From: "SV Perception / Phyl & Fred Denton" <denton@flash.net
To: Crews List
Subject: Crews Letter #2002 10 An Epistle from Ephesus
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 11:43:03 +0300

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen;

While we were waiting for a water tank for the water maker to be fabricated in Marmaris, a tour inland seemed appropriate. First choice was Efes and the final home of the Virgin Mary. The area is about 100 miles north of Marmaris. The bus trip, bearable. The tour guide, excellent. Ephesus is a Greek affectation of the local name, Efes.

Legend has it that the first Efes was founded by Amazons in 2000 BC. It was connected with Mesopotamia by a major highway. The Greeks revived it in 11th century BC as a harbor and trade center. The goddess, Artemis, formerly known as Kybele, later equated by the Romans to Diana, was the primary god of the city. The temple of Artemis was built here.

It qualified as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

By the time the Romans arrived, Efes was well established as a center of medicine and medical care. It was here that the image of a snake climbing a tripod to drink from a challis of milk became the symbol of modern medicine.

<<The next version will probably be the sick, dying and medical professionals being crushed under the weight of corporations and lawyers. That is unless the government socializes medicine first.

Isn't it the pits? The doctor that I knew well always thought that socialized medicine was the worst thing that could happen in the US.

Then some bright doctors decided that they could manage health care easier than seeing patients. Their collusion with big business created the privatization of socialized medicine that skipped a step and took it one step worse. But I digress.>>

With Roman organization and Greek ingenuity the city reached a new plateau in sophistication. The downtown sported a beautiful and near complete library, hot, tepid and cold baths in the town bathhouse, running water latrine, and brothel. The streets are paved with marble.

Sewers are under all of the main streets. Temples for all of the important gods were strategically placed to allow for convenient worship at exactly the times required. For the discreet, there was a tunnel between the library and the brothel. It allowed those gentlemen whose position might be tarnished by entering a brothel a way to satisfy their whim without lowering their pretension. For others, it worked vice versa.

Halfway between downtown and the harbor was the theatre. Before there were electronic methods for changing sound into noise, engineers had discovered ways to shorten the distance between presenter and listener. With the same stroke they all but eliminated the secondary paths that clutter the listener with echoes and reverberations. The result is an acoustically clean theatre seating 25,000 patrons each with front row clarity of sound.

The heart of this city was the harbor. It pumped wealth from around the world into Efes in every way imaginable.

Efes was a city of 250 thousand people and 25 thousand slaves. It was the religious and educational center of Asia Minor. It is supposed that for exactly this reason, Paul was compelled to come here to preach the Gospel. His success in the synagogue got him banned. He moved his ministry to a private home. His success there got him an invite to the theatre. The warm up act was the shop steward for the silversmiths.

Their industry was built on icons and artifacts for Artemis and the lesser gods. This shop steward surmised, correctly so, that this guy, Paul, was a threat to their honest business. He so worked up the crowd that they shouted out Paul. The healing power of a real religion could not possibly be more important than the health of a businessman's purse. Paul was taken to prison, instead of the theatre stage.

When they got him out of town, he continued his ministry here by mail

Paul had done the good deed. The Christian church was here. John and his charge came to live out their lives. John remained in the city and continued to give testimony. Mary retreated to a spring high on a mountain side. There her house has been reconstructed on the original site.

The harbor silted in. The river by name is the Menderes. Sounds like meander. The sea is three miles away. Ships no longer come and go.

The city is a monument to what has been.

Regards,
Fred

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