Amazon Surprise

Since one of the comments left after my last posting was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Amazon women, I thought it might be interesting to talk a little about the Amazons.

Here is a photo my husband took in Ephesus when we went there to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary a couple of years ago. (We married when we were twelve.)

You know how legend has it that Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus? Well, according to the same sort of lore, Ephesus was founded by the Amazon women. Our tour guide even told us “Ephesus” was the name of the leader of the Amazon women, though I have never found anything to confirm that (or disprove it, for that matter), and I have certainly looked.

The photo above is of what remains of the Amazon story as depicted in stone over a doorway in Ephesus. There were other renderings of that story in Ephesus, but this was the first one we laid eyes on. And we stood there stunned, mouths agape, when we saw it.

Why stunned? It’s sort of a long story. But I will try to simplify. It starts way back. Back two millennia. Back when the apostle Paul wrote this to his protégé, Timothy:

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies… (1 Tim. 1:3–4, emphasis mine).

We conclude from these verses that when Paul wrote 1 Timothy, he was giving Timothy instructions about doing ministry in Ephesus. And that letter Paul wrote to Timothy in Ephesus goes on to include these words:

I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. “But she will be saved through childbearing”--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. This is a faithful saying. If someone aspires to be an elder, that one desires a noble task (3:12–4:1).

Tough words to figure out, right? Because I teach a grad-level class on the role of women in ministry, Gary and I have spent years reading and talking about these scriptures and works written about them. And some of the egalitarian books say that when Paul wrote these words, he was addressing a specific problem in Ephesus because the city had sort of a pro-woman/anti-man mentality.

Yet some of the complementarians and traditionalists writing on the subject say that idea is unsupportable because there is no evidence that anybody in Ephesus ever had such a mentality.

So now you know why we were stunned when we saw the Amazon story sculpted in the stone over the doors.

Both sides on the role-of-women debate have made overstatements, to be sure. So I’m not saying the egalitarians have it all right. My point is simply this: we had better tell the truth, whether or not it fits what we want to teach. Otherwise we seriously undermine The Truth.

Something else about the woman thing at Ephesus: Though the KJV and NKJV translate Acts 19 as referring to a riot about Diana in Ephesus, the Greek actually records that the name of the goddess in question was Artemis. Like many, for years I considered Greek and Roman goddesses totally interchangeable, but thanks to my studies in the Humanities department at UTD followed by some sharp research by some of my DTS students, I know there was not always a one-to-one correlation between goddesses. While Diana was the (Roman) goddess of the hunt, Artemis in Ephesus was perhaps the goddess of the hunt but most certainly the (Greek) goddess of childbearing. Greek and Roman goddesses tended to be more distinctly individual in the cities, where they took on emphases unique to their locales.

As the myth goes, Artemis witnessed her mother giving birth to her twin, Apollo, and Artemis swore she would never have anything to do with that kind of horrible pain. So she has special sympathy for women giving birth and is devoted to virginity.

Though for some reason a lot of ink has been spilled writing about the Isis cult in Ephesus (both Artemis and Isis had temples in Ephesus), I don't think Isis is comparable in her influence. The temple of Artemis in Ephesus was the largest of the Artemis cult temples and, more importantly, it was one of the seven wonders of the world. Antony and Cleopatra made a visit there to see it.

Consider this statement about it by Antipater (130 B.C.): I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon, along which chariots may race, and on the Zeus by the banks of the Alphaeus. I have seen the Hanging Gardens and the Colossus of Helios, the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic tomb of Mausolus. But when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus."

If you have been to the amphitheater in Ephesus (Sting had a concert there!) and imagined the Christian conversion of some idol-makers having the entire place chanting, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" (as opposed to other cities' Artemises, perhaps?), you know Artemis's influence there was a force with which to be reckoned. But if you've read Acts 19, you also know Christianity turned that powerful gender-sick city upsidedown with the life-and-society-transforming truth of the gospel!