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BY VIRTUE of their very creed and calling, the first-century Christian apostles and their converts were not generally the “wise”, the “mighty”, or the “noble” of the world (1 Cor. 1:26), and their lives contained little or nothing which would leave the kind of material traces which are the very stuff of archaeology: palaces, temples, treasures, burnt cities, monumental inscriptions. This being so, and because the time span covered by the writings of the New Testament from the Book of Acts onwards—from the ascension of Christ to the Revelation of John—is so relatively short, it could easily be assumed that archaeology has but little to offer by way of illustration or corroboration of these parts of the Bible record. Yet, while it is inevitably true that archaeology cannot throw much direct light on the sayings and doings of the apostles, it can and does illuminate remarkably well the historical, geographical and cultural background against which no less than twenty-three books of the Bible are set.

As with the archaeology of Old Testament times, so the archaeology of the Greco-Roman world is providing a steadily increasing wealth of detail about the people, places and customs of New Testament times, and shows the Acts and Epistles to be wholly accurate reflections of the period in which they purport to have been written. In addition, the discovery of large quantities of secular papyrus manuscripts from the period, as well as subsequent copies of the New Testament books themselves, has provided valuable evidence, not only of the linguistic appropriateness and integrity of the New Testament writings within their contemporary context, but also of the reliability and preservation of the original inspired text. It is a matter of no small comfort to the Bible believer that such a significant part of the Word of God is confirmed in all these ways by the findings of the archaeologist.

“God is not mocked”: the case of the Book of Acts

When the hostile Bible critic F. C. Baur, a professor of theology in Tubingen from 1826 to 1860, devised his rationalistic theories for the late dating of the writings of the New Testament, there was no real evidence from archaeology to challenge his view (shared by so many of the higher critics who followed the influential ideas of the Tubingen school) that Acts was a product of the second century, that Luke could not have been its author, and that many of its narratives and facts were “intentional deviations from historic truth”.(Footnote 1) For almost a generation Bible believers could only counter such baseless slander through a trusting and faithful reliance upon the Word of God as a Divine, and therefore an accurate, record. Yet all the time the patient work of the archaeologist and the Bible historian was preparing the providential answer, which was to be made public by the English scholar William Ramsay.

Ramsay’s conclusions, based on a number of years’ patient analysis of the recent findings of the classical archaeologists, and published in his monumental work St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (1895), revolutionised, within a very short time, the popular view of Luke as a writer, and changed the critical perception of him to one who should be placed “among the historians of the first rank”.(Footnote 2)

Ramsay himself, who admitted to having been “at one time quite convinced” by “the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tubingen theory”,(Footnote 3) was quite simply bowled over by the archaeological data, and the publication of his book showed that, far from being an unreliable second-century composition, Acts could safely be regarded as “an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor”, and that “in various details the narrative showed marvellous truth”.(Footnote 4) If ever there was a case of archaeology confirming the Book of books, this was it! The critic had chosen the battleground, and was about to be sorely routed.

Acts can now be shown, from the evidence of archaeology, to contain references on virtually every page to historically attested people, places, events and facts, at a quite astonishing level of detail and accuracy. One set of examples will, perhaps, be enough to illustrate the point. The discovery of inscriptions in Cyprus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Achaia and Ephesus (among many other places) has shown that Luke always assigned the correct titles to the right officials at the precisely appropriate periods—something which, for a later writer, would have involved an impossible degree of guesswork.

By the time of the visit of Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus about A.D. 47 (Acts 13:4) the island had already had four different types of Roman government in just over a century; yet Luke unerringly uses the only correct term for the ruler, Sergius Paulus, referring to him as the “deputy” (Gk. anthupatos, the equivalent of the Latin proconsul). The magistrates in Philippi (a city correctly designated by Luke in its contemporary status both as a “chief city”—Gk. prote polis—and as a Roman “colony”—Gk. kolonia; Acts 16:12) are given their appropriate Greek title strategoi (‘captains’), as also are their “serjeants” (Gk. rabdouchoi: ‘rod-bearers’; Acts 16:35). In Thessalonica the rulers of what we now know to have been at that time a “free city” are described by Luke as politarches (‘city chiefs’; Acts 17:6)—a title not found in classical literature but discovered in contemporary inscriptions in a number of Macedonian towns enjoying the same legal status as Thessalonica. Gallio’s official title as “deputy (or proconsul) of Achaia”, used so surefootedly by Luke in Acts 18:12, has been shown to have been valid for that one year only (A.D. 51-52), his successor being designated a propraetor.

