Ephesus, a Turkish Gem

“A Reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, Brothers and Sisters…..”

                   This was my knowledge of the Ephesians, never knowing when or where they were located. Along comes our World Cruise and one of our ports is that of the seaside town of Kusadasi in Turkey.

                   Now we’ve never heard of Kusadasi (have you?) or many other places located here except maybe Istanbul. The next step after looking at our Itinerary was to examine each Port Guide and see if any of the proposed Shore Excursions were something that would interest us. Half the time we just guess at something and if the excursions are filling up fast, we just pick something so that we are not just stuck on the ship!

                   The description read, “Ultimate Ephesus: Tour the old ruins, see the Terrace Houses, visit the site of the Basilica of St. John and his resting place, and visit the House of Mary. You will be dropped off at the Grand Bazaar for a Rug Factory Tour and shopping before your short walk back to your ship. A private lunch is included in this full day excursion.”

                   Hoo-boy! Lunch is included! Now we’re talkin’!

                   So off we went with Harold and Sherry’s assurances that we would like what we were going to see. They’ve been here before, so they did something different. Luckily, our Buddies for the day, the illustrious “Red 23” Group, was somewhat smaller in number and only filled up half of the bus, and here’s the best part….no Mobility-Challenged Tourons! Our group hopped, skipped, and ran like a slew of kindergarteners when our Tour Leader, Oz, let us free.

                   Almost. We needed to mind the hopping, skipping, and running as practically all of our tour was on the very uneven stone slab constructed old Roman Ruins.

                   The first stop was at the ruins of St. John’s Basilica. This church was built by Justinian I in the 6^th century AD on the former site of a chapel long dedicated to St. John. St. John, who Jesus had entrusted the safety of his Mother to, traveled to the Ephesus region shortly after Jesus’s time in Jerusalem. It was here that he was imprisoned, set free, and finally assumed into Heaven, much like the Virgin Mary was. This is backed up by the fact that no church has laid claim to any relic of St. John. All the other Apostles have left some bodily relic behind to be venerated. Anyway, this is the place that St. John was last seen before a blinding light came and he was no longer there.

                             You make the call!

                             This is some of the subject matter that Aladdin spoke about. Being a professional archeologist it is impossible, on that level, to prove that many of these beliefs and teachings are what and where they purportedly happened. His answers to this dilemma make sense.

                             “Tradition” especially the kinds that are handed down from generation to generation locally are the foundations of all of these mystical stories and parables. In a way, you need to ask yourself, “Why would these stories change over the years? Why would someone say that this spot here, is the site of XXXX, when everyone else at that time knows that it’s really there. Mix in a few known facts like, generally known other corroborative locations that can help give credence to the argument and you come up with a possible/probable story.

                             There’s an old saying that everyone learns in Archeology 101, that states, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

                             We can debate this for eons, but this is not the forum for that! This argument is for illustrative purposes only because many of the sites in this area, especially when connected with the Bible, rely on this mix of tradition and Archeology to make a case for a particular setting.

                   Such is the issue with our next stop, The House of the Virgin Mary. Tradition has it that Mary went with St. John to Ephesus where she lived out the rest of her mortal live. The trail kind of ends there until the middle of the 1800’s when a German Nun, Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich (now Blessed) had several visions. She was a known mystic in her homeland and had never visited the Ephesus region. Her visions were recorded and later referred to by a Franciscan Friar who undertook a journey to Ephesus to try and locate the house using Emmerich’s descriptions of the area. He was successful on a certain level, but his efforts fell by the wayside until ten years hence, another attempt was made by a nun and two priests, using the same narratives as guides. They re-discovered the old stone foundation that the first Franciscan did and upon further local examination, they learned that this place was called Panaya Kapulu or The Doorway to the Virgin.

 Here’s the kicker, this nomenclature was bestowed on this site not by the folks of the day, but by the ancestors of the little local town, whose inhabitants had lived there since the days of the early Christians of Ephesus.

          Why would they call it that?

          What would drive them to do that?

          Is all of this possible?….. definitely!

          Is all of it probable?…. Maybe!

          Again, when the puzzle pieces fall into place by accident, you start to wonder  😊

          Once more, you make the call.

          After our visit to Mary’s House, we ventured down the hill to the still-evolving archeological site of Ephesus. This city, started back in the day by Greeks and then modernized by the Romans is quite the sight!

                   Let’s pretend that we are visitors from a foreign land, and we’ve come to Ephesus to do some business. Better yet, let’s pretend that we are the businessmen in Ephesus wanting to show off for these caller’s from afar.

                   What would we have constructed?

What would we like to make sure that every person that came to Ephesus knew beyond a shadow of a doubt?

We want them to think and know how successful we are!

          So, we need to build an incredibly grand city, clad it, not in limestone, but in marble! We need unbelievable Mosaics in our places of business and homes, and not just any mosaics, we need them to be in “black and white” because colored stones are a denarius a dozen, whilst black (and white) ones are very rare, so lets get a bunch of these!

          We also need wide plazas and corridors linking all of the homes and buildings. Hey! Let’s line everything with majestic marble columns to add some stature! And while our guests are here, we need to treat them to a show, so we need an amphitheater, a really big one! And we should have a stadium too, even bigger!

That’s what we found when we visited Ephesus.

The evidence of grandeur was everywhere.

Ephesus sits between two large hills that over the years, buried the old city with the debris of many an earthquake. If recent seismic activity is any indication, we can see how this can happen!

          “Modern” Ephesus dates back to about 1000 BC and the Roman Era started in 129 BC. It is the location of the Temple of Artemis, one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. Ephesus was located on the shores of the Aegean Sea which made its trade importance the center of its claim to fame. Enter the natural process of the silting up of a shore, add a few tremors, and soon (relatively) you end up with a receding shoreline, and a decreasing trade importance.

          Oh well. Buried and somewhat forgotten, Ephesus lived on in those Letters of St. Paul and eventually in the hard work of the archeologists that are still toiling here to bring this ancient city back to life. Their work is on-going as you can see from the accompanying photos. It is financed in a large part by the many visitors that come to bear witness to those ancient visitors from long, long, ago who marveled at these sights in all their intended magnificence.

          In a way, they are just as magnificent today as they were back then!