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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
The seven cities of Asia
Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea, proud cities of the Roman province of Asia, strung along a road a courier could walk. Each letter in Revelation 2 and 3 speaks into its own city's history, trades and temples.
A letter to a town council lands harder when it mentions the bridge everyone knows is cracked. Revelation is addressed to churches in seven real cities in Rome's province of Asia, today the western part of Turkey. They lay along a road a messenger could walk, one after another. Each church's letter speaks into the life of its own city: its proudest buildings, its trades, its earthquakes, its gods and its temples to the emperor. Seven was also a number of completeness, and many readers take the seven to stand for every church as well.
A messenger from Patmos would reach Ephesus first, and the other cities follow in walking order, thirty to forty-five miles apart. The ESV Study Bible notes that "The order in which the churches are listed traces the route" a courier would take. There were other churches in Asia, so the choice of seven is deliberate. William Ramsay found local color in each letter; Keener judges some of his links strained and others apt. Wright and Bird stress how thoroughly the emperor's cult had filled the province. By the end of the century "all seven cities that John mentions had cultic sites for imperial devotion". Six had imperial temples, and five had imperial altars with a priesthood. Sardis and Philadelphia were wrecked in AD 17 and rebuilt with imperial help. Laodicea was damaged in AD 60 and refused Roman relief. Ephesus was the leading city of the province, and Keener calls Ephesus and Smyrna the oldest centers of the imperial cult. The atlas and the Zondervan dictionary put the first Asian temple to an emperor at Pergamum in 29 BC and the second at Smyrna in AD 26. The churches' troubles differed. Wright and Bird write that not all were persecuted, and that several faced affluence and the pull to compromise; the cultural backgrounds notes count Ephesus, Thyatira, Sardis and Laodicea among them. Each letter keeps a set pattern. The speaker describes himself, says I know, praises and blames, calls the church to hear, and promises a reward to the one who conquers. Keener likens the form to imperial edicts posted in Asian cities; the cultural backgrounds article Letters to the Seven Churches finds the prophets' oracles on the nations a closer model.
An analogy: a touring speaker who gives the same talk in seven towns but opens each night with the local news, the mill that closed, the flood last spring. Each audience knows the talk is meant for them.
Because each letter speaks into its own city, the lukewarm water of Revelation 3:16 carried a local sting before it carried a general lesson. Colossians 4:13 ties the believers of Laodicea and Hierapolis together through one worker, and Acts 19:10 says the whole province heard the message while Paul was based in Ephesus.
Not one talk with a local opening. Each letter keeps the same frame, but the praise and blame change from city to city, since not every church was persecuted and several faced wealth and compromise instead. Keener reads the real road and the local color as signs of actual churches, not stages of church history.
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- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 1:11, introduction to Revelation 2:1-7, on 2:8-11, introduction to 2:12-17, and on 3:17-18
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Introduction to Revelation (Setting)
- ESV Study Bible, The Setting of Revelation, and study notes on Revelation 1:4-6, 1:11, 2:1-3:22, 3:1-6, 3:7-13 and 3:14-22
- CSB Study Bible, notes on Revelation 3:1 and 3:7
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 34, Origins of the book of Revelation
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 1:9-20
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Letters to the Seven Churches
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, The Seven Churches of Revelation, Smyrna and Pergamum
- Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entries Pergamum and Smyrna