In Acts 19:31 Luke uses the Greek word asiarches (AV: “chief of Asia”)—a term which, prior to its discovery in many contemporary inscriptions, Luke was accused of inventing. Yet now it is known that the title was held by citizens of rank and wealth selected by the emperor to preserve the rites of the imperial cult within the league of designated cities in Roman Asia (of which Ephesus was one). In Ephesus, too, Luke speaks accurately of the “townclerk” (Gk. grammateus: ‘recorder’; Acts 19:35)—the official who acted as the link between the local government and the Roman administration. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the townclerk’s own statement (v. 38: “there are deputies”), where the Greek word anthupatos occurs in the plural. This is remarkable because, although it was the normal practice to have only one of these deputies at a time, it appears from careful investigation that the proconsul of Asia, Junius Silanus, had been murdered about this time, and that his murderers, the emissaries of Nero’s mother Agrippina, had taken charge of the new emperor’s affairs in Asia.

Inscription mentioning politarchs. British Museum.

Such is the consistent accuracy of this kind of detail in Acts that no sensible scholar these days would presume to undermine Luke’s reliability on account of any remaining ‘obscurities’ in his record.(Footnote 5)  As one modern writer on Biblical archaeology has put it: “ . . . the evidence derived from this field of study calls into question the groundless scepticism underlying much German New Testament scholarship, based as it is . . . upon hypothetical theories . . . unrelated to observed literary usage in the surrounding world”.(Footnote 6)  Luke’s writings are, in the view of many modern Bible scholars, “sober records of reality”,(Footnote 7) and it is almost entirely the providential findings of the archaeologist which have brought about this remarkable critical reappraisal of a once-vilified part of the Word of God.

Timeless letters from the first-century world

The New Testament Epistles, like so much else in the Word of God, have all been subjected in their turn to a great deal of critical scrutiny. Their authorship, dating, ‘genuineness’ and reliability have all been speculated about and discussed at length, with competing hypotheses being advanced, many of which have become the basis of academic careers and reputations, waxing and waning with the ‘received wisdom’ of the prevailing scholarly fashions. All the while, however, archaeological discoveries have accumulated, casting light on points of obscurity in the Epistles, pointing inexorably to earlier rather than later dates of composition, confirming the accuracy of much artlessly mentioned detail in the text, and showing them to be writings cast in a genuinely contemporary mould. The Epistles now exhibit so many points of contact with their first-century world (its language, culture, history and geography) that it becomes increasingly perverse to see them as anything other than genuine letters from real-life apostles to contemporary Christians and their communities.

Much of this archaeological evidence is of the kind which illustrates particular allusions in the Biblical text to the material world of the first century, and which thus invests the letters with that certain ‘ring of truth’. Paul, for example, refers in Ephesians 2:14 to “the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile, which Christ has “broken down” by his sacrificial death. Archaeological investigation has corroborated the factual basis of this imagery, understood previously only through the writings of Josephus. In the temple area of Jerusalem in 1871 the archaeologist Clermont-Ganneau discovered an inscribed stone notice which reads: “No man of another nation to enter within the fence and enclosure round the temple. And whoever is caught will have himself to blame that his death ensues”.(Footnote 8) 

Inscription from temple area at Jerusalem forbidding entry to Gentiles.

