Conducting my research on Acts 19:21-40 for this class project, I came to the conclusion that there is broad historical evidence supporting the authenticity of this biblical passage from the historical point of view. Therefore, I came up with the following thesis: passages such as Acts 19:21-40 can be used as the vivid proof of biblical historical trustworthiness which supports its superiority over other religious works and suggests its divine origin.
First, at the initial stage of my analysis, I performed research on the following terms “Achaia”, “the Way”, “the temple of the great goddess Artemis”, “proconsuls”, and “legal assembly”. My focus of interest was to identify whether these terms have presence in historical documents and thus prove authenticity of the Bible from the historical point of view. I have found that “Achaia” was one of the regional units in Greece in the days of Apostle Paul. Moreover, the area did not change its title nowadays and is still a part of Greece located in the west of the country in the north-western part of the Peloponnese peninsula (Green, 2010). The word-combination “the Way” occurs in the Bible only two times and refers to the title of Christ’s followers given to them by the wide public in the days after Jesus’ death when they still had no official name such as Christians (Hayes & Holladay, 2007).
I have researched historical sources to find out that this title is present in the historical documents dating back to the year 35 C.E. and further on (Korner, 2014). The phrase “the temple of the great goddess Artemis” also captured my interest because I wanted to make sure that in Paul’s days, a religious practice to worship Artemis with pomposity truly existed. I did found support to this biblical mentioning in secular sources proving both the grandiose scale of this religious tradition and the financial benefits it brought to those engaged in the Artemis worship-related services. Finally, I checked the terms “proconsuls” and “legal assembly” to make sure that in Paul’s days, Roman legislative system did had these types of workers and provisions, and I found out again that the Bible is accurate here from the point of view of historical data (Green, 2010).
Next, I proceeded with analysis of the biblical verses I found noteworthy in connection with the theme of its trustworthiness from the historical point of view. In Acts 19:28 (NRSV Bible), the audience reads, “when they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”” Refereeing to my primary research, I have found the parallel between this biblical account of religious practices common in the first part of the first century C.E. and the historical data confirming that honoring Artemis with the words “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” was widespread in this ancient city of those days. Another passage that attracted my attention in connection with the topic under consideration is Acts 19:35 (NRSV Bible), “The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven?” My support research supported the conclusion that this expression by the city leader was the highly veracious description of the common worship practices in Asia of the first century C.E.
References
Green, J. (2010). Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for interpretation (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids, M.I.: Eerdmans Publishing.
Hayes, J., & Holladay, C. (2007). Biblical exegesis: A beginners handbook. London: Westminster John Knox Press.
Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version: Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/ Deuterocanonical books. (2007). London: Collins.
Korner, R. J. (2014). Before ‘Church’: Political, ethno-religious, and theological Implications of the collective designation of Pauline Christ-followers as Ekklēsiai.Web.