Diana

AI summary: Diana matters because the cross references present her worship as a powerful religious and economic system threatened by the spread of the gospel. The uproar in Ephesus shows that Christian proclamation does not remain abstract; it collides with deeply rooted civic identity, commerce, and idolatry. Her name therefore marks more than local mythology. Taken together, the material presents Diana as a false goddess whose cult becomes a direct point of conflict with the advance of the gospel.¹

So called by the Romans; called Artemis by the Greeks, the “great” goddess worshipped among heathen nations under various modifications. Her most noted temple was that at Ephesus. It was built outside the city walls, and was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. “First and last it was the work of 220 years; built of shining marble; 342 feet long by 164 feet broad; supported by a forest of columns, each 56 feet high; a sacred museum of masterpieces of sculpture and painting. At the centre, hidden by curtains, within a gorgeous shrine, stood the very ancient image of the goddess, on wood or ebony reputed to have fallen from the sky. Behind the shrine was a treasury, where, as in ‘the safest bank in Asia,’ nations and kings stored their most precious things. The temple as St. Paul saw it subsisted till A.D. 262, when it was ruined by the Goths” (Acts 19:23-41)., Moule on Ephesians: Introd. ³