[195] The student may consult on the identification of Artemis and the Oriental or Persian deity Anaïtis, the _Revue Archéologique_ for 1885, vol. ii., pp. 105-115, and Derenbourg and Saglio's _Dict. des Antiq._, s.v. Diana.
[196] This argument may be pressed further. The silence which we observe in much of second-century literature about the New Testament Canon and Episcopacy is of the same character. The best known and most notorious facts are those about which authors are most apt to be silent when writing for contemporaries, simply because every person acknowledges them and takes them for granted.
[197] This is manifest at once if the reader will consult Mr. Wood's _Ephesus_ or Guhl's _Ephesiaca_, a work which, though published (in 1843) before modern discoveries had taught all we now know, is a most elaborate account of ancient Ephesus gleaned out of ancient writers.
We have now cleared the way for the consideration of the narrative of the riot, which is full of the most interesting information concerning the progress of the gospel, and offers us the most wonderful instances of the minute accuracy of St. Luke, which again have been illustrated and confirmed in the fullest manner by the researches so abundantly bestowed upon Ephesus within the lifetime of the present generation. Let us take the narrative in the exact order given us by St. Luke: "About that time there arose no small stir about the Way." But why about that special time? We have already said that here we find an indication of the date of the riot. It must have happened during the latter part of April, A.D. 57, and we know that at Ephesus almost the whole month of April, or Artemisius, was dedicated to the honour and worship of Artemis.[198] But here it may be asked, How did it come to pass that Artemis or Diana occupied such a large share in the public worship of Ephesus and the province of Asia? Has modern research confirmed the impression which this chapter leaves upon the mind, that the Ephesian people were above all else devoted to the worship of the deity? The answers to both these queries are not hard to give, and serve to confirm our belief in the honesty and accuracy of the sacred penman. The worship of Artemis, or of Anaïtis rather, prevailed in the peninsula of Asia Minor from the time of Cyrus, who introduced it six or seven centuries before.[199] Anaïtis was the Asiatic deity of fruitfulness, the same as Ashtoreth of the Bible, whom the Greeks soon identified with their own goddess Artemis. Her worship quickly spread, specially through that portion of the country which afterwards became the province of Asia, and through the adjacent districts; showing how rapidly an evil taint introduced into a nation's spiritual life-blood spreads throughout its whole organisation, and when once introduced how persistently it holds its ground; a lesson taught here in New Testament times, as in Old Testament days it was proclaimed in Israel's case by the oft-repeated statement concerning her kings, "Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam [king after king] departed not." The spiritual life and tone of a nation is a very precious thing, and because it is so the Church of England does well to bestow so much of her public supplication upon those who have power, like Cyrus and Jeroboam, to taint it at the very foundation and origin thereof. When, for instance, St. Paul landed at Perga in Pamphylia, on the first occasion when he visited Asia Minor as a Christian missionary, his eye was saluted with the splendid temple of Diana on the side of the hill beneath which the city was built, and all over the country at every important town similar temples were erected in her honour, where their ruins have been traced by modern travellers.[200] The cult or worship introduced by Cyrus exactly suited the morals and disposition of these Oriental Greeks, and flourished accordingly.