Before or after your tour of Ephesus, you’ll enjoy reading these eight stories in an amazing new book about Ephesus by Finlay McQuade. They are all historically authentic, true to history when the history is known, plausible when the history is not known.
Finlay McQuade was a teacher of teachers at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. When he retired from teaching, he lived for eight years in the town of Selçuk, where the ruins of Ephesus were quite literally on his doorstep. He lived across the street from the Basilica of St. John, built by Justinian I in the 6th century to house the Apostle’s grave. Down the hill was the Isa Bey Mosque, built by Seljuk Turks in the 14th century. And at the bottom of the hill, the few remaining stones and column drums of the Temple of Artemis were sinking unmajestically into a swampy puddle. Thus, surrounded by history, he did the research and wrote these stories.
They tell about—
- The destruction of the Temple of Artemis in 356 BCE
- The flood that shifted the city to its present location
- Mark Antony’s seduction of Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s sister
- Apostle Paul’s conflict and expulsion by rival faith healers and silversmiths
- A young man’s conversion to Christianity, his imprisonment, and execution
- The theft of a priceless book from the Celsus Library
- The Seven Sleepers, who slept for 400 years (or so they claimed)
- Nestorian heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE
A thousand years of history in one city!