In 1 Corinthians 10:25 Paul advises his readers to eat “Whatsoever is sold in the shambles” (Gk. makellon, ‘market-place’), an allusion corroborated by an inscription found in Corinth, dating from the reign of Augustus, which specifically refers to a meat-market there. Brief mention has been made already of Paul’s reference in Romans 16:23 to Erastus “the chamberlain” of Corinth, of whom Paul speaks also in 2 Timothy 4:20 as abiding still in Corinth. During excavations in that city in 1929 a first-century pavement inscription in Latin was unearthed which reads: “Erastus, procurator and aedile, laid this pavement at his own expense”. Whilst it is not certain that the Greek word used by Paul to describe Erastus {oikonomos, ‘treasurer’) is the exact equivalent of the Latin aedile (‘director of public works’), it is known that the functions of both offices included responsibility for financial affairs. Many scholars now agree therefore that there is good reason to suppose that the Christian Erastus and the pavement-layer attested by archaeology were one and the same person.

When Paul asked Timothy to be sure to bring certain of his belongings from Ephesus to Rome (2 Tim. 4:13) he was careful to include a request for the all-important “books” and “parchments”. While the latter would consist of the skins of sheep or goats (Paul uses the Greek word membranas, literally ‘membranes’), which would be particularly costly, the former would almost certainly be the cheaper and more common rolls of papyrus.(Footnote 9) This reference to Paul’s use of papyrus bears witness to the importance of this humble but serviceable material in the process of the transmission of information in the ancient world, and particularly in the first century.(Footnote 10) The Apostle John’s mention of “paper” (Gk. chartes;2 Jno. v. 12) is almost certainly also a reference to this everyday commodity.

The increasingly common use of papyrus as a writing material in the first-century world has, happily, provided the archaeologist with vast quantities of manuscript (as distinct from purely monumental) remains from the early Christian era, much of which is a source of information about the text, language and background of the New Testament letters. So much so, that one expert has written: “No single material substance has in recent years contributed to our knowledge of the world in which the New Testament was written, and indeed the New Testament itself, more than papyrus”.(Footnote 11) Our oldest surviving New Testament manuscripts are papyri, and it is almost certain that the original New Testament letters were written on papyrus rolls. But it is the huge numbers of surviving papyri—many of them found in the rubbish dumps of Egypt, like the Oxyrhynchus papyri, discovered less than a hundred years ago—which have graphically portrayed the world of the New Testament letters, their language and forms of expression, and even their very format.

Only in the present century, however, has the real linguistic significance of the papyri been understood. The language of the New Testament Epistles had long been known to be different from ‘classical’ Greek; but it had been presumed to be some special ‘ecclesiastical’ form, coined by the Greek-speaking Jews among the early Christians. But the obvious similarities between the language of the New Testament and the language of the contemporary papyri has gradually made it clear that the New Testament was written in a literary form of Greek which was heavily influenced by the lingua franca—the everyday speech—of the times, the so-called koine Greek, which itself has been identified as a descendant of the Attic Greek of the fifth century B.C. From the point of view of the Bible student the principal contribution of such scholarly conclusions is that the New Testament Epistles can be shown from their language and format to belong very definitely to the first-century Greco-Roman world in which we believe they were written.

Examples of verbal similarities between surviving papyri and the New Testament Epistles are legion;(Footnote 12) and while it is possible to overemphasise the correspondence between New Testament Greek and the vernacular of the papyri, the light thrown on the inspired and enduring text of Scripture by the cast-off ephemera of that same first-century world is not to be underestimated. Nor is it without interest that the papyri show that the letters of the New Testament demonstrably follow the general format of secular letters of the time.

Archaeology has revealed, for example, that the opening and closing ‘formulae’ of the letters of Paul, of Peter, and of John, have a typically contemporary flavour.(Footnote 13) Though the archaeologists can be expected to tell us little about the Divine origin and inspiration of these letters, their discovery and interpretation of the papyrological evidence (including many papyrus fragments containing copies of parts of the New Testament text)(Footnote 14) has caused many earlier critical theories—especially about the dating of the New Testament—to be reassessed.

