of the first century. Britannica narrows that to the early or middle fifties, after Paul founded the church on a first visit. Two settings compete: a first brief stay at Ephesus, and the longer stay. The longer stay is the favoured setting.
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Older printed Bibles end the letter with a note that names Philippi. Gill and Clarke reply that the greeting comes from the churches of Asia, not those of Macedonia. Readers weigh the two places within the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Troas has one defender, though Ephesus remains the standard view.
Chloe is named in chapter one. Her household told Paul of quarrels in the Corinthian church. Nothing else is known of her, and her name was familiar to the Corinthians. Paul hears the report at Ephesus, a stop within the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Ellicott pictures messengers travelling between the two cities.
Stephanas is the other household named in the letter. In chapter one Paul recalls baptising Crispus, Gaius and the household of Stephanas, and cannot recall baptising anyone else. Chapter sixteen calls that household the first converts in Achaia. It had devoted itself to serving God’s people. Paul asks the Corinthians to respect such workers.
Stephanas came to Ephesus with Fortunatus and Achaicus, who supplied what Corinth lacked, as Paul writes. Shore, in Ellicott’s commentary, suggests that the three brought the Corinthians’ own letter. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown reads the same three as the bearers of the reply. Nobody knows whether the three came to Ephesus by land or by sea.
The Corinthians wrote to Paul with questions, and chapter seven opens his answers. The Greek phrase peri de, meaning concerning, marks the turns from chapter seven onward. Scholars treat it as a key to the plan. Those answers came from Ephesus, a city within the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
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Divisions open the letter, and marriage, food offered to idols, worship and spiritual gifts follow in turn. Chapter fifteen turns to the resurrection, and chapter sixteen turns to the collection for the believers in Jerusalem. Robertson and Plummer split the letter into two parts: chapters one to six, and chapters seven to sixteen.
Chapter five refers to an earlier letter that has not been preserved. Paul says he wrote the closing greeting in his own hand. The finished letter left Ephesus, a place within the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Sosthenes, named beside Paul in the first verse, is a co-sender of uncertain role.
Why do scholars link the Gospel of John with Ephesus through the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Irenaeus, writing in the late second century, says John published a Gospel while living at Ephesus. Scholars date the book to about the end of the first century. Its story runs through the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Rylands keeps the oldest known fragment.
Irenaeus set the claim down in the third book of Against Heresies. He names four writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. John, the Lord’s disciple who had leaned on him, published his Gospel while he stayed at Ephesus in Asia. Eusebius copied the passage into book five of his Church History.
In the late second century the bishop of Ephesus wrote to Victor, the bishop of Rome. Readers can follow that letter through the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Polycrates, its author, calls John a witness and a teacher. He adds that John, a priest, wore the priestly plate.
Eusebius passes on a tradition about why the fourth Gospel was written. Mark and Luke had published, the tradition holds, and John wrote last. The earlier books lacked an account of the deeds from the start of the ministry. John’s Gospel supplies that early period, while the other three tell the later events.
Clement of Alexandria gives a second account in the lost Hypotyposes, quoted by Eusebius. He writes that John saw the external facts made plain in the gospels. Pressed by his friends, John composed a spiritual Gospel. Both accounts can be weighed through the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Alexandria never questioned the authorship.
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The Muratorian fragment calls the fourth Gospel that of John, one of the disciples. It is a Latin list of books dated to the later second century. Theophilus of Antioch wrote To Autolycus after the death of Marcus Aurelius. He quotes the Gospel’s opening lines and names John as their writer.
Commentaries name Ephesus as the probable place of writing, though reference works call the place and date uncertain. That question follows travellers through the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Authorship stays open: the text names no writer. It points to an unnamed disciple whom Jesus loved, and scholars cannot agree who he was.
The gospel was written in Koine Greek. The American scholar Raymond Brown made a fourfold plan popular. It runs: a prologue, a Book of Signs, a Book of Glory and an epilogue. The prologue fills the first eighteen verses of chapter one. The epilogue is chapter twenty-one, and scholars debate whether the same writer added it.
The Book of Signs runs to the end of chapter twelve. It is named for seven signs; the text calls the water turned to wine the first. Readers meet that story through the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Cana is its setting. One scheme counts eight signs and ends with a catch of fish.
