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(Revelations 3:1-6)
INTRODUCTION & HISTORY
The fifth letter
of John to the Seven Churches was to the ancient and
historic city of Sardis. Sardis was the capital city of King
Croesus who was considered as the richest man on earth in
the ancient times. Due to gold bearing river Pactalus and
gold collected in the area, Lydian Kingdom became one of
the great Kingdoms of the antiquity. Lydians who minted
first coins with a fixed and guarantied value and were so
proud of their richness and their impregnable fortress, they
were sure that no army on earth could capture their city.
But the city was captured twice when Lydian guards were
careless and sleepy. After each disaster, the city was
recovered but slipped back to false sense of security.
Accusations and blames for the church in Sardis is easy to
understand: It is blamed not to be careful and watchful. It
is warned to strengthen spiritual defenses.
The name Sardis is that of the stone, sardius (Greek:
sardinos; carnelian, RSV, cp.Rev 4:3). The semi-precious
stone is orange-brown but reflects deep red when light is
passed through. It was an economic stronghold of the wool
industry. The acropolis was built about 1500 feet above the
plain on a ridge of the 5,800 foot high Mount Tmolus. The
precipice was difficult to reach and was considered
unassailable by an enemy. The lower city was more accessible.
Today the site is a ruin, but nearby the small Turkish
village bears the name Sart, and the memory of fabled
characters such as Midas and King Croesus of Sardis live on.
LOCATION &
POPULATION:
As one of the oldest cities of Asia Minor, the city lay
along a highway that stretched from the Persian city of
Susa, following a parallel course to the Tigris River,
passing through Cappadocia to Sardis. Located in the Hermus
Valley (modern R. Gediz) on the banks of a southern
tributary, the Pactolus (modern Sart Cay) and north of the
range of the Tmolus Mountains (modern Bozdag). It is about
30 miles southeast of Thyatira and about 45 miles of Izmir (Smyrna).
A great colonnaded marble road of 4600 feet in length
divided the Roman city, whose population was estimated as
large as 120,000 in the time of the Apostle John. A variety
of inscriptions on extant statuary reveal the relationship
with succeeding Emperors. Hadrian visited the city in 123
AD. Later, Emperor Diocletian reorganized Asia in (297 AD)
and Sardis became capital of the revived district of Lydia.
Melito, Bishop of Sardis, served in the second century, and
some of his sermons have been preserved. Several
representatives from Sardis attended the Councils of Nicea
(325), Ephesus (431), and the so-called "Robber Council" of
Ephesus (449). Sardis was conquered by the Arabs in 716 AD,
and eventually by the Ottoman Turks in the 14th century.
HISTORY OF
OCCUPATION:
Sardis was a place of importance from the Lydian Kingdom in
the 13th century BC. The Lydian Kingdom made Sardis its
capital as early as 700 B.C. The first king of the Mermnad
Dynasty was Gyges (687-652 B.C), credited with the invention
of the first coined money. The earliest coins were made of
“electrum”, an alloy of gold and silver. In excavations in
the early 1980s, many were found in buildings of the Lydian
period.
The last and most famous Lydian King Croesus (560-546 B.C.)
was said to have panned gold from the nearby river Pactolus
introduced coinage of pure gold and pure silver. Crucibles
and a few gold objects have made conclusive evidence for the
gold-refining process from the 6th century B.C. for modern
archaeologists.
Following the Lydian Kingdom, Persian domination began in
546 BC, when King Croesus and Sardis fell to Cyrus.
Herodotus records the shock of the Lydian defeat, as they
considered the city impregnable. According to the ancient
historian, the Persian forces were in the valley below the
citadel, when a Lydian soldier dropped his helmet over the
city wall. He scaled down the rock to get it. A local slave
watched carefully and when captured, revealed the city's
vulnerability. The soldiers used the information to capture
the city for Cyrus, and King Croesus was taken prisoner. At
the end of the Susa Road, Sardis became the most important
Persian city in Asia Minor.
With the decline of the Persians under the advancing Greeks,
the city surrendered willingly to Alexander the Great in 334
BC. Sardis became the western administrative center for the
Seleucid Dynasty. One notable battle of the period was in
214 BC, when the city fell to Antiochus the Great through
the use of the employed by the Persians more than three
centuries earlier.
Sardis came under Pergamene rule from 189 to 133 BC, and was
passed into the hands of the Romans upon the death of
Attallus II. Under Roman rule the city flourished until it
was devastated by the great earthquake in 17 AD (called by
Eusebius “the greatest earthquake in human memory”). and
Tiberias assisted in the rebuilding of the city (Tacitus
Annals II.47). Some scholars feel that because of this
great indebtedness to Tiberius, the city gave itself to the
cult of emperor-worship, largely abandoning its historic
love affair with the Cybele cult. In 26 AD, Sardis lost the
competition with Smyra for the coveted permission to build a
temple to the emperor.
Until the change in 17 AD, Sardis was a center for the
worship of Cybele. Nash provides us with a good summary of
information about the Cult of Cybele: “ Cybele, also known
as the Great Mother, was worshipped throughout much of the
Hellenistic world. The cult of Cybele underwent a number of
significant changes over a period of several hundred years.
Cybele undoubtedly began as a goddess of nature; the early
worship of her in Phrygia was not unlike that of Dionysus.
But it went beyond the sexual orgies that were part of the
primitive Dionysias cult, as the frenzied male worshipers of
Cybele were led to castrate themselves. Following their act
of self-mutilation, these followers of cybele became
“Galli,” or eunuch-priests of the cult. From her beginnings
as a Nature-goddess, Cybele eventually came to be viewed as
the Mother of all gods and the mistress of all life” (Nash,
Christianity and the Hellenistic World, pp.138-139).
Barclay points out that “even on pagan lips, Sardis was a
name of contempt. Its people were notoriously loose living,
notoriously pleasure-and luxury loving. Sardis was a city of
the decadence. In the old days it had been a frontier town
on the borders of Phyrgia, but now it was a byword for slack
and effeminate living...” The most splendid temple in Sardis
was the one devoted to Artemis, the later memory of the
Cybele worship. It had apparently undergone three specific
phases of construction beginning in the C3 BC, and ending at
the earthquake of 17 AD. Coins also depict sanctuaries to
Aphrodite Paphia.
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