Wrapping My Head Around What I'm Seeing

         On Thursday we spent the day in the ancient town of Ephesus. There in Ephesus, not only were there hundreds of other people looking at the same things we were, but there were also many reconstructions and excavations revealing a lot about what the town looked like in ancient times. We saw the Curates street, both the state and commercial agoras, a combined bouleuterion and odeion, the terrace houses, the Celsus Library, the Great Theater, St. Paul’s Grotto, and the Domitian Temple. One extraordinary thing was the Domitian Temple and what was underneath it. Like the Trajan Temple in Pergamum that we saw recently, where arches were holding the platform for which it was standing, the Domitian Temple, which pre-dates the Trajan Temple, also uses arches to support a platform of the temple. The construction feat in Pergamum might be more impressive, but the Domitian Temple had some surprises for us.

Cenkis, a retired archaeologist who worked on the Ephesus site for 40 years, points behind to the base of the Trajan temple (now gone) that would have stood on the top of where grass now grows.

          There isn’t much left of the Domitian Temple itself but underneath, there is an inscription museum. We had to pay a little extra to get into this museum but it was definitely worth it. One of the inscriptions inside the museum was from the 5th-6th century BC, one was from 4th century BC, and there were many other inscriptions just as old. Some inscriptions were broken, and some still held the complete message. Some inscriptions were execution notices and some were tombstones from their graves. One inscription in particular though caught the attention of a couple people including myself. On the very first line of the inscription, it had the letters AYTOKPATOPAKAIΣAPA. One thing that I’ve learned from Greek is that there is no punctuation so it is hard to decide when one word ends and the next word starts. For this inscription though, with the help of my scholarly classmates, I learned that AYTOKAPTO can be interpreted to an auto/self-ruler, implying lordship. KAIΣAP means Kaiser, which is referring to Caesar. So the first line of the inscription reads something like, Caesar is the only one who rules himself, or no one is above Caesar. Apparently it was not uncommon to begin inscriptions with this statement to show reference and respect the emperor.

Another example--Though it is missing the first two letters "KA," you can tell that the inscription reads KAIΣAP (Caesar) ΣEBAΣTOΣ (Sebastos, which is Greek for the Latin "Augustus," a word which we commonly render as "Almighty" in our Bibles) and AYTOKPATOP (Auto/self-ruler, a title given to the one with ultimate, imperial power--the emperor). Thus, the inscription may be translated as, "Almighty Ceasar, the Emperor."

       
          In John’s book of Revelation, he writes in what is called symbolic language. He writes in a way that in the 1st century AD, early Christians would understand the contexts in which John wrote. Due to John’s symbolism though, it is very difficult to interpret the book of Revelation without any historical criticism. John opens the book with these two verses (Revelations 1:4-5), “John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth…” This last statement is interesting to me. There is a chance that John could have been doing a play on words here with inscriptions like the one I saw! Romans are writing inscriptions saying that no one is above Caesar, that Caesar is lord of all, and here John comes back saying that Jesus Christ is the ruler of all the kings of the earth. Seeing these inscriptions and understanding that John was probably talking against the very thing I’m looking at is something that is hard to put into words. I have never imagined seeing the things here in Turkey that I am which makes it hard for me to fully grasp the significance of them.

          Seeing these ancient cities and these giant temples and fortresses gives me a whole new understanding of my God. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around God’s characteristics as is, but seeing these things makes it even more difficult. I have a hard time understanding that He is timeless, that He is sovereign, and with many other things, but being able to walk on the same road that Paul the apostle, John the apostle, and so many other historic evangelists whose writing still inspire helps me to understand God better. My understanding for God’s grace has changed because now I understand the sheer numbers of people, Christian or not, who lived between Paul the apostle and me. The God who gives me breath and the strength to live each day is the same God who shined a light on a lost man named Saul on a road to Damascus. The God who transformed a man’s live and transformed him into one of the most significant Christians of all time, is the same God who I have a relationship with. God’s love, which is already hard for me to fully grasp in my own life has been extending down from above for hundreds and thousands of years. This trip not only has given a lot of experience and knowledge of the society of Biblical times, but it has also helped me to understand my God in a much more complete way.

Drew Pagenkopf

Looking down the Curates in Ephesus down at the Celsius Library and where the Old Harbor once was.

Looking underneath the Domitian Temple at the Inscription Musuem.

Inscription of the word "Efes" which means Ephesus.