Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Sardis and Smyrna

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review, an instructor of
Liturgy in the Anglican Studies Program at Regent College, Vancouver,
and pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Hope, B.C.

At the annual Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities from 1995
to 2003, the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies ran a series of
“Religious Rivalries” seminars. For four years (1998–2001), these
seminars focused on the cities of Sardis and Smyrna in western Asia
Minor, two of the seven cities addressed in the “seven letters to
seven churches” in the second and third chapters of Revelation. This
collection of essays, edited by Richard Ascough, is based on the
Sardis–Smyrna seminar series.

The book consists of 13 papers, as well as an introduction and
conclusion by Ascough, which looks at what is known about the two cities
from historical writings, archaeology, and New Testament and related
texts, particularly in the first and third centuries AD (CE, as it is
now labelled by many religious scholars). The three Christian documents
that receive the greatest amount of attention in the essays are the
biblical book of Revelation (especially Chapters 12 and 17), the
“Martyrdom of Polycarp” (second century CE), and Melito of
Sardis’s “Peri Pascha” (also second century). Ascough is concerned
with the religious life of the cities, and the way different religious
groups related to each other and to the political and economic life of
the wider community. Thus he provides valuable background information
for students of New Testament and early church history.

“Rivalries” is used in the title because, as several authors note,
there were many religions in Sardis and Smyrna, monotheistic (Judaism,
Christianity) and a wide polytheistic range (ancient indigenous, Greek,
Roman). These groups competed for adherents and for proper, even
preferential, treatment from the authorities. Yet, and despite
Polycarp’s martyrdom by the Roman officials, there appears to have
been within particular groups more vehemence expressed about other
groups than publicly exhibited. In the public life of these cities, the
adherents of various religions appear to have lived in relative harmony,
and may have had little knowledge of the affairs of other
religions—much like life today in Canadian cities.