Faith Among the Ruins: My Case for Christianity in Turkey

I hadn’t intended to explore the Christian faith in Turkey. Really, I wanted to explore Islam, not because I wanted to convert, but because Turkey was the only country where the mosques welcomed visitors with open arms. I knew nothing about the Muslim faith, and after so many years in the security space, I figured I should learn about the nonextremist version. Just a week later, my outlook changed as I stood in Ephesus’s great theatre. Suddenly, I was face to face with my own Christian faith in a country that served as the seat of Muslim empires for a thousand years. Had I studied the Bible more intensively or paid better attention in Sunday School, I might have known that Turkey was part of Christianity’s ground zero. But I hadn’t, so I didn’t. Starting in Ephesus, I received a crash course in ancient Christian history, and by the time I left, I had made up my mind: the case for Christianity may be circumstantial, but I was convinced.

My first lesson came from the great theatre at Ephesus. The theatre was massive and could hold 25,000 people within its semicircular walls. Against the backdrop of the shimmering Aegean, it surely would have been an amazing place to see famous plays from Greek and Roman times. The theatre was also the site of the Riot at Ephesus, where the Apostle Paul was nearly killed for preaching the Gospel against Artemis, the Hellenistic goddess whose temple was not far away. I learned of the riot from Luke’s account in the Book of Acts. Standing in the great theatre where it took place, I was hard-pressed to argue against Luke’s account as a historical narrative. Everything about the city was exactly as he described, from the theatre to the ruined Temple of Artemis down the road to the fear the Ephesians held that Paul’s teachings would topple their cult. Could I inarguably see that the Ephesians abandoned Artemis because of Paul’s preaching? No, I couldn’t, but the fact that the Temple of Artemis lay in ruins, just as the silversmiths feared, was at least circumstantial proof that the Bible’s version of events held some truth.

Down the road from the Ephesian ruins, in the modern town of Selçuk, lies the Apostle John’s tomb. Unlike Paul, there are no biblical accounts of John having been in Ephesus; the historical narrative surrounding the life of Christ, His teachings, and the early Church ends after the Book of Acts (which focuses mostly on Peter and Paul). However, that isn’t where the story ends. As with all traditions and theology, history continues outside the religious texts, and John was no exception. Several Church historians during the Ancient Period clearly indicate that John lived, preached, and died in Ephesus, although there is little hard evidence to corroborate the narrative. But how many times had I believed something based on word alone without hard evidence as a soldier, police officer, or security analyst? Were drug dealers and terrorists more trustworthy than Irenaeus, Eusebius, or Ephesus’s own city council? Surely not.

I considered this as I learned about John’s death. According to one tradition, John died in Ephesus and was buried in a tomb on the hillside overlooking modern Selçuk. In another, John climbed into the tomb in a ray of blinding light; when the light was gone, so was John, assumed into heaven. On the site of his tomb, the Ephesians erected a martyrion, which they later expanded into a grand basilica. But how can we know John was ever there if he was assumed into heaven? Constantine opened the tomb and found no relics, not even bones. That might have been explained by grave robbers, by the assumption, or by the idea that John had never been there in the first place. I determined the first two were more likely. The martyrion was built more than 200 years after his death, so even if the assumption narrative was more traditional than grounded in fact, the grave robber explanation was the more likely throughout all of human history. Why build a martyrion on a place where more than 200 years of history said John was buried if it wasn’t true? And more: how many tombs and gravesites are hundreds of years old in Europe and the United States that we accept without question, based purely on a historical narrative? I couldn’t believe we were any more historically rigorous than the Romans were in their time.

As excited as I was by these personal discoveries, I left them behind as I headed inland. At least, that was my intent, until I came across the Apostle Philip’s tomb at Hierapolis. Philip was, to me, a lesser-known Apostle; he appears only a few times in the Book of John. That doesn’t negate his standing, of course, but it does mean our knowledge of his life comes from extra-biblical, historical sources. As early as the 300s, Church historians mentioned that Philip was buried in Hierapolis. A martyrion was built in the 400s. Even so, evidence of Philip’s existence eluded modern historians until 2011, when a team of archaeologists discovered a tomb they claimed belonged to him. Was it truly his? Again, the evidence was circumstantial, but compelling. It was a 1st-century tomb, just a few metres from the martyrion said to have been built atop it, and inside were Christian symbols, inscriptions referencing Philip, and carvings of baskets, loaves of bread, and fish. The latter convinced me: Jesus asked Philip about buying bread in John chapter six.

But where was the proof in all of this? Tomb carvings, apocryphal ascriptions, and 2,000-year-old texts hardly provide anything concrete. At the same time, scientists and historians give this sort of evidence enormous credibility when interpreting Egyptian mythology, Bronze Age revolutions, or indigenous American histories. If we concede those narratives as valid, then I couldn’t in good conscience dismiss the same kind of evidence for Christianity right in front of me. With that in mind, I resolved it wasn’t a leap to claim the Bible’s teachings were historically accurate, nor the early Church’s, even if evidence for their divinity was lacking.

Therein lies the element of faith. Did Jesus really feed 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fish? Did John really preach and die in Ephesus? Is Christianity truly superior to Hellenism? The truth is, we don’t really know and likely never will. Archaeology and history are soft sciences, and without a time machine, we can only make an assessment of what actually happened. But I answered those questions with some of my own. If Jesus didn’t feed the 5,000, then why does a 1st-century tomb, ascribed to a Philip, and located exactly where every historical narrative says it should be, feature inscriptions of bread and fish? If Paul’s and John’s preachings were false, then why would they repeatedly risk their lives ministering to the Ephesians? If Christianity was no more true or divine than Hellenism, then why did the Temple of Artemis suffer the fate the silversmiths feared, and why has Christianity become the world’s dominant religion while Hellenism remains limited to a few thousand?

I hadn’t come to Turkey searching for these answers. I was there for the ruins, to learn about human civilization and gain insight into a religion other than my own. But divinity has plans for us all, and in the ancient ruins, I collided with the evidence of my own faith. Had I fallen out of favour with the Church, requiring such an experience? I didn’t think so, but sometimes, we all need a push to get to the next step in life. In the midst of Christian giants, I experienced that push. The stories from Sunday School and theological college were no longer abstract concepts but concrete facts. The Apostles were no longer mythical figures in stained-glass depictions but real people who lived and died according to a divine awakening they received from Jesus. Ancient tombs and biblical stories were no longer myths but historically grounded places and events that seamlessly aligned with Christian texts.

These experiences haven’t convinced me of every Church tradition (indeed, I have many qualms with several Catholic practices as a Protestant), but I was convinced that where the Bible should be taken as a historical text, it could be. And I found it difficult to untangle the history from the religion when the two clearly went hand in hand, at least in the cases I witnessed. Was every story from the Bible true? I don’t know. Surely, many were parables. But that couldn’t be the case for all of them. It wasn’t the case for all of them. And if evidence exists for some, might not evidence for others lie buried somewhere in the rock?

As a student of history, I hoped so.

As a Christian after traveling Turkey, I am sure of it.