The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2Stokes, George Thomas
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2
Stokes, George Thomas
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries; Bible. Acts -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
because it is so the Church of England does well to bestow so much of
her public supplication upon those who have power, like Cyrus and
Jeroboam, to taint it at the very foundation and origin thereof. When,
for instance, St. Paul landed at Perga in Pamphylia, on the first
occasion when he visited Asia Minor as a Christian missionary, his eye
was saluted with the splendid temple of Diana on the side of the hill
beneath which the city was built, and all over the country at every
important town similar temples were erected in her honour, where their
ruins have been traced by modern travellers.[200] The cult or worship
introduced by Cyrus exactly suited the morals and disposition of these
Oriental Greeks, and flourished accordingly.
[198] See on the exact time of the Macedonian and Ephesian month
of Artemisius, Ussher's treatise on the Macedonian and Asiatic
solar year, in the seventh volume of his works Ed. Elrington, p.
425, with which may be compared Bishop Lightfoot's _Ignatius_, i.
660-700. Mr. Lewin, in his _Fasti Sacri_, p. 309, makes it the
month of May. The Macedonian month Artemisius extended from March
25th to April 24th. This point is further discussed in Lewin's
_St. Paul_, vol. i., p. 405. If St. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians at or
shortly before April 7th, the date of the Passover, the riot which
hastened his departure must have happened within the succeeding
fortnight. Bœckh, in the Corpus of Greek Inscriptions, No.
2954, inserts a long Greek inscription, found one hundred and
seventy years ago at Ephesus, laying down the ceremonial to be
observed in honour of the deity throughout the whole month, which
Mr. Lewin translates, vol. i., p. 405. See, however, more upon
this below.
[199] The Persian language was still used in the worship of Diana
at Hierocæsarea and Hypæpa, two well-known towns of the province
of Asia in the second century of our era. See Pausanias, v. 27;
cf. Tacitus, _Annals_, iii. 62, and Ramsay's _Hist. Geog._, p.
128.
[200] Voluntary associations were formed all over Asia Minor to
cultivate the worship of Artemis. Modern research, for instance,
has found inscriptions raised by the Xenoi Tekmoreioi indicating
their peculiar devotion to Diana and her worship. They specially
flourished at a place called Saghir, near Antioch in Pisidia. It
is a curious fact that the cult of the B.V.M. has been substituted
for that of Artemis by the Greeks of the neighbourhood, and a
feast in her honour is celebrated at the same time as the ancient
feast. See _Revue Archéologique_, 1887, vol. i., p. 96; Ramsay, in
his _Geography of Asia Minor_, p. 409, and in _Jour. Hell.
Studies_ for 1883.
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