Revelation opens with letters dictated to seven churches, named in a ring — Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. All seven are genuine, identifiable cities of Roman Asia, and their order on the page follows the actual circuit of the imperial roads a messenger would ride, one city to the next. Some letters even seem to touch each city's known character — Laodicea's neither-hot-nor-cold reproach beside its famously lukewarm water supply, Sardis's warning to “wake up” beside a citadel twice lost by surprise. Excavation confirms the cities and the road that binds them; it does not open a window on the congregations inside them.
- What it is
- Seven real, excavated Roman cities of western Asia Minor — Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea — linked by the imperial road network
- Date of artifact
- Roman period (the letters written late 1st century AD)
- Discovered
- western Turkey (each city excavated by various expeditions)
- Where it is now
- In situ
- Related to
- The seven congregations addressed in John's Revelation
- पवित्र शास्त्र
- Revelation 1:11 · Revelation 2:1–3:22
What this find showsAll seven are real, excavated cities in exactly the road-circuit order Revelation follows.
What it does not proveArchaeology attests the cities and their setting, not the churches' inner life or the visions addressed to them.
स्रोत व अधिक वाचन