In the words of one highly respected scholar: “The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established”.(Footnote 15)

“In the midst of the candlesticks”

Our understanding of the background to the Letters to the seven representative ecclesias of the Roman province of Asia, contained in Revelation 2-3, has been enhanced on many points of detail by the discoveries of the classical archaeologists, and the general historicity of the Letters themselves has been confirmed by many of the excavations and findings in or near the sites of the towns and cities to which the Letters were first sent, in what is now Modern Turkey. W. M. Ramsay’s book The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia (1904) was the first to suggest that “the Seven Churches are enumerated in the order in which a messenger sent from Patmos would reach them”,(Footnote 16) and further archaeological investigations have cast light on a number of the towns as they existed in the latter quarter of the first century. A brief survey and selection of the available archaeological material will serve to illustrate some of the many points of contact between the Biblical text and the ancient remains so far discovered.

Column base from temple of Diana at Ephesus.

British Museum.

Ephesus, the principal city of the province, and the first in the Biblical order of the Letters (Rev. 2:1-7), is perhaps the site which has occupied the attention of the archaeologists most of all. The search for the city’s ‘legendary’ Temple of Diana (Artemis), mentioned by Luke in Acts 19, began in earnest in the 1860s under the sponsorship of the British Museum, with the temple being found by J. T. Wood in 1869, and extensive excavation of the whole of the ancient city being undertaken by the Austrian Archaeological Institute from 1896 onwards. Reference has already been made, elsewhere in this article, to inscriptions which confirm the accuracy of New Testament allusions to various features of first-century Ephesus. What was not wholly understood until the archaeologists’ work, however, was the extent to which the original site of Ephesus, which had been placed on the Aegean seafront many centuries before the time of Christ, had had to be moved as the harbour silted up and the sea receded.(Footnote 17) The threat of the Lord Jesus to “remove” the Ephesian ecclesia’s candlestick (Gk. luchnia, ‘lamp stand’) “out of his place” (Rev. 2:5) would therefore have a very special meaning for those who well understood the major problems caused by the enforced migration of a whole city.(Footnote 18)

Coin of Ephesus showing temple of Diana.

Smyrna, first in the circuit after Ephesus (Rev. 2:8-11), was an ancient and thriving centre of commerce, close to the sea. Few excavations have been carried out there because the modern town covers most of the ancient site, with the result that our knowledge of Smyrna’s history is derived mainly from references in surviving literary sources and in contemporary coinage. From these, however, emerges the city’s devotion to the goddess Cybele, whose worshippers wore a flower-garland (“the crown of Smyrna”) in her honour, and whose priests received a garland-crown when their term of office was complete.

This celebrated feature of Smyrnean city life would no doubt give particular significance to the Lord’s promise of a “crown of life” (Rev. 2:10) to the members of an ecclesia which escapes all censure at his hands.(Footnote 19) The Lord’s reference to himself as one who “was dead, and is alive” (v. 8) would no doubt also remind those who lived in Smyrna of the remarkable ‘resurrection’ of their own city—laid waste by the Lydians in the sixth century B.C. but rebuilt over 200 years later on a much larger and more prosperous scale by the successors of Alexander the Great.

Excavations at Pergamos have revealed many fascinating features of what was clearly an important centre of pagan religion. Asklepios, the god of healing, symbolised by a rod and a serpent, was worshipped there, and the Emperor Augustus had made the city a seat of the imperial cult. The expressions “Satan’s seat” (Gk. thronos tou satana, ‘the throne of the adversary’) and “where Satan dwelleth” (Rev. 2:13) are clear references to such a local institutionalisation of idolatry, which must have made it particularly difficult to avoid religious compromise. The mention of “Antipas . . . my faithful martyr” (v. 13) is also a grim reminder that the Neronian persecution had already taken its toll in this cultic centre, where the offering of a few grains of incense to the Emperor was imposed as a test for those suspected of being Christians. Appropriately, therefore, the Lord Jesus speaks of himself (v. 12) as the one who carries “the sharp sword with two edges”, where the Greek word for “sword” (romphaia) refers to the ceremonial weapon of a proconsul—the Roman official who, for those in Pergamos, would be the arm of the persecuting authority.

Inscriptions found at Thyatira, the home of Lydia, “seller of purple” (Acts 16:14), show the city to have been the headquarters of numerous trade-guilds, including those for the smelting and polishing of brass. Hence the appropriateness of the choice of figures to describe the coming in judgement of the Lord Jesus (Rev. 2:18), with eyes “like unto a flame of fire”, and feet “like fine brass”.