The oldest known fragment of the gospel is Rylands Papyrus 52, kept at the John Rylands University Library in Manchester. It is a codex leaf, 8.9 by 6.4 centimetres, with seven Greek lines on each side from chapter eighteen. Bernard Grenfell bought it in Egypt; scholars place it in the second century.
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Other copies reach readers through the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Bodmer Library, near Geneva, holds Papyrus 66, a near-complete codex of 156 pages. The Vatican Library holds Papyrus 75, where John begins on the page where Luke ends. Neither papyrus has the passage at chapter seven, verse fifty-three, which later copies move.
How long did Paul stay at Ephesus, as counted toward the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Scholars add the three months in the synagogue to the two years in the lecture hall. Paul himself speaks of three years. Those figures lead toward the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Gallio supplying the dated anchor.
The Acts of the Apostles sets the Ephesus years in order across chapters eighteen to twenty. The third journey runs from chapter eighteen, verse twenty-three, to chapter twenty-one, verse fourteen. Paul’s first call at Ephesus ends with a refusal to stay longer and a promise to return if God wills.
Paul next sails to Caesarea, goes up to Jerusalem and down to Antioch, then travels through Galatia and Phrygia. Chapter nineteen has him pass through the “upper coasts” and reach Ephesus. There the long stay begins, and scholars count its months toward the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Counting begins with the synagogue.
Chapter nineteen gives the first figure: Paul speaks in the synagogue for three months. Then he moves to the lecture hall and teaches there daily for two years. One commentary counts those two years from the end of the three months. Another adds the three months to the two for the whole residence.
The farewell speech holds the second figure. At Miletus Paul tells the elders of Ephesus he warned each of them “night and day” for three years. One commentary reads those years as the whole sojourn, with Ephesus as his headquarters. Scholars measure that span toward the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Chapter nineteen leaves room around its two figures. One commentary says the text covers three months and two years, followed by an undefined period. Verse twenty-two puts Paul in Asia “for a while”. Another commentary reaches two years and six to eight months. A third judges the stay nearer three years than two.
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Jewish reckoning explains the gap. One commentary says part of a year counted as a whole year. Another says such a span need only hold one whole year. Scholars read the figure as rounded and set it toward the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Exact months, one commentary adds, sound out of place in such an appeal.
Chapter nineteen, verse twenty-one, shows the next plan. Paul decides to pass through Macedonia and Achaia, go to Jerusalem and then see Rome. One commentary notes that Rome was already meant to follow Jerusalem. Dating ranges for the Ephesus stay run from the year fifty-two or fifty-three to the year fifty-five.
Paul leaves for Macedonia, reaches Greece and stays three months. The ship leaves Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and the party waits seven days at Troas. Scholars fit those weeks toward the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Jerusalem is the goal, so the ship sails past Ephesus.
The Gallio inscription is a set of nine fragments from a letter of the emperor Claudius to Delphi. It was found early in the twentieth century at the Temple of Apollo. The letter asks the city to invite well-born people from other cities as settlers. Its dated titles give scholars their fixed point.
The letter calls Gallio “my friend and proconsul”. Its titles name the twelfth tribunician power and the twenty-sixth acclamation as imperator. Gallio’s one-year term falls in the early fifties, and Paul’s eighteen months at Corinth overlap it. The Ephesus years run from that anchor toward the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Delphi marking the dates.
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Which early Christian signs are cut in stone amid the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Crosses, a wheel-shaped fish sign and Greek epitaphs are cut in the stone of Ephesus. Smyrna adds a grave text. Such marks lie amid the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Ichthys, Greek for fish, stands for Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.
Five Greek words give the fish sign its letters, one from each. Christian art and writing first show the sign in the second century. Roman catacomb monuments carry a fish from the first decades of that century. Clement of Alexandria urged readers to engrave a dove or a fish on their seals.
Ephesus lies amid the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Marble there carries a circular form of the sign, built from the letters of Ichthys. A fourth-century adaptation of the sign lays those letters over one another, like a wheel with eight spokes. Others read the round form as a loaf of bread.
Writers once read the fish as a secret sign. Scholars have largely set that idea aside, because no early Christian source ties the sign to persecution. The fish seems to rank first among early Christian symbols. A funerary slab from the early third century reads the Greek words for fish of the living.
A cross enters the record at Ephesus amid the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Demeas, an inscription tells, did away with an image of Artemis and set up the cross of priests. He calls the cross a symbol of truth. Once the city turned Christian, the name of Artemis appears erased from inscriptions.
