5th Place: So Shines the Night (Temple of Diana at Ephesus)
So Shines the Night
As I place this book as 5th place, I cringe at the meaning that it might be seen as the “worst” of them all.
Not so.) It’s just that, in all of its beauty, it ends up here. We meet Daria as an educated young woman-teacher training other women–in Rhodes. So she has an unusual, but very likely, love of learning in the age of the Early Church.
After a meaningful series of mishaps, she meets a merchant who wants to learn Persian, so is hired to be his tutor and returns with him to Ephesus.
This is Ephesus of St. Paul, Timothy, Aquilla and Priscilla.
Now I know Ephesus like the back of my hand. Having lived in Smyrna (Izmir) Turkey for almost 30 years, I have visited Ephesus more times than most people.
So I knew the harbor and the cliff houses and the location of the amphitheatre and the general direction of the School of Tyrannus. I knew the little shops where mysterious goings-on could go-on. I knew the streets and the paths and where the prostitute’s brothel is.
I knew how to go up the steps to get to the merchant’s house. I know the view you’d have from his terrace. I could see it in my mind’s eye and was amazed at Tracy Higley’s accurate use of these locations.
But likewise, I know how long it takes to walk from the terrace houses, past the harbor, to Artemis’s temple. So it puzzled me how some of the timing worked. But anyhoo–
The story shows the abject darkness of both idolatry and sorcery in the ancient world. And it shows the simple power of the Name of Christ that overthrows the powers of darkness.
If you go to Ephesus today, there is a new exhibit that is a multi-media, 5D adventure into Ancient Ephesus: The Ephesus Experience. You enter in and the rooms become a travel to the past. You walk with others from the harbor toward the amphitheatre. You feel the mist coming in from the sea as you are shown the growth of the cult of Artemis in Ephesus from the beginning of its oldest days.
But, by the end of the exhibit, (apparently) the creators want the participants to feel an anger at Christianity for being the CAUSE of the destruction of the “beautiful Temple of Artemis.”
This book, I think, is a much better way to experience that change. Because the freedom that comes to Daria (and others) because of Paul and (wink-wink) Timothy gives a much more satisfying Ephesus Experience with an amazingly (mostly) accurate representation of the city plan of Ephesus.