The ecclesia at Sardis, it seems, shared a number of those unfortunate characteristics of the city which emerge from a study of the material remains which chart its history. In Ramsay’s words: “No city in the whole Province of Asia had a more splendid history ... No city of Asia at that time showed such a melancholy contrast between past splendour and present decay ... Sardis lived and yet was dead”.(Footnote 20) For a self-satisfied and complacent ecclesia, too, there could be no more appropriate words of warning, in a hill-top city which thought itself impregnable but which had twice fallen prey to surprise attacks(Footnote 21) and once (in A.D. 17) to an earthquake, than the words of Jesus: “If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee” (Rev. 3:3).

Two historical features of the city of Philadelphia, attested by literary references, inscriptions and coins, and reflected in the Lord’s letter of commendation, are worthy of particular note here. The city had a history of earthquake damage (it was totally destroyed in the earthquake of A.D. 17); the prospect, therefore, of becoming a “pillar” (Gk. stubs) in God’s temple would be a comforting promise of future permanence of special significance to Philadelphians (Rev. 3:12). In addition to this, the devastated city had been revived after the great earthquake by the generosity of the Emperor Tiberius, and in gratitude for this Philadelphia had adopted the ‘new name’ of Neo-Caesarea in honour of its benefactor. The Lord’s allusion to such a procedure would not be lost on his first-century readers (end of v.12).

The sharp rebukes administered to the ecclesia at Laodicea, and which complete the Lord’s seven-part circuit, are also couched in language which the archaeologist has shown to be particularly apt. Though the site of the city has been but little excavated, enough is known of the basis of Laodicea’s former wealth to be able to grasp the Lord’s two ironic allusions: to the Phrygian powder produced in the local medical school for the treatment of ophthalmia (“eyesalve”, v. 18; Gk. kollourion), and also to the shiny black woollen cloth for which the city was equally well known (contrasted, in verse 18, with the “white raiment” which the Lord counsels his disciples there to buy from him). Widely known, too, is the fact that the city’s water supply was brought several miles along an aqueduct from hot springs; hence, no doubt, the fitness of the Lord’s telling criticism: “thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot” (v. 16). The city which boasted of its ability to recover its material prosperity after the great earthquake of A.D. 17 without the aid of Rome had also produced an ecclesia which felt “rich”, “increased with goods”, and in “need of nothing” (v. 17).

In all these ways, and many more, the archaeologist has helped the historian and the Bible student to see and understand the Letters to the seven ecclesias in a new and interesting light. Much more is left to be discovered, of course, on these as on other parts of Scripture; and while the Lord remains away we can be certain that further support for the Word of God will emerge from the work of the archaeologist. And from it all we are able to conclude, with J. A. Thompson: “It is very evident that the Biblical records have their roots firmly in general world history. Archaeological discovery supplements, explains, and at times corroborates the Biblical story. The happy combination of the Biblical records, the non-Biblical histories, and the discoveries of the archaeologists has produced such splendid results to date that we are full of optimism about the future . . . Many sites have yet to be excavated thoroughly and many others remain whose excavation has not yet commenced. If the achievements of the excavator up to the present have yielded such important results, what may not the future hold for us?”.(Footnote 22)

FOOTNOTES

1. Quoted in A. T. Robertson, Luke the Historian in the Light of Research (Edinburgh, Clark. 1920), p. 1.

2. W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 14th ed. 1920), p. 4.

3. Ibid., p. 8.

4. Ibid.

5. Even from a purely rationalistic point of view, leaving aside the role of inspiration in ensuring that everything Luke wrote was accurate, the astonishing range of Luke’s familiarity with precise detail is itself a firm indication that Luke was ‘actually there’ to record so much of what happened from at least Acts 16 onwards.