The plain cross is scarce in early Christian stone, and scholars note its near absence from the earliest monuments. The staurogram, a tau and rho joined into one mark, is read as an earlier picture of the cross. From the third to the sixth century, a monogram cross is a regular part of epitaphs.
Chi-Rho joins the first two letters of the Greek word Christos into one monogram. Scribes used the mark long before the church, to flag a good passage in a margin. Ptolemy III marked a coin issue with it in the third century BC. By the mid-fourth century it appears on Christian sarcophagi and frescoes.
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Christians took the anchor as a sign of hope. The Letter to the Hebrews, in chapter six, first links hope to an anchor. It recurs in catacomb epitaphs of the second and third centuries. The oldest second-century examples stand beside words of peace. The commonest form has a ring beside the cross-bar.
Christian epitaphs at Ephesus carry crosses amid the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Timotheos, a priest, is named with his living children on a sarcophagus text, with a cross at each end. Another epitaph, for Neikotychos and his wife, opens with a greeting in the Lord. It sets a penalty for an unauthorised burial.
Late texts form a small part of the stone record amid the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Epigraphers tally 2,590 Greek and Latin inscriptions at Ephesus, and 210 were cut in late antiquity. A cross with a prayer to the archangel Michael, found at Ephesus, is probably late antique.
Smyrna adds a Christian text amid the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Hierios is named in a grave text from Isikkent, near Izmir, which opens with a cross. The Basilica in the agora of Smyrna holds graffiti on plaster, and a scholarly volume gives Christianity a section. Roger Bagnall calls the evidence for Christians among them tentative.
What does the Acts of John tell about Ephesus against the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Apocryphal and set aside by church writers, the Acts of John is a story text of the second century. Read against the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Ephesian chapters name a theatre, an inn and a temple.
Scholars date the Acts of John, an apocryphal text, to the later second century. One reference work gives about the year one hundred and eighty. Five apocryphal acts carry the names of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas and Paul. One reading puts the bulk of them in the mid-third century. The date stays a range.
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Photius, a ninth-century patriarch of Constantinople, named the author Leucius Charinus. Modern scholars doubt that Leucius helped compose the work, and the authors are unknown. Where it was written stays contested. Scholars put forward Ephesus or Asia Minor. Readers weigh such claims against the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Bonnet, an editor of the text, worked from a number of manuscripts. Modern translations are reconstructed from copies made long after the work first circulated. Two of those witnesses are codex Q, kept in Paris, from the eleventh century. Codex V, in the Vatican, dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century.
A gap in Bonnet’s text before chapter fifty-six is filled by codex Q, which holds a story of a partridge. A Vienna manuscript of the fourteenth century carries chapters eighty-seven to one hundred and five. Such gaps call for care when the text is set against the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Hunt and Grenfell edited one leaf of a papyrus codex that holds part of the Acts of John. It was found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford keeps it. Palaeography dates the leaf to the fourth century. It is one of the earliest witnesses to the work.
The surviving text opens with John on the road to Ephesus after a vision. Its actual beginning has been lost. The Ephesus stories begin at chapter eighteen. Latin versions seem to have been edited to remove unorthodox content. A traveller can set this opening against the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Section A, chapters eighteen to fifty-five and fifty-eight to eighty-six, holds the Ephesus stories. Its episodes carry titles, among them the Theatre, the Temple of Artemis and a Summons from Smyrna. The Theatre fills chapters thirty to thirty-six, and the temple chapters thirty-seven to forty-seven. Bedbugs, chapters fifty-eight to sixty-two, puts John and his companions at an inn overnight.
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Chapters eighty-seven to one hundred and five form Section B, a piece where John recalls earlier days with Jesus. Chapters ninety-four to ninety-six hold a hymn that describes a circle dance of Jesus and the disciples. The apostles answer the hymn with Amen. Readers set the hymn against the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Metastasis names Section C, chapters one hundred and six to one hundred and fifteen, which tells of John’s death. A separate set of stories, called the Acts of John in Rome, places John before the emperor Domitian. Scholars no longer give it the same origin as the Ephesus chapters of Section A.
Eusebius lists the Acts of Andrew and John among writings to cast aside as absurd and impious. In the late eighth century the Second Council of Nicaea rejected a version that held parts of Section B. A reader sets the text against the Izmir Ephesus biblical cities tour from Istanbul as story, not history.