The location of the river at Philippi in relation to the town gate (Acts 16:13); the presence of a marketplace (Gk. agora) in that town (Acts 16:19) and in Athens (Acts 17:17); the existence of a Jewish synagogue in Corinth and the location of the city’s “judgment seat” (Gk. bema: Acts 18:4,12); the use of magical papyri at Ephesus (Acts 19:18,19); the possible identity of Erastus, the “chamberlain” of Corinth (mentioned in Acts 19:22, and almost certainly the same Christian believer as in Romans 16:23); the size of the public assembly arena at Ephesus (the “theatre” of Acts 19:29), and the use of the special honorific title neokoros for the city itself (Acts 19:35, “worshipper”; mg. ‘the temple-keeper’)—all these, and countless other details, have been verified or illuminated by archaeological discoveries.

6. K. A. Kitchen, The Bible in its World: Archaeology and the Bible Today (Exeter. Paternoster Press. 1977), p. 132.

7. Ibid.

8. Quoted from C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (London, SPCK, 1961). p. 50. The stone is now in the Istanbul Museum, Turkey.

9. Or perhaps, even by that date, they were papyrus codices, that is, single sheets of papyrus gathered together into a codex, an early form of our modern book. Most scholars now accept that it was the early Christian communities which popularised the codex in preference to the papyrus roll, principally for ease of reference to other parts of Scripture. See C. C. McCown, “The earliest Christian books”, Biblical Archaeologist, May 1943.

10. The Greek word Paul uses, translated “books” in the AV, is biblia, which itself gave rise later to our modern word ‘Bible1. The word is derived from biblos, the pith of the papyrus stalk, which took its name from the Phoenician city of Byblos, famous for its papyrus manufacture and export.

11. Barrett, op. cit., p. 22.

12. For example, first-century papyri have been found which contain, in common with the New Testament Epistles, the following words from contemporary usage: aparche (cf. Rom. 8:23, “firstfruits”), sphragizo (cf. Rom. 15:28, “seal”), kapeleuontes (cf. 2 Cor. 2:17, “which corrupt”), paidagogos (cf. Gal. 3:24, “schoolmaster”), arrabon (cf. Eph. 1:14, “earnest”), and ataktos (cf. 2 Thess. 3:11, “disorderly”). For very many further examples see A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (London, Ηodder and Stoughton, 1910), pp. 70-142.

13. See J. A. Thompson, The Bible and Archaeology (Exeter, Paternoster Press, 1969), pp. 427-32.

14. Though the remarkable manuscript evidence for the reliable transmission of the actual text of the New Testament has been left to a large extent outside the scope of this present article, it is important to bear in mind that “among works of classical (Greek and Latin) literature, the writings of the New Testament...have a manuscript attestation second to none” (Kitchen, op. cit, p. 131). See also F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents (London, Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 5th rev. ed. 1960), especially pp. 15-20.

15. F. Kenyon, The Bible and Archaeology (London, Harrap, 1940), p. 288.

16. W. M. Ramsay, The Letters to the seven Churches of Asia (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), p. 185.

17. There is, it seems, a reference to these continuing problems of silting-up at Ephesus in the Annals of Tacitus (xvi.23), in a passage relating to the middle of the first century.

18. The threatened removal of the light source may also be an allusion to the fact that the city of Ephesus itself was known, according to Pliny, as “the Light of Asia”.

19. See Thompson, op. cit., p. 414, and W. Smith, A Dictionary of the Bible... Vol. III (London, John Murray, 1863), p. 1335. Other writers, including Ramsay (The Letters, op. cit., pp. 256-7), understand the phrase “the crown of Smyrna” to refer also to the splendid buildings which once ‘crowned’ the top of this hillside city, and which are represented, on coins and inscriptions, by what Ramsay calls “the mural crown” of the city’s goddess (ibid., pp. 266-7).

20. Ramsay, The Letters, op. cit., p. 375. In Revelation 3:1, of course, the Lord’s opening remarks to ecclesial members at Sardis included the stringent criticism: “thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead”.

21. In 546 B.C. the city was taken suddenly by Cyrus (who seems to have specialised in such surprise attacks), and in 214 B.C. it fell quickly to Antiochus the Great.

22. Thompson, op. cit., p. 438.